After having never touched, trimmed or even seen a cannabis plant in the flesh (leaves?) in my time as a weed smoker, you can imagine how slightly intimidating the whole process might have seemed.

But, in another attempt to become slightly more self-sustaining, and after a little research, my boyfriend and I decided to take on the challenge.

After ordering twelve feminized seeds from a Canadian website (we spent .03 BTC, at the time), I consulted a few tutorials and recipes for a super soil and decided to piece together a recipe of my own.

Ultimately, after a few days of obsessively editing my Amazon cart, my own recipe began coming together; I decided to go with a low-maintenance mixture of:

Worm Castings 9 Cups
Bat Guano 2 Cups
Kelp Meal 2 Cups
Blood Meal 1 Cup
Epsom Salt 1/2 Cup
Perlite 8 Quarts
Coco Coir 5 Blocks

I mixed all of this with 3 bags of 3.5 cubic feet bags of potting soil and let sit covered in a sunny, hot place for 15 days.

FIRST MONTH

To sprout the seeds, we let them sit in a cup of distilled water in a cool dry place until their tap roots were beginning to emerge. As soon as the white tip was visible, we planted them about 3/4 of an inch below the soil in a quart sized plastic pot and sprinkled them with some water mixed with seed starter and placed sealed sandwich baggies over them to increase the humidity and help the first leaves sprout.

We kept them indoors under a plant-friendly light for about 2-3 days, until the first leaves emerged.

SECOND MONTH

Once the second, more familiar pair of leaves sprout, we transplant it into a 1 Gallon pot and began exposing it to sunlight for 6-7 hours a day, then leave it under lights through the night. By the next month, it seemed to have grown exponentially.

Once the fourth node (set of leaves) sprouted, we topped them, so that they would have more main colas than just a single stalked plant.

They all turned out unique!

THIRD MONTH

They were beginning to outgrow their one gallon pots, so we transplanted them into their final home, these 7 gal. felt bags, which ended being great for moving the plants around with the sun during the day. We were watering them about every day at this point, which had a lot to do with the summer heat. The best way to tell when it's watering time is to stick your finger about 3 inches into the soil -- if it's dry, water, if it's moist, wait a bit.

We maintained a 24 hr light schedule with 7-8 hours of sunlight a day, and the night spent under lights.

In their vegetative stage, these plants are like bean stalks. They seemed to be growing an inch a day!

FIFTH MONTH

The plants looked great! They were getting a little bushy, but still growing at a steady rate.

Check in soon to learn about the flowering stage!