Read Spear - Small Spaces, Big Yields: A Quick-Start Guide to Yielding 12 or More Ounces Indoors (MJAdvisor)

Dedica tion

Coloradans* now enjoy what is their birthright: the un-harassed use and consumption of any plant we find growing on what my grandfather called Gods Green Earth. Well, amen.

The truth of the matter is that the prohibition of this plant was doomed from the start; we grew it anyway and you cannot successfully legislate against culture. This victory is moral. Prohibitions misguided goal, to regulate the self-regarding behavior of other people and its sole achievement, the incarceration of vast numbers of innocent, mostly non-whites , is now behind us in Colorado, and we can get on with the enjoyable pastime of growing our own marijuana without the threat of having Big Brother ruin our lives and the stress and paranoia that comes along with such a threat. As an activist myself, I can attest to the hard work and dedication that went into bringing this change about in Colorado and wish to dedicate this small volume not only to those who fought in the trenches of the drug war and won, but to those victims still paying for their crimes in US prisons and around the world. As you use this information to produce your favorite herbal medicine or recreational drug, please reflect on the following:

The US is the worlds number 1 incarcerator. Nobody else imprisons a larger percentage of its people than we do here in the Land of the Free. Nobody. We can and must reverse that. Politicians will follow if the people lead.

Our prisons are increasingly private and for profit, misaligning the motives of proper governance with those of for-profit industry. This should induce nausea. Instead it is little-known. Imagine the size of the voting block consisting of the families of the more than one million individuals either incarcerated or on probation for drug- related crimes. We need only to help them overcome their shame at having an incarcerated family member, then we can help them organize and get vocal.

The vast majority of drug prisoners are African American or Latino. Incarceration is racist. Blacks are 10 times more likely to go to prison for drug use, even though whites use drugs at about five times the rate of blacks.

Federal prosecutors are in it for the numbers and they do not answer to their mistakes. The prosecutors, the DEA, police departments, politicians and corporations are all in on the take. Only you have the ability to lead our country out of this mess.

Folks, we have a long way to go. Celebrate your new freedom, but do not rest on your laurels. Please visit the Drug Policy Alliance, Americans For Safe Access, NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project, DrugSense and any number of other organizations to educate yourself and offer your help, and if you cannot donate, please become vocal: Talk about the insanity of incarcerating people for committing crimes that either involve no one else or only other consenting adults. Thanks for letting me take up my soapbox, now onto the fun stuff: growing lots of weed!

*Washington messed this up somehowthere is no personal growing allowance in Washington.

Why An other Grow Book?

This guide is intended for the educated indoor grower who is not yield ing enough. In this guide I assume you are a grower who knows about the plant, cannabis, understands that it is dioecious (separate sexes on separate plants), knows the basics of how to grow plants generally, and knows how to force cannabis to flower.

I also assume that you are a grower who has had only moderate success or has only just begun growing cannabis in earnest. There are lots of guides available to the home grower that cover the basics. This one is aimed at practicality and is written for all of the people with whom I have interacted over the years, in person or by email, who know how to grow but want to know how Im hitting my numbers.

What are my numbers? I find it no problem at all to get 10-14 ounces from a single plant under 600 watts in 60 days. Thats around half a gram/watt of premium cured bud, trimmed flush. Bigger numbers are achievable (by vegetating longer or by growing outdoors), but I find this to be an achievable target in terms of time and effort for a home indoor grower, given the space available to most people. There is nothing presented here that I have not done myself. Follow my instructions and hit my numbers.

I learned to grow in the darkpolitically and from an informational standpoint. Many of us learned that wayfeeling our way around, testing various hypotheses, suffering setbacks, enjoying success when it came. One of the great things about learning to grow today is that the Internet is full of information. But, this is also a drawback. There is too much information available to the grower today. Much of it is good, but much of it is bad. And so the problem for todays grower is epistemologicalhow do you know which information is good and which is bad? This guide will help you sort through those bits and pieces of information. For example, this book only covers two methods of growingin soil and in deep water culture. The others wont get you where you want to go as quickly or as inexpensively. I know because Ive been there, done that.

I have always been interested in exploring the various heuristics that growers pass along to other growersthe received wisdom that we have all heard and most people live by and which now pervades growers forums. I like to test these bits of folklore to see whats really behind themif they work, why they work and which ones we should keep and which ones we should discard. Having had my own medical marijuana facility (the second one in the state of Colorado to receive its official license), I have had the chance to grow thousands of plants and test these rules. I am also interested in efficiency, since this is surely why these heuristics evolved in the first place. What I mean is that the science and art of growing pot has been conducted under the threat of legal repercussion, making the enterprise a highly risky one. Someone taking the risk to produce a crop needed* to get to the finish line as soon as possible and with the highest reward. Therefore, experimentation came at great cost. If the experiment failed, the clock was reset and the risk due to exposure went up. If the experiment succeeded, news spread rapidly, perhaps without having rerun the experiment or re-testing all variables and really focusing on what it was that worked.

Running my own legal operation afforded me the opportunity to experiment. It is my observation that everything in this business has a performance curvewhether its cloning, vegetating, flowering, trimming, CO2 levels, temperature, watering, employee time spent at various tasks, sales price, and so on. I have done my best to find the peak of those curves. Here in this book is what I have foundthe best ways I have found to hit big numbers fast. I invite the reader to contact me through this book's companion website, MJAdvisor.com, with any questions, comments or ideas they may have.

Together we have put cannabis at the apex of horticultural achievement, exceeded only perhaps by the science that has produced GMO crops such as corn and soybeans, and together we can continue to innovate. This book is offered in the spirit of continued exploration.

*Please excuse my use of the past tense, I realize that not everyone lives in Colorado, but the day is surely coming when we will all be using the past tense when discussing marijuana prohibition!

The Grow Space

We are focusing on a big yield in a little space. Space is a critical issue. Too little space and the plants just wont thrive, too big a space and disease can take over without your notice. I want you to grow in a 4x8 tent, but will assume you only have space for a 4x4 tent or closet.

Please do not grow in a smaller space and expect my results. If your space is a tent, youre pretty set; if it is a closet, you have some prep work to do.You should have about 6 feet of vertical space (height) and the room should be either sealed air-tight if you intend to supplement CO2 or be well-ventilated with fresh air if you do not. I strongly suggest you use CO2. We will cover that a bit later on in the book.