When did you (anyone reading this) start growing? Do you remember? What year was it? I’m also wondering if you can remember what equipment you actually started with? Example: what kind of lights? How many Watts? Do you remember the strain that popped your “
cherry”?
I’m 36 and I’ve grown alil bit of Outdoor & Indoor. Ive only ever used soil as my main growing medium. My first grow was an outdoor of 52 clone ladies of AK47. And they turned out great. Some animal did get into the main plot (even tho it had chicken wire and some (blood or something) that we had bought from Amazon to keep animals away?.. But in the end it was a hell of alot of work. Alot of early mornings like b4 sunrise cuz we had to bring all our soils & stuff with no one seeing us! It was definitely a great summer experience. One that definitely got me hooked! It was the yr 2000 and it was the year I LOST my cannabis cultivation cherry.
Much love and respect from Canada
Does trying to grow a plant under a 15 watt florescent table light in the early seventies count ?
Mine was a 125w cfl, with a homemade pop can reflector, in a fireplace. It was a Sativa that did not enjoy the height restrictions of the fireplace.
I cropped, just barely.
Well technically it was bagseed under a incandescent or halogen desk lamp, pretty sure it was the stretchiest thing ever. My dad thought it was funny 
2003 was when I found OG however, while I was in cooking school. 600w hps on a mover in a closet, vegged and cloned under 4’ fluoros in mylar lined rubbermaids. All in a studio apartment lol.
First actual strain was Nirvana Bubbleicious and it was really nice, even had a true bubblegum pheno. Still have the pics on another site I think.
Grew out two bagseed in a window overlooking a courtyard in Manhattan in my 30s. I had zero information. I bought some miracle grow or similar. Both grew into litlle bushes which I slapped together.
Alas, my girlfriend was an attorney with political aspirations and threw a kill-them persuasion fit. I don’t think either finished veg. There were no buds, just a few presex calyxs.
I chopped them and collected leaves and dried them in paper bags and made brownies without decarbing and served them at a party and everyone said they got wasted.
It seems like just yesterday, but I began my lifelong hobby of growing in the spring of 1970.
There were no how to books, no interwebs, a definite dearth of cannabis growing information. For the first few years, it was all outdoors with bag seeds of what was mostly long finishing sativas. NE NJ was not very hospitable for successful cultivation of these seeds outdoors.
Circa mid ‘70s Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal published their first how to book, which introduced me to the earth shattering concept of growing indoors under fluorescents. A momentous revelation for sure.
I subsequently developed a passion for gardening which has only intensified ever since.
- First strain was ubc chemo outdoors. I then slowly moved indoors and had Bubblegum, White widdow, blueberry(opt pheno) and the chemo. From there I just kept going forward. I still run HID lights but upgraded to electronic ballasts.
- Took a sack of Mexi brick seeds and sowed them all over the woods. They were mostly destroyed, Mexican would never finish at my latitude anyway, and planting sun loving Cannabis in a shady forest is like the worst place to do it. Anyone walking can see a 8’ spindly weed plant in shady woods. It was destined to fail. It was like a quarter mile out of town where people fish, walk, and hunt too lord was I dumb.
I’m an outdoor grower. I’ve thrown many a seed in the ground throughout my life and grew in some shitty plants before I got serious about it. I really started growing a few years back when Cali moved from a medical marijuana state to a recreational one. The state and county taxes they added on at the dispensary once it became legal made it more expensive than the black market and I became completely incensed every time I went to buy weed. I remember coming home from the dispensary one day just seething about the outrageous tax and posted a rant on social media about it. I clearly remember one of my friends commenting “Grow your own” and that was it. I remember saying aloud to the computer “Goddammit I will!” So growing my own has become my silly way of sticking it to the man ever since. Ever since I watched that first seed emerge from the soil, I was hooked. Dug out and amended my entire huge back yard and started an entire flower garden back there and a place to grow my cannabis.
I couldn’t tell you what the various bag seeds were that I simply threw in the ground in the past, but my first serious (stick it to the man) grow was Blue Dream. A super easy strain to grow.
aside from throwing mexibrick bagseeds in various outdoor spots, i started in 07-08 or so. 2 tents, 1k se hps + fluoros, soil, fox farm nutes. had a giant lazy susan in the flower tent. i know there was a white widow and sage in there, but there were plenty of other strains that i dont remember. had a casey jones cut from damn near the beginning that i miss the hell out of (lost it a couple years ago). low budget/ghetto/guerilla grows in the early years were a lot of fun, i almost miss it sometimes. then i look at my garden as it is today, chuckle, and feel thankful for how far ive come and for not being at risk of incarceration over growing anymore
I have to say guys these stories really made my morning. Some of you guys had some rather funny first time grow experiences😂 I was rather impressed to read one story from someone that’s been growing since the 70’s… Man what I’d give to pick ur brain!!! Guaranteed hes had his fair share of mishaps and progression thru trial & error. Thxs for sharing your story with me/us. Ive always been fascinated and eager to learn from people that have “been there done that” or simply just knowledgeable in their field. Keep GROWING. Much love and respect from Canada.
20" fluorescent tube mounted inside a rubbermaid bin. Once it got too tall I cut the bottom out of one and the top off the original and stacked them, covered up w a blanket. Bagseed, took it all the way to the end of flower and it took forever. But I made it thru Christmas break and having to smuggle that box out and back for someone else to take care of for 2 weeks, and an inspection by the RA 1/2 way thru 2nd semester. So yeah, 1st grow was in my dorm room as a freshman. By the end of that year, 3 or 4 other guys were popping seeds on their windowsills to transplant outside. Upgraded to a low budget hps, moved into an apartment, eventually got ahold of clones and kept upgrading the set up for 3 more years after.
Graduated school, stopped growing, 15 years later and back at it!
20 yrs ago in closets under 150watt hps…good times!!!
About 10 or 12 years ago
Kid went off to college we had the house to our self
My nephew with the help of a friend built a box and grew out his first plant it was ice cream it was called
It was extremely good
I smoked a joint with the mrs she looked at me and said I quote if he could grow this you should be able to
Well I took a closet next to the garage created a false wall entrance through the garage only 53 in x 32 ins 96 hi
Wit 400 watt Chinese hps and no carbon filter and a hand full of autos from short stuff seeds
The rest is history
Central Coast of California.
A few bags seed and a dream.
Ran what ended up being a 3 plant HPS closet grow.
Super DIY and battling temps the whole way.
yea my man i started growing outdoors in jr high school we were getting some smoke off of a major air force base they called it afghan @ the time afghan did not mean anything to me except it was alot better than brick weed. i lived in a area that had a lot of green houses.so my friends know how to grow different plants. so 1 day a friend of mine showed me his plants.hell they look like tomatoe plant no buds.so he told me buds will come later. that all i need to know so that winter all winter i started making plots. ready to go for spring time.all i was told i needed to top my plants trail/error/ i got to harvest some bud with little money spent i was hooked been growing outdoors every year.as i am getting older i am going to have to look into growing inside but i will always have a few outdoors can not beet the big hid in the sky dolomite lime bone meal blood meal bloom bat guano for the win win
About 20 years ago in y early 20s I had a girl say to me imagine if we could grow our own. Challenge accepted. My first was bag seed.
When I was 16 yrs. old and used old school genetics Columbian/Acapulco Gold and seeds from Thai Sticks.
in spring of 1983(?) I planted some bag seeds in the back of an abandoned field of an elderly neighbors small farm.
surprisingly, they all sprouted.
unsurprisingly, rabbits found and ate them all about 3 weeks later.
I tried again in ~1985. Planted a seed in the greenhouse our high school had. This plan was of course doomed from the start, and over Feb break I wasn’t around to water the hidden plant and it died before it was even 2" tall.
I didn’t try again until about 5 years ago.
instant success, because… no bunnies, no snooping teachers, and a whole internet filled with info and supplies!
First grow was in the early 2000s Outdoors. Can’t remember exactly where the seeds came from but there was a lot of them.
We had at least 50 plants that got anhilated by deer in a single night. I started growing indoor shortly after 