Sunny South Africa with a varied but almost perfect climate is the ultimate outdoor marijuana grow spot. While many others have to often use indoor grow tents for their steady supply throughout the year. But South Africans have the privilege to grow thriving, dank bud the way nature intended.
Is it Legal to Grow Dagga in South Africa?
The 18th of September 2018 is one of our favorite days in South Africa. The constitutional court finally decriminalized the private cultivation and use of marijuana. The essential word being ‘private’. We’re not at the coffee shop and joint stage yet – keep it at home.
Two years later and the law is still a bit hazy. Before you turn your house into an episode of Narcos, familiarise yourself with South African weed laws.
A massive growth operation could land you with a criminal offence for dealing drugs. But growing enough for yourself is perfectly okay and who needs more than that, anyway?
Tips For Growing Dagga In South Africa
Source Your Seeds
A quick Google search will tell you what you need to know. But the good people at weed culture.co.za have provided a list of recommended online providers in Mzansi who will deliver cannabis seeds to your door. Don’t worry, discretion is the name of the game here.
Kknow Yoyr Equipment
Before you get started, it’s vital you know what you need first. For those of you growing indoors, you’ll need a suitable light – depending on how many plants you want to grow, the required wattage will vary, but you generally want around 100w of draw minimum for a single plant, a popular choice for grow tents is a 400W or 600W metal halide and high-pressure sodium, both of which could cover a 4×4 foot area.
A small bag of organic potting soil and a pot (preferably around 20 liters) a popular choice is a fabric pot, which allows oxygen to flow into the compost and the plant itself, and is highly recommended for a first-time grower as they make it harder to overwater your plants.
Water Balance
This is important, and you might need to find yourself a pH balance kit, too. The water you use to hydrate your plant cannot be too acidic or alkaline. You’ll need to be between 6.5 – 7 on the scale to play it safe when growing with soil, or 5.8 – 6.2 when growing with a soilless medium such as hydroponics.
Temperature Is Critical
Unless you’re putting it in a grow room and under the glare of an electric bulb, it’s vital that you find somewhere that has as much sunlight as possible, ideally around 14 hours of sunlight a day during the summer months. A potted plant must be placed in 12+ hours of light every day in order to keep the plant from “flowering” – more on that in a moment…
Find A Well-Lit Area
Unless you’re putting it in a grow room and under the glare of an electric bulb, it’s vital that you find somewhere that is guaranteed eight hours of sunlight a day.
A potted plant must be placed in 12+ hours of light every day in order to keep the plant from “flowering” more on that in a moment.
How To Water The Plant
Okay, so if you’ve got your seeds, planted them in your fabric pot using organic soil, put them somewhere where they can get enough sunlight at a temperature between 20 – 30C (give or take), and you can supply them with neutrally balanced water, you’ve got the go-ahead.
But what’s the best way to water your supply? This is no exact science, we’re afraid. It will be at your discretion to decide how much water is needed because too much – or too little – can kill the plant.
A good way to decide is by pressing into the soil with your finger. If you feel dry soil before your whole finger is submerged, it needs a top-up. For younger plants, they will only need to be watered gently with lower volumes of water, in a radius around the stem. When plants are larger and have established roots, you can water the whole pot until about 10% of water runs out the bottom of the pot. Overwatering is a common cause of plant health issues among new growers, more so than plants drying out, so be careful not to over w
Don’t Let It “Immediately
You have to keep it in a “vegetative” state, as this encourages growth.
You have to keep it in a “vegetative” state, as this encourages growth. You need the plant to grow before it can start producing the goods. If immature plant flowers are too early, there won’t be much harvest to be had.
When growing outdoors, your vegetative stage will be something out of your control, but planting it earlier in the season will give your plant more time to grow before the light cycle changes and the plants enter flower. When growing indoors, you should veg your plants for however long you desire, in order to get the yield you are looking for.
Between 6 and 8 weeks is most common, though remember that your plant will stretch in the first week of flower and can easily double or even triple in size during that period, so that is something you should take into account, especially when growing in a confined space.
Gey Your Timing Right
When growing indoors you will have control over the light cycle and be the one determining when your plant will enter flower. You should be vegging under 18 hours of light and 6 hours of dark, when you want your plants to enter flower you will lower this amount of light to a 12/12 cycle, 12 hours of light, and 12 hours of darkness. When growing outdoors, nature will do this change for you as the season change and plants will begin to flower automatically, usually around February.
Separate Males Ans Famales
Nearly there. Only female plants (yes, they have sexes) start to show buds towards the end of vegetation. The male plants do not germinate, so once you’ve identified them, you can get rid of them.
Pick Your Buds
Okay. If you’ve followed these steps, you’ll see the plant coming into bloom, producing the buds that we’ve come to know as dagga. If you get to this stage, congratulations! You’ve legally grown and smoked your own weed. Don’t thank us, thank the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Which fertilizer is good for dagga In South Africa
The big three primary nutrients that marijuana plants need to grow are NPK, short for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
NPK is the collective building block of any cannabis fertilizer, as well as any thriving marijuana plant.