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Growing Marijuana with HighGrowThis section deals with all the things that you need to know to be able to operate HighGrow and care for your virtual marijuana plants. How this program worksThe objective of this program is to teach people something about this wonderful Cannabis plant, while providing a fun (and offbeat), "legal" growing experience. In order to achieve this, HighGrow must perform the following functions: Calculate daily health and growth based on the user's actions Each time HighGrow is started up, the current status of each plant is calculated. If you haven't started up HighGrow for a few days, the growth for the days you have missed is also calculated. New growth however, is only calculated on a daily basis and, should you visit the growroom twice in the same day, you must not expect to see any changes to your plants. All your actions however, will immediately influence your plants!! If you water and fertilize them, adjust the lighting or prune them, they will respond accordingly. Just by visiting the growroom and looking at your plants seems to influence them positively. Whether it's the fact that your plants enjoy being spoken to or not, they definitely seem grow better if you visit the growroom on a daily basis. Provide the tools to manipulate and control plant growthGrowing marijuana is not a very physical exercise !! There is actually very little you can do to help your plants grow, as most of their strength and potency is determined by the seed's genetic code. Besides planting the seeds, watering, fertilizing, adjusting the lights, occasionally pruning a growing tip or two, and then finally harvesting your plants, there is not much you can actually do here at HighGrow !! Most of the growing is done by the plants themselves (hypothetically speaking of course - this is after all a computer program), but your actions will not only ensure your plants survival, they will also ensure your enjoyment in following their continued development. Display plant development, accurately reflecting each day's growthGrown indoors, marijuana plants can grow from a few millimeters to three or more centimeters each day. Growth is determined by the plant's health and growth stage and unless pruned, your plants will continue to grow on a daily basis. Pruning growing tips will not seriously harm your plants, but it will cause your plants to slow node growth for a day or two afterwards. As each plant grows, it continually develops new nodes. These start off as growing tips, forming at the top of the branches and growing faster than any other part of the plant. Each new node sprouts two new leaves and these will continue to grow in size as the plant develops. Leaves may however drop off from time to time, particularly if the plant's health is declining.Provide logs and charts for visual representation of growth patternsTo enable you to accurately monitor your plant's daily growth and development, HighGrow displays all the growth statistics in both log and chart formats. The Growth Log shows all the data in a tabular form, while the Growth Chart shows it in the form of a graph. Information that is calculated and plotted on a daily basis includes the health, height, mass, potency, moisture, soil pH and the nutrient level of each plant. Play some funky reggae tunesMany experts will agree that talking to your plants, or playing some rhythmic music in the growroom will positively influence plant growth and development. Although this statement cannot be scientifically verified or disproved, this version of HighGrow includes a MIDI music system to randomly play a music file when you enter the growroom. Essential things to rememberWhile operating HighGrow, you should always bear the following things in mind: Date and time checks As you can imagine, HighGrow has very complicated and sensitive calculation operations. Each time the program is started up, important growth calculations must be performed. Even while the program is open on your Windows desktop, growth calculations are constantly being performed. Many of these calculations are based on the current date and time and should these change unrealistically, the program may refuse to operate further. It will not be possible to set the computer's clock back in an attempt to alter the plant growth, since the growth for that date will already have been calculated (this is also impossible to do with real plants) and can never be recalculated. Note: Many countries implement daylight saving time, and your computer's time may automatically be adjusted when this takes place. Please ensure that HighGrow is not running when this time adjustment is made.No more than three plants Due to space limitations in HighGrow's virtual growroom, you will only be able to grow three plants at any one time. Although there is a considerable gap between the pots, once the plants start getting larger, they quickly fill out and use up all the available space. Registered users will only be able to plant a fourth seed after harvesting the first plant. As soon as a plant is harvested it's stem is cut off at the base and the pot is prepared with fresh soil for the next seed. HighGrow actively prevents multiple installations in an attempt to limit the number of plants grown on any one computer by any one user.The best moment for planting It is always very tempting to select the best three seeds and plant them immediately. However, if all the seeds are planted at once, then each one will be influenced in a similar way and you will not be sure if this is as a result of your actions or not. Each plant will develop similarly and you will not always be aware how much the plants are being affected by your actions, or by their genetic characteristics. If you planted each seed a few days apart, you could try various different techniques while caring for each plant. If you notice that something you have done to the first plant has negatively influenced it, you can always try a different approach with the other two plants. You may also wish to plant two seeds on one occasion and then the third one a few days later. This will enable you to compare the difference between the first two plants and then apply that same treatment to the third plant a few days later.Planning your harvests Before you decide to harvest your plants, there are some things to bear in mind. The best time to harvest your plants is when the plant's potency is at it's highest level. However, this is not always easy to determine accurately, as the plant's potency fluctuates throughout it's life-cycle. Potency amongst females usually peaks towards the end of flowering, but is often already on the decline by this stage. Although it is quite common for the potency of a female plant to decline slightly during the few weeks before flowering, it usually increases again when the flowers start appearing. The gender of the plants can only be determined once the first few buds or flowers start appearing. To only harvest sinsemilla females (flowers without seeds) you must harvest all male plants as soon as they are identified. If you leave the males to flower, they will pollinate the females. Once pollinated, the females stop producing resin and start developing seeds. Female potency will usually not increase much after pollination and male potency usually declines as soon as the small yellow flowers open and start to release their pollen. How to control plant growth In order for your plants to thrive and grow potent buds, you'll have to care for them. As their fate is held entirely in your hands, you may want to know exactly what you can do to influence their growth. It is important to remember that each plant will respond slightly differently to the others, even if treated exactly the same. This is because they all genetically different. Although all the seeds belong to the plant species Cannabis, some seeds are Cannabis Indica, some Cannabis Sativa, and some a cross between the two varieties. The differences in growth between your seedlings may not be apparent at first, but you could soon notice that one plant develops faster and stronger than the others. The following section describes some of the things you can do to influence the growth and development of your plants.Health Although your plants' health is mostly influenced by their growth stage, everything you do to them will have some effect on them. Plant health should always be increasing, and a steady decline generally indicates some sort of incorrect treatment. The health should only start to decline, naturally, towards the end of the flowering period. The most common reasons for a decline in health are over or under-watering and allowing the tips to touch the lights. This causes the young leaves to overheat and start drying out. As a plant's health declines, it starts to lose some of it's lower leaves, which slowly dry out, shrivel and drop off the plant.Potency Although there are over sixteen chemical elements found in the Cannabis plant, the most important element influencing the "Cannabis High" (and thus determining it's potency) is tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. The amount of THC produced by each plant is mostly determined genetically. Basically speaking - if you plant the seeds of some really potent, fresh marijuana, the chances are very good that the plants grown from these seeds will be as potent (if not better)!! The THC content of different parts of the plant varies considerably, the most potent parts being the flowering tips. The potency generally increases, but often fluctuates a little during the life-span of the plant, decreasing significantly a few weeks before the flowering stage begins. Although the female flowers are also generally more potent than male flowers, plant potency is not directly related to the amount of resin produced.Lighting Besides regular watering, lighting is the most influential factor determining the health and growth of your plants. With enough light, a marijuana plant can easily grow to four or five meters tall, but with insufficient lighting it will grow slowly, developing thin, spindly stems and buds. The lights provided at HighGrow are of the Metal Halide variety, and although more expensive than fluorescents, they provide better light to individual plants. Each light has a timer, which can be turned on and off each day at a predetermined time. To ensure that your plants get the most from the lights, you should always ensure that the lamps are a few centimeters from the tallest tips of the branches. Don't ever allow the tips to touch the lights, as they will burn and seriously harm your plants. Marijuana enjoys a regular light cycle, so once the timers have been set, they should not be changed on an irregular basis. Seedlings and vegetating plants thrive on light and do not require any daily dark period. Although the HighGrow light period cannot exceed 23 hours and 45 minutes, you should set your lights to this photoperiod immediately after planting a seed and continue at this level until you decide to start the flowering stage. The flowering stage of the life-cycle of indoor marijuana is determined entirely by you, the grower. Grown outdoors, the plants usually respond to the start of autumn, when the days start getting shorter and the nights longer. To induce your plants to start flowering, you should try to replicate this natural life-cycle. When your plants are large enough for the branches to support the heavy buds - after about three months of growth - you can gradually start reducing the photoperiod to about 12 hours (or less). After two weeks of less than twelve hours of daily light period, your plants will start flowering. If you increase the light period once the plants have started flowering, they will stop producing flowers and continue vegetating again. Watering Watering is the most influential activity that you can perform here at HighGrow. Your plants will require regular watering, but they should not be watered every day. Germinating plants and seedlings growing in large pots (as supplied with HighGrow) may only require weekly watering, but if you forget to water them and allow the soil to dry out, the plant's health will be seriously affected. The daily light photoperiod and the height of the light above the branch tips also influences the amount of moisture transpired daily. Generally speaking, the more light you supply to your plants, the more water they will use. It is always better to water regularly, slowly increasing the amount of water supplied (as the plant gets larger), than to always water the same amount but with shorter time periods between waterings. You should always try to water your plants about two or three times per week (every second or third day).Fertilizing The primary reason for fertilizing is to supply the soil with nutrients which, in turn, feeds the plant. As the plant grows in size, it removes nutrients from the soil, which must be replaced in order for the plant to continue growing at the same rate. The soil provided at HighGrow is initially quite rich in nutrients, so you should not have to add much more during the first few weeks of growth. Nutrient requirements are low with seedlings, increasing during the vegetative stage. Although it may seem like a good idea to provide lots of nutrients during the preflowering or flowering stages, this is not recommended. As the plant gets larger, it's nutrient requirement increases proportionately. Seedlings don't require more than about one or two grams (mixed N,P & K) per week, whereas vegetating plants enjoy approximately three to five grams per week. To enable the nutrients to reach the roots, you should always mix the fertilizer and the water together before watering your plants with this solution. Never fertilize without watering at the same time!! Fertilizing always influences the soil pH. With regular use of Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus, the pH will slowly start to drop. This is not too serious, providing it doesn't get too low. The ideal soil pH for growing marijuana seems to be about 6.8, but nothing less than about 5 will seriously affect the plant's health. To increase the soil pH again, you could add a little Calcium or bonemeal when watering. A pH above 9, on the other hand, will also negatively affect the health of the plant. While the regular addition of Nitrogen will improve leaf and general plant growth, Potassium seems to enhance stem strengthening development. Phosphorus also builds strength, especially in seedlings and young vegetating plants. Calcium on the other hand, should only used to balance the soil pH, and should not be added on a regular basis. Pruning The main reason for pruning is that it helps to develop the growing branches, allowing you to directly control the shape of the plant. Each time you clip off a growing tip, two new tips start developing from the nearest leaf axil. By pruning the tips of the upper branches, you also give the lower branches a little time to catch up. When the lower branches catch up, the plant forms a flatter top and the light is able to reach more growing tips. The occasional clipping of a growing tip will not seriously affect the growth or health of the plant, providing you don't repeat this too often, or clip of more than just the top two leaves. The clipped branches always require a few days to repair the damage before resuming vegetative growth, so you shouldn't clip them again within a week or so of the previous clipping. Seedlings should also not be pruned, allowing them a little time to build up the energy required for repairing plant tissue.How to operate HighGrow If you understand how to use some of more common controls found in most Windows programs (a button, a menu, a toolbar etc), you should have no problem figuring out how to use everything in this program. However, there are one or two things that you may not realize immediately and may find very useful to know before starting.In the Growroom The toolbar (below the menu bar (heh, heh, heh)) includes a control called a combobox, showing the name of the currently selected plant. When one of the "Activity" toolbar buttons are pressed, the Activity dialog for that plant is displayed To select a different plant in this combobox, you could simply click on the plant in question. If you double-click anywhere on the growing plant, you will immediately start up the information page (in the Activities dialog) for that plant. If you double-click anywhere on a pot, you will start up the watering page of that plant's Activities dialog. Similarly, if you double-click anywhere on a lamp, you will start up the lighting page. If you move the mouse cursor over a growing tip it will change to show a pair of scissors. To prune the tip, simply click the left mouse button. To adjust the height of a lamp, simply move the cursor until it turns into a hand, click the left mouse button, drag the lamp to the desired height and release the button again.Adding more music files This version of HighGrow will randomly play any valid MIDI (.mid format) music file from a selection of files located in the same directory (or folder) where the main program files were installed. To add more files, simply copy them into this installation directory. |
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