Advanced Cultivator
Plant biology — cannabinoids, terpenes and the deep how.
12 lessons
Plant biologyCannabinoid Biosynthesis: How Your Plant Builds Potency
Here's what catches most growers off guard: your plant doesn't produce THC. It produces THCA — tetrahydrocannabinolic acid — which is a completely different…
Terpene Profiles: Written in Genetics, Locked In
Your strain's smell is determined by which terpene synthase genes it expresses and at what level. Allen's team at Steep Hill Labs mapped the entire terpene synthase…
The Entourage Effect: What the Research Actually Shows
The "entourage effect" — the idea that cannabis compounds work synergistically to produce effects different from isolated cannabinoids — is a plausible hypothesis…
The Flip: 12/12 and What Changes
You've kept a plant alive and vegged one without helping it to death. Now comes the part where the money is made or lost: the flip. Flowering is where everything…
Flower Feeding and the Taper
Here's the thing most beginners get backwards: flowering is not the time to feed harder. It's the time to feed differently, and then feed less. The plant's diet…
Humidity in Flower: The Bud-Rot Window
The Sleepwalker did everything else right. Light dialled. Nutrients dialled. Temperature dialled. Never checked humidity once. Walked into the tent at week seven…
Plant healthPests and Diseases: The Unwanted Guests
There was a single white dot on the underside of a fan leaf. I noticed it on a Tuesday, decided it was probably dust, flicked it off, and carried on. Nine days…
Water & mediaHydro, If You Must
A YouTube video sold me on hydro. Roots like angel-hair pasta, plants twice the size of anything in my fabric pots, a bloke in a garage narrating over a harvest…
EnvironmentOutdoor and the Irish Climate
I read that outdoor cannabis grows bigger, costs nothing, and the sun does all the work. So I put a photoperiod seedling straight into a shaded garden spot in May…
Harvest & cureWhen to Harvest: Trichomes Don't Lie
I'd been staring at it for two weeks. Is it ready? Is it ready now? The pistils were orange, the buds were fat, and the trichomes were — well, I didn't own a loupe,…
Drying: The Slow Part You'll Want to Rush
After I chopped that first harvest ten days early, I made it worse. I wet-trimmed every leaf off because the buds looked tidier, hung them naked in the tent with…
Curing: Where Good Bud Becomes Good Bud
Most beginners have never heard of curing before their first grow. Some never hear about it at all and go straight from drying to smoking, then wonder why their…