“How to grow from seed instead of cuttings”
Up to 7 x per year harvesting with the No Mercy 12/12 cultivation system
If you're after the very best yield possible – and I mean both in terms of weight and quality - just ask yourself:
How much time do I spend vegging?
How many times a year do I harvest?
How much space do I need for growing?
How often is my grow room vacant while waiting for new plants?
Am I happy about my electricity bill?
How much money do I spend on seed?
How much time do I spend manicuring fluffy small buds?
We will help you find cheap and easy solutions that will squeeze the last drop of efficiency out of your grow room and improve your output. Allow you more harvests a year, but less and bigger buds to manicure. Tell you how to do more with less space, buy seeds and still have money left to buy a pair of designer jeans and cut on your electricity bill. Too good to be true? Read on!
The reasons why are obvious!
Top quality seed is available for much less than the outrageous prices that are still the standard with many seed companies. For larger orders we can offer you prices as low as € 1,25 each, but even in smaller quantities we will beat the prices of the famous seed companies by a large margin. This is something the average seed bank won't be able to afford. Most of them pay big money for international advertising, fairs and bribes - money that has to be recovered somehow. By charging you!
And if you're someone who has been taught to distrust 'cheap', because it's supposed to equal 'low quality', it's time to 'reset' your prejudice. Take a deep breath and check our website to see what can be achieved with cheap seeds! You'll be amazed - and that's a promise.
Apart from our affordable prices we pride ourselves on the level of service we offer; our website and forum is a treasure trove for passionate growers, and provides a wealth of basic as well as in-depth information.
We are not one of those companies where you just don't seem to get through. We are there for you. Our English may not be as good as these words suggest. We may not always be as polite as the girl at the bakery's. But hell, we ARE there to help you out.
For technical or business-related questions we are at your service 6 days a week, 12-14 hours a day. By mail, or even by telephone if you like to waste your money on international calls. Can you think of one seed company that does that?
Should I go on, or do you start to see the light?
As long as you're growing a crop that is considered illegal all over the planet, your freedom and maybe even your life is at stake. Growing is a tricky business and could land you in a world of trouble. To make your risk worth it's while you owe it to yourself to use the available space as smartly and efficiently as possible. The best system to achieve this is the 12/12 system which No Mercy has succesfully finetuned to perfection over the last ten years. Those who are already convinced of the 12/12 system definitely don't want to go back – not to growing from cuttings, not to growing in a traditional seed based system. Why?
Under normal conditions seed needs 5 to 10 weeks before it shows sex. In other words: growing from seed takes time. Believe it or not... by using the 12/12 system we easily yield 1 gram for each watt and harvest six times a year – at least. If you're using fast maturing varieties even more!You could even use your flowering room for germinating and save space. Unbelievable as it may seem, the plants you see in the pictures have really been germinated under 12 hours of light – and in fact have never seen more than 12 hours of light. This is super growing, thanks to the little tricks mother nature allows us to use.
Let's get started
Use a small partition of your flowering room (or a separate cabinet or growbox) for sowing under a couple of fluorescent lights. Start 19-22 days before you plan to harvest. Use 9x9 cm or 10 x10 cm plastic containers filled with … soil, or use rockwool starter plugs of 7.5x7.5 cm. If you decide to use starter plugs, flush them well and add a tiny bit of nutrition to the water. Place the plugs together tightly and make sure to add a layer of 2 cm Hydrodensa or perlite underneath the starter plugs to prevent root damage. When germinating in starter plugs make sure to add 1-2 cm Hydro or germinating soil on top of the seed.
The best fluorescents to use are Philips 33 Cool White! AVOID Cool White Deluxe!!! Add some Philips 830 to get enough of the red spectrum. One red to every white is ideal. Shortage of red light causes too many males to emerge. In case your store doesn't carry Philips fluorescents they usually have reference tables available that show the corresponding colours of other brands.
To make sure you get even germination, soak your seeds for 50 hours in wet cotton wool before placing them in containers or starter plugs. At regular normal indoor temperatures planting the seeds will germinate within 50-55 hours. All the seeds, including the ones that have not (entirely) opened are then placed in the next medium. Place one seed in each container, preferably each at the same depth of 0.7 mm! Make sure you use Hydrodensa or a special seed starter mix containing some sand, or mix at least 40% argil with the potting soil. If you skip this step the seed coat (or testa) on some of your seedlings will stick to the leaves and come along when the seedling sprouts. The plant will not remain stocky and compact like we want, but will start to stretch and grow leggy because the little plant 'thinks' it is still below the soil and... continues to stretch in search of light.
If you use a room outside your flowering room, make sure that once the seedlings are above ground your timer is set to 12 hours light. If you don't want to change your light hours, synchronize the fluorescents in this room with the HPS bulbs in the flowering room.
If you germinate in the same room make sure the timer for the fluorescents is exactly synchronised with the timer you're using for your HPS bulbs. This way you prevent the flowering plants to receive any false light. It may sound strange to germinate plants under 12 hours, but you will be amazed. On average your plants will reach a height of about 75-80 cm. DON'T be tempted to give the seedlings 18 hours of light for the first one or two days. By sticking to 12 hours the seedlings are forced to almost immediately choose sex... so that when you harvest three weeks later your fresh ladies are ready to occupy the grow room, because you have snipped off the males around day 16-18! Just let them go until day 20 or 21 to be absolutely sure there are no more males. Once you get experienced you'll be able to spot the males around day 15-16.
In order to get vigorous plants it's absolutely essential to give your seedlings a lot of bright direct light form the very beginning. It cannot be too much! The fluorescents need to be very close to the seedlings, just an inch above the foliage is ideal. If that somehow is impossible at most two inches.
After day 20 even the biggest fool can recognize the males and weed them out. Don't worry about fertilisation... females are a little slower to get receptive than males are capable of releasing their pollen. At the very most one tiny seed will develop at the first node of a pre- flowering female. A preflowering female shows her sex at the first node by growing one female flower – which of course has it's reason.
Another huge advantage is that your HPS bulbs are never switched on for more than 12 hours, saving you a lot of electricity. And the beauty of it all is... your growroom is never improductive or empty!
Een heel groot voordeel is ook dat je nooit meer langer dan 12 uur je HPS hoeft te laten branden, dus dat spaart veel stroom. En het allermooiste is…je hok staat nooit geen dag meer leeg of onbenut!
Those seedlings have had 3 weeks at 12 hours when you harvest and only need 7 weeks to finish flowering! Well, that makes... 7 x 7 = 49 weeks! And because a year has 52 weeks you'll even have some slack. And don't forget.... plants grown this way only produce one big cola – a collection of buds. And of those big cola plants you can put more to a square foot/meter than you're used to. At least 26 containers of 7 liter a square meter under a 400 watt bulb and 30 under a 600 watt bulb. You will notice you hardly get any lateral branching. In other words: a lot less to trim & manicure! However, depending on the variety, these plants will still reach an average height of 75-80 cm...
And hey... don't forget that when you use one of the traditional grow systems 80-90% of your yield is produced by main buds, the other 20% is fluffy light weight stuff. Why then bother with all lateral branches that only block the light and produce so much of that annoying fluff you have to trim.
Growing from seed is the future... growing from cuttings is on the way out
Make sure to master the art of germinating seed, and you'll be two steps ahead of your cuttings supplier. Thanks to their taproot seedplants are much stronger than cuttings with their pathetic little emergency rootlets! When you get your cuttings elsewhere you always take the risk of importing spider mite and thrips along with the cuttings. Seedlings are more vigourous than any cutting, and have better resistance to pests and diseases. Quality and quality increase in equal measure. Seed is easier to deal with, to order and get hold of. Which makes you more anonymous and safer. And last but not least... a seed plant is a more natural plant.
Tips:
If you germinate on starter plugs make sure they are well flushed with pH minus for flowering (phosphoric acid). First lower the pH to pH 3.5, then leave the starter plugs to soak for 3 hours. Soak again in water adjusted to pH 5.8 to which you add (on top of the EC value of your tapwater) 0.3-0.4 EC. Add some Bacterial to your last water (which you can recycle). Bacteria take care of a beneficial micro life in your medium. Only then your starter plugs are ready.
If you only use soil... take care! Fresh potting soil is very acidic. In other words: to compensate, use regular tap water with a non-adjusted pH.
Stay cool, high and take time to fly !
SpeesCees
Over the years I have written about this subject quite a few times: the dominant cuttings culture of Dutch growers won't survive. In this respect the Dutch market is unique: people order and buy clones from stores. It's a shady and unreliable market *). Sooner or later people will get tired of it's many disadvantages and start learning how to grow from seed. Even though in other countries growing from cuttings may not be the prevailing technique, there is still a lot to be gained from our system - even for experienced growers who never use cuttings!
Why cuttings are on the way out in the Netherlands
- Cuttings are expensive
- Cuttings make you dependent
- If you're lucky half of your cuttings will be healthy
- You can't be sure what variety you're getting
- Cuttings need time to develop roots and often you will have retards
- Cuttings produce a lot of lateral branches that don't produce significant buds
- Cuttings often come with eggs of spider mite and thrips
- To haul around soaking cardboard boxes full of cuttings really isn't a good idea
- Buying cuttings allows others to get a pretty good idea about when you are likely to harvest (dangerous!)
- Trying to score cuttings guarantees a lot of stress
- Making cuttings yourself requires a lot of space for your motherplant(s) as well as a seperate cutting room
- When using seed you only need a couple of fluorescent lights to decently grow your seedlings for the first weeks
- Cuttings make for 20 times more manicuring than plants grown from seed
- Growing from seed will cost you significantly less electricity
- Seedlings are much stronger and have more self regulatory power than cuttings
- You can germinate seed in the same room as where you flower your plants
Why use the No Mercy 12 hours system?
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