I recently got a piece of land from a friend and thinking of growing myself for the first time. However, I’ve been reading some of the posts and it’s making me feel anxious. Some of the growers I spoke to shared that they’ve lost 200k plus on their first batch, which makes my knees shake. The land is in So Cal, essentially just a desert. Any suggestions on what strain would be the easiest to start with? Obviously, I’ll start small. Any pointers would do, I’m still putting things together, it’ll be a while for the greenhouse to be finished. I’m mainly trying to find a type of seed that is easy-ish to grow and has a nice yield.
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Blue dream is usually in the list of easy to grow strains 
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Desert huh sour diesel and afghani descendants do well in hot dry settings
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I’m just some guy who doesn’t buy sell or smoke weed growing for his first time with bad results, so smother this comment in salt:
- Is it legal to grow commercially in your county? In mine it isn’t
- You may want to talk to area dispensaries and see what’s been selling/ what they’ll buy from you
3)I hope you have a good way of getting enough water. I have no idea whatsoever how tight a growers budget is relative the profit margin. But I see a lot of grow lights for sale on craigslist in my area leading me to believe that where I am small scale indoor grows aren’t very profitable anymore?
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Hi @RyanKing
You on a great path with so many speedbumps. We are in the process of putting up a tunnel, but instead of cannabis, it will be vegetables, something much more needed in my community. An old friend of mine who is qualified in cannabis actually converted from cannabis to microgreens due to redtape and profitability. He had a setup in Arizona for a couple years.
Some advice would be to take really small steps, and grow into your land, learn as you go along, try different strains, work on learning about the resources you can use, network, meet people and grow into your shoes.
Check out GN’s seed hub for preferred seeds.
A couple suggestions to look at:
Durban Poison - landrace sativa
Kush varieties - indica dominant
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@RyanKing the first thing you BETTER do is take a look at your water QUALITY! If you’re in the So Cal desert your water may not be suitable for much!!! High pH and salts content can be atrocious…
There is NO variety that is going to do well in pH 8.5 water with a EC of 2.0 already!!! Boron and Sodium levels can be quite high!!!
Suggest the first thing you do is determine your irrigation source and take a water sample into any Ag lab in the area for analysis!!! If you have a hard time understanding the analysis report PM me a copy and I can give you a pretty good idea of what you’re up against!
The irrigation water analysis will be the best money you have ever spent before even considering anything else regarding your grow…Good Luck!
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When you say grow for yourself do you mean this is your first time growing cannabis ? There’s alot of lessons to be learned especially if this is your first time growing cannabis. @TheMadFlascher is right about the water your going to need to know what’s in it. A common mistake I have seen with people trying to break into the industry is going to big too fast without knowing how the plants ect will preform under your growing conditions. There’s no sense in throwing 200k at a grow op if you don’t know what to expect in terms of quality, yeild and safety standards. If you have experience growing cannabis and you have some idea of the quality and quantity you produce it will make your life alot easier and your investments much less risky. Keep in mind you are going to be competing against others from quality/price and if your hoping to throw a bunch of plants in the ground with little effort, preparation and planning and make tons of money right away without the experience just because it’s “weed and grows itself” you would save yourself alot of stress and money to get out while you still can.
If you have grown before and you have an idea of what to expect then I would start small and build gradually as @chrisj mentioned
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