How to Grow Marijuana on a Balcony

I have been growing Marijuana on my 6th floor balcony in Australia 3 years in a row.

It worked great.

How much direct sun reaches your balcony? You need direct Sunlight that reaches your plant for at very least 3 hours a day.

Regarding on the intensity of sunlight in your place, this can be more. For example, here in australia, the sun is very intense during summer. 3 hours direct sunlight and the rest indirect will already yield a harvest. But in Germany, 3 hours would probably not be enough.

This is my one of my balcony plants:

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Growing Marijuana on a Balcony

This is the story of how I did it.

2 plants were germinated. More on germinating Marijuana Seeds.

The plants were put into direct sunlight as much as possible.

After a while, they looked like this:

At this point, i started to add fertilizer to the water. i used tomato fertilizer. It is probably not the best choice, but i did not have hydroponic fertilizer on hand.

Whichever fertilizer is chosen, it is wise to make sure it is suited for food plants.

The plants kept going. With ca. 4 hours of direct afternoon sun.

Automatic Watering

The large plants needed water twice a day.

This is easily forgotten and the green ladies suffer from drought.

So i built a watering system.

The pump pumps twice daily for ca 5 minutes water into the pot. Excessive water runs back into the reservoir underneath.

The pump is a little garden pond pump, connected to a timer.

The water contains fertilizer.

This way, you do not have to worry about watering the plants.

These plants were started in spring. Outdoor Marijuana usually starts flowering in the middle of summer, when the days are getting shorter.

Both plants turned out to be females. They started developing buds:

After ca 3.5 month:

It is harvest time. More than 50% of the trichomes (little white hairs on the buds) have turned brown.

The later Marijuana is harvested, the more numbing is its effect. I prefer my weed not too numbing, but rather uplifting.

So I usually harvest when more than 50% of the trichomes are still white. The weed in the following picture is, in my opinion, overdue for harvesting.

The plants were harvested at the age of 4 month.

The buds were cut off and the small leaves in between were removed.

Click the links to read about curing Marijuana and harvesting Marijuana.

The harvest and curing is over, the fresh weed is left:

Now comes ..... drying.

The weed should dry slowly and in the dark.

If you are interested, please read the article on drying of Marijuana.

After the Marijuana was dried, i put it into plastic containers.

It came to 2.5 ounces of dried Marijuana.

I was happy with the result. Growing Marijuana on balcony is possible. It was a nice smoke. The strain was not very strong, but that's alright because i had enough of it.

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