As soon as Amendment 64 passed, I got some seeds from a friend (Aurora Indica, a Northern Lights x Afghani breed) and started a grow. For that first grow I began my babies as seed in soil, starting in cream cheese tubs.

Cream cheese tubs are great for starting seeds, as long as you poke drainage holes in the bottom. They are waterproof and pretty much unbreakable. From the tubs, which are about three inches across, I repotted to four-inch plastic pots, then to six-inch, then to pots that were approximately 11 inches across. Finally I moved them to the five gallon pots where they lived the rest of their lives.

That was a lot of repotting, and each time there is the danger of damaging the roots or breaking the stem if you don’t handle the plants carefully. I’ve been growing houseplants for years so I’m pretty good at repotting, but it seemed like wasted effort. So for this second grow, I started the plants directly into six-inch pots and moved them only once — to the five-gallon pots where they are now.

Baby plants in six-inch pots.

Seeding directly into the larger pot, or moving a plant up to a much larger pot, also has its dangers. Mostly you have to water very carefully, making sure that you neither let the edges dry out nor let the soil get too waterlogged. I’ll have a lot more to say about watering as I go on. For now, I’ll just note the picture above, which shows that my seeds sprouted nicely and grew well when sown directly into six-inch pots.