Johnnie Green, The Instinctive Gardener

Johnnie Green, The Instinctive Gardener joins us today from his grow in Michigan. After joining the Army and giving up cannabis while serving our country, Johnnie now likes to serve others in the form of home grow consultation. With 20+ years of cannabis gardening under this belt, once Michigan went live with their form of legalization, it seemed like the next obvious step for him to start to help others take that step to provide themselves with good clean cannabis. 6:00 – Johnnie gives a rundown on the size of his room and how to set up the best room for your growing situation, which includes several rooms so he can properly separate the different stages of growth – including a flower room, veg room, a Mom room recently turned into a drying room, as well as a studio/classroom that he uses for grow classes. He’s using Gavita DE 1000w bulbs throughout the flower period to ensure that he’s achieving the weights that he wants as well as the quantity. At the 10 minute mark, Johnnie encourages growers not to skimp on any grow supplies and going for the best that you can afford at the time. I chime in and suggest that it’s ok to start low and go slow, if you need to, you can always start out with the more low-end products and then work your way up from there but understand that you get what you pay for. How to improve your overall plant health? His suggestion is reducing the salt input on your plants, which means using fewer nutrients! This is a case where less equals more. He also says that lots of people are having a Magnesium deficiency due to the overuse of other bottled nutrients that results in your plant building up salts in the root area and eventually not absorbing the nutrients that you’re putting into the soil. How can you increase your yields? Shortly after 15:30 Johnnie gives a few tips to achieve the yields that you desire – and the first is more light. It’s not necessarily the starting point, but once you get your room dialed in and your plants producing at least 1.5 pounds per 1000w, light is the way to really take your yields to the next level. Johnnie uses light movers in his room, and we discuss the cross-section of adding more light in a room but having your lights on light movers. Essentially, this gives your plants a bit of a break in between full strength 1000w lights and when they get that full light again they respond and grow quicker, resulting in more yield. He also uses some T5 veg lighting as supplemental lights on the outside of his light movers to keep them illuminated. What’s your unique tips or tricks to growing cannabis? Johnnie drops it just after 29 minutes, and it’s plant manipulation. He’d like you to consider manipulating your plants during the vegetative stage to help reduce your “set back times”, which means that your plants will need recovery time when you do anything to them such as topping or super-cropping. The least amount of “set back time” you can achieve without sacrificing your yields is important, and is Johnnie’s tip for the day. Keeping an open mind is important, as well as patience and that mistakes happen, are the 2 character traits that Johnnie believes creates the most successful growers. We discuss this topic right around 32 minutes. Johnnie Green’s last bit of advice for you: Pay attention to the political landscape and don’t let the commercial entities control the government and control our plant. It’s critical that we are able to continue to grow our plant and keep large corporations where they belong. There is a place for them, because not everyone will be able to grow their own – but we both strongly believe that everyone should have the right to grow this plant at home and we must fight to gain and then maintain that right because we have so many forces joining against us, including some large medical dispensaries in many states. Find and connect with Johnnie Green @instinctive_gardener on Instagram, or [email protected]. You can also call him at 268-243-8979 for a live consultation and help with our garden. If Johnnie isn’t the consultant for you reach out to us here at [email protected] or on Instagram @thehomegrownhelpers and we can ensure you get the best Homegrown Helper for your needs! Our GrowPass membership partners for this show are: Harvest Mutual Seed Bank - Harvest Mutual is our choice seed bank for top quality genetics from the best breeders in the world. 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Members of GrowPass save 20% when accessing the website through the membership site. Atlas Plant Trainer - Have you ever found yourself a few weeks away from your next harvest and running low on bud? Are you wondering how you can get more out of your plants without replacing your lights or nutrients? I bet you’re tired of bamboo stakes poking you when you're trying to train and support your plants.  With Atlas Plant Trainer, all of those concerns are wiped away. Connect, click, bend and clip. 4 easy steps to growing the plants of your dreams and never running out of cannabis again. Use code GROWCAST at checkout to save 10% off your entire order, or bump that up to 25% by becoming a member of GrowPass.  If you liked this interview, and want to hear more from this week's Homegrown Helper please head over to http://thehomegrownhelpers.com/bonus and download the rest of the show!