Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209401 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

The Bible! Answered all my questions and I grew more weed!
I had two old editions of this book and am impressed with how much more information this new edition has in it, especially the color photos and drawings. The color drawings of different nutrient deficiencies really helped me out. It is quite complete, logical and information is easy to find. Jorge covers all kinds of new growing techniques and keeps them simple. The troubleshooting chart and complete index saved me a lot of hassle. I am a professional and still learned a lot from this book. My copy is only four months old and the pages are already dog eared! Thanks Jorge!

An excellent book in many ways, but...
Although this book is primarily aimed at the large-scale grower, most of the advice can also readily be applied or adapted to more modest set-ups - even to a single plant grown in a bedroom closet! So I hope the use of the term "horticulture" in the title doesn't put anyone off.

There is an enormous amount of information and practical guidance crammed into this book, and it's generally well laid out and easy to access. The use of icons to draw attention to some of the more important points is also a nice touch. However, several of the figures are a bit on the small side, and I had to use a magnifying glass to read the text on some them (eg P 59).

The author clearly has a world-wide network of contacts involved in both commercial growing and research, and seems to be well informed regarding the latest developments. Cutting-edge stuff in many ways, I guess.

Some of the advice seemed to be a bit out of kilter with that given elsewhere (eg regarding watering frequency), but as it's all based on such wide-ranging experience, it has to be given credence.

The standard of written English is well above average for a cannabis grow book - I doubt if there are more than 50 (US) spelling and grammatical errors in the entire 332-page work. Hardly impressive for mainstream literature, but quite outstanding for this genre.

Unfortunately, the book is also riddled with science-related factual errors, most of which are trivial (in context) and have presumably arisen due to carelessness rather than lack of understanding. Although these mistakes don't detract from the usefulness of the book, they are still rather irritating to the informed reader. For example: one nanometre = 0.000001 millimetres, NOT metres (P13); light intensity does NOT diminish exponentially with distance from the source (P 21); the inert gases xenon and argon are ionised during HID lamp operation, NOT vaporised (P55 etc); carbon dioxide sublimes at a temperature of -78.5 degrees C, NOT 78.5 degrees C (Appendix); Pure distilled water has no conductance, NOT no resistance (P156, P160)...

Chapter 2 on lights, lamps and electricity contains some of the worst examples. The author states in the introductory paragraph that "In this chapter, I take the complexities out of lighting and put them in terms everyone can understand". Well, I'm a physicist, and I still found parts of this chapter totally incomprehensible. I'd like to think that this is because parts of it are actually wrong. For example, it seemed to me that on more than one occasion there was some confusion between the "lux" and "lumen" concepts. What is certainly wrong is the assertion - made throughout the text of the book, and implicit in at least 5 calculations - that as the light intensity reduces with the square of the distance from the source, the intensity at 4 ft is 1/14th of the intensity at 1 ft. Does Mr Cervantes really think that 4x4=14? Presumably not, as 1/16th is correctly specified in the figure on P 21.

Yet despite all of the above, I'd still have been prepared to award this book 4 stars if it had not been for the negligent attitude of the publisher with regard to editing and proof-reading. It's pretty clear to me that no effort at all was made to check through the text of this book before dispatching it to the printers - presumably on the grounds that any old rubbish is good enough for this readership? Personally, I find this attitude insulting. And calling the editor "John the Pothead", and the proof-reader "Dokta Budla", is not a good enough joke to compensate for this blatant lack of professionalism.

I wasn't too annoyed about the relatively large number of sentences with missing or superfluous words (eg Choose a fungus-inhibiting agent is not toxic to plants, P37), as I accept that it's possible for a proof-reader to miss this sort of thing when skimming through a text - especially if working to a tight deadline. However, what did annoy me was the large number of "unmissable" mistakes of the following type: "Growers rotate plants every day or two by moving them /-fi turn." (P 27); or "Press and rub dry soil through a / to fi-inch screen..." (P 99). There are over 20 similar occurrences. (I think "/" should read "1/4", and "fi" should read "1/2", but it's not always clear.)

In summary, a tremendous amount of work has gone into this book, and it's certainly worth buying despite all of the above criticisms. However, just a bit more effort on the part of the author and publisher and it could have been so much better.

(Note: the above review relates to the UK edition published by Avalon Wholesale, 2002.)

The author has explained the subject matter explicitly.
Indoor Marijuana Horticulture by Jorge Cervantes.
This new edition of the classic book known as "The Bible" has been completely rewritten from beginning to end. This book puts all the latest information on indoor cultivation at your fingertips and thoroughly explains the complete process of setting up a grow room in simple terms. This book is very well designed and contains over 200 colour photos and 200 b/w photos as well as graphs, charts and drawings. This book is quintessential for all indoor growers.