So you’ve decided to embrace your inner-agrarian and want to grow your own marijuana. How hard could it possibly be? Well, cannabis can actually be incredibly tricky to grow, particularly if you don’t have the right resources, writes Joseph Misulonas.

Here are eight tips of things to avoid when growing your own marijuana:

Winging It

Most people think, “Oh, it’s just a plant. How hard can it be to grow?” Well, you’d be wrong. Growing cannabis takes time and effort, as well as a certain amount of knowledge. Do some research so you know what you’re doing.

Overfeeding

Overfeeding plants is a mistake made by people growing anything, not just cannabis. Humans are taught that food leads to growth, but for plants overfeeding can lead to death. So make sure you follow instructions on feeding and don’t try to rush the process.

Overwatering

Again, this goes along with overfeeding. Overwatering can cause the roots of your plant to die. Make a schedule for watering and stick to it. Some say you can even wait for your plants to wilt a little before watering.

Unregulated Temperatures

Like other plants, cannabis needs certain types of climate in order to thrive. Generally, you’ll want to keep your cannabis around 75 degrees fahrenheit. Don’t worry if there are some temperature fluctuations, marijuana is generally resistant to some temperature changes. However, humidity is the big factor. If your plant gets too humid, it can grow mold which will obviously ruin your plan. When you first start growing your cannabis, you’ll want about 60 percent humidity, but as it matures you’ll want to slowly drop that down to 40 percent.

Getting Any Old Soil

You’ve done your research and picked out the perfect seeds for you. So now you just buy some soil and you’re good to go, right? Wrong. Picking the right soil is just as important as anything else when growing cannabis. Marijuana is somewhat finicky when it comes to soil, so you’ll want to make sure it’s grown in soil that has a pH between 6.5 and 7.5. Anything more or less will ruin your plant.

Treat Them All the Same

So you’ve grown some cannabis in the past and you’ve now acquired seeds from a different strain. Just do what you did last time, right? Also wrong. Different strains require different resources and temperatures, and also will take either longer or shorter amounts of time to mature. Every strain is different, so you’ll want to make sure you do your research for each one.

Getting Impatient

Growing cannabis can take a long time. You’ve been watching your plant grow for a couple weeks, and it looks basically ready to harvest, so you decide to do so before you’re told to. And while you can harvest your cannabis at any time, if you do so early it will not be mature enough and it won’t have the same taste or properties that you’re looking for than if you had been patient. Likewise, don’t take too long to harvest because it will begin losing those properties as well.

Using Available Lighting

Let’s say you’re living in an apartment and don’t have the resources as someone with their own garden or greenhouse. So you think you’ll just use your nearby lamp to light your cannabis. Well, that’s a terrible idea. Plants, particularly ones with buds like marijuana, need a lot of light. So you’ll want to make sure you have a proper lighting system in place before you begin the grow process, or your cannabis will not come out the way you desire.