If you want a book on how to grow weed, the short answer is: buy the one that matches the grow you are about to do, not the thickest one. A first tent or a few outdoor plants needs a book you will actually read cover to cover before the seeds crack. A commercial room needs a reference you will open a hundred times and never finish. Most people buy the second kind, read forty pages, and go back to forum threads.
I wrote two books and they do two different jobs. Cannabis: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Marijuana is the short course: 144 pages that walk a first-time grower from seed to cure without assuming any prior gardening. It is the book version of the grow guide on this site, written a few years earlier and shorter on photographs. The Official High Times Field Guide to Marijuana Strains is a reference, not a manual: profiles of the strains that defined the cup era with their lineage, breeder, flowering time and character. It is the source for most of what is in the strains section and the Top 10 Strains of the Year retrospective.
Below both books is the comparison I would give a friend who asked. The other authors on that list are people I have interviewed, judged alongside or read for years, and each of their books is the right choice for someone. The table says who.
Cannabis: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Marijuana
Cannabis: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Marijuana is a 144 page starter course for a first small grow: choosing seeds, soil versus hydro, lights, feeding, training, harvest and cure, with photographs of each stage. Written for someone who has never grown anything.
Best for: First grow, small indoor or outdoor setups.
The Official High Times Field Guide to Marijuana Strains
The Official High Times Field Guide to Marijuana Strains profiles well over a hundred strains with lineage, breeder, flowering time, character and photography. The strain reference of its era and the source of the notes behind the strains section of this site.
Best for: Strain history, lineage and breeder notes.
Praise From Jorge Cervantes and Cannabis Now
Praise from Jorge Cervantes and Cannabis Now, in their own words:
Danny Danko was my only choice to take over my question-and-answer column for High Times. Danny, my protégé and friend, is a dedicated cannabis cultivator. His numerous articles packed with expert advice have helped growers produce crop after crop of outstanding cannabis.
Jorge Cervantesauthor of The Cannabis Encyclopedia
The book caters to a rising breed of novice home growers; it is a return to the fundamentals of growing cannabis and a prime example of the old adage, credited to Albert Einstein, that "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Cannabis Nowmagazine, on Cannabis: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Marijuana
Best Books on Growing Weed, Compared
These are the best books on growing weed, compared by who each one is for.
| Title | Author | Year | Best for | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cannabis: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Marijuana | Danny Danko | 2018 | First grow, small indoor or outdoor setups | 144 |
| The Official High Times Field Guide to Marijuana Strains | Danny Danko | 2011 | Strain history, lineage and breeder notes | 180 |
| The Cannabis Encyclopedia | Jorge Cervantes | 2015 | The reference shelf: every system at every scale, encyclopedic | 596 |
| Marijuana Grower's Handbook | Ed Rosenthal | 2010 | Textbook style course, the Oaksterdam curriculum | 510 |
| The Cannabis Grow Bible | Greg Green | 2017 | Exhaustive third edition for growers scaling past a tent | About 700 |
| Teaming with Microbes | Jeff Lowenfels | 2010 | Soil biology for living-soil growers, not a grow manual | 220 |
Sources
- Hampton Roads Publishing: Cannabis, A Beginner's Guide to Growing Marijuana (publisher of the 2018 book)
