How to Grow Cannabis on Windowsill
Want to grow cannabis on windowsill without spending money on expensive grow lights? You can do it right on your windowsill using just natural sunlight! This guide will show you how to grow DutchFem Autoflowering cannabis in a small space with minimal effort.
1. Grow cannabis on windowsill – Choosing the Right Pot
Since windowsills don’t have room for large 10-liter pots, we’ll use a smaller 2-liter pot instead. The smaller the pot, the smaller the plant, so keep that in mind. The biggest challenge with growing in small pots on a windowsill is that they dry out quickly because they sit above heaters, behind glass, and in direct sunlight. To solve this problem, we use a pot with a built-in water reservoir. This keeps the soil consistently moist with the help of a wick system, preventing the need for constant watering.
2. Grow cannabis on windowsill – Planting the Seeds
Once everything is ready, place the seeds on moistened soil and lightly cover them with a thin layer of dry soil. Water gently, cover the pot with a lid, and you’re done! For this grow, we used DutchFem Autoflower in one pot and DutchFem Dwarf in another.
After two days, the first plant (Autoflower) appears, and by day three, the Dwarf also sprouts. At this stage, give them as much sunlight as possible. Avoid keeping them in complete darkness, as they might stretch too much while searching for light.
3. Grow cannabis on windowsill – The First Few Days
You can leave the lids on for the first two days, but since these plants grow fast, remove the lids afterward. This is a crucial growth phase. If they get enough sun, they will grow both in height and width, developing strong stems. However, if they don’t get enough sunlight, they might stretch too much and become weak.
On cloudy days, you can prevent excessive stretching by placing them under a fluorescent tube or CFL lamp. These lights don’t get too hot, so you can keep them close (about 5 cm away). This will help them grow wider instead of just taller.
4. Grow cannabis on windowsill – Supporting Your Plants
If your seedlings stretch too much and become weak, you can support them with a skewer or a small plant stake. Don’t tie them tightly with cable ties or string, as this can damage the plant. Simply leaning them against a support is usually enough, and after a few days, they should be strong enough to stand on their own.
By the end of the first week or after 10 days, if they’ve had enough sunlight, their stems will be strong enough to hold themselves up.
5. Sunlight and Outdoor Time
As the plants grow, you may notice that some need extra support. For example, our Dutch Dwarf needed a bamboo skewer because it stretched too much in its first week. If possible, place your plants outside on a balcony for extra sunlight. Just be careful in the first two weeks—too much wind can knock young plants over. A gentle breeze is fine and can even help strengthen the stems.
6. Maximizing Growth
Every extra hour of sunlight leads to better growth and bigger yields. You can move your plants slightly to follow the sun, but avoid constantly moving them, as they don’t like to be disturbed. After 3.5 weeks, our plants reached 10–12 cm in height and started growing their second set of leaves.
We’ll keep updating this grow journal with photos and results, so stay tuned to see how our windowsill cannabis grow turns out!
7. Harvest time
As you can see from the following photos, they have grown quite a bit but not too big to have on the windowsill. I have regularly been able to put them outside for a few extra hours in the sun but they have spent most of the time just standing in one spot on the windowsill. Of course, the big danger of moving them is also that things can go wrong as you can see from the Dutchfem Autoflower. The main branch broke off when I dropped the plant from my hands while moving it. Fortunately, the 4 side branches did not suffer any damage.
After 8 weeks, the plants were ready to be harvested. I was left with 24 grams of dry tops from the Dwarf and 16 grams of dry tops from the ‘crashed’ Dutchfem Autoflower. All in all, not a bad result for a windowsill grow in the Netherlands where we don’t have such a good climate with much sunlight.
We’ll keep updating this grow journal with photos and results, so stay tuned to see how our windowsill cannabis grow turns out!
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