08 Jan
LED Grow Light

Indoors vs Outdoors Checklist – What Do I Need To Consider?

Checklist – Growing Marijuana Indoors vs. Outdoors

When choosing whether to grow marijuana indoors or outdoors, there are some important factors you will need to consider. This easy checklist breaks everything down for you.
 

Indoor growers should consider…

  • Where are you going to grow? You need to create a light-tight growing environment with ventilation, a good breeze, and enough room to hang your grow lights above your plants. Many indoor growers build custom grow spaces or invest in a pre-made grow tent.
  • What grow lights are you going to use? Since you don’t have access to the sun, you must provide all the light your plants need. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to grow a marijuana plant in a window, unless we’re talking about a huge window that’s bathed in direct sunlight for 8+ hours a day.
  • What growing medium do you plan on using? Soil or hydro? You want to find a grow method that best fits your schedule and style. 
  • Do you have convenient access to water? You don’t want it to be inconvenient to water your garden.
  • Will you grow with nutrients? Most growers add some sort of nutrients or supplements. In hydro, you must provide all nutrients, since there are not enough nutrients in plain water to feed your plants. Whether you’re growing in soil or hydro, you can buy pre-formulated marijuana nutrients or mix your own custom blend.
  • Temperature of your grow area? Marijuana plants enjoy a comfortable room temperature. Many grow lights can produce a lot of heat, which means that you may need to consider ventilation and an exhaust system to keep your temps down. Cold is less often a problem indoors, but remember that very cold and freezing temperatures will kill marijuana plants.
  • What about smells? If you have invested in an exhaust system, you will likely want to invest in an exhaust fan with a carbon scrubber to automatically neutralize all smells in your grow area.

Outdoor growers should consider…

  • Can tomatoes be grown outdoors in your area? As a general rule, if the environment cannot support tomatoes, it probably will be unable to support marijuana plants.
  • Do you plan on growing in your backyard or somewhere off-site?
  • Does this area get at least 6-8 hour of direct sunlight a day? The best hours are in the middle of the day when the sun is strongest, and plants should receive direct sunlight during this part of the day.. More light = bigger yields.
  • Do you have easy access to this grow area? You’d like to be able to check on your plants at least every 1-2 weeks.
  • Do you have easy access to water at this grow site? If rain patterns aren’t optimal and you need to water your plants, you will want a nearby water source.
  • What steps will you take for security? You must consider that people or animals may find/take/eat/smell your plants. If animals are a problem, you may need to erect a barrier to keep them out.
  • What kind of bugs do you need to worry about, and what will you do to prevent them from attacking your plants?
  • Do you have a backup plan if it rains too much, if it gets too cold, or if you get an early frost/snow? These factors can ruin a whole crop, so it’s important to consider them when choosing your spot.
  • Do you have a stealthy way of moving your plants after harvest? Remember, some outdoor plants can grow to be as high as a house, especially when conditions are optimal. What is your plan for moving these plants at harvest time so you can trim/dry/cure them?

Outdoor Security Tip: A good way to test whether people or hikers are going to see your grow spot is to leave a bit of money around the area, tucked in places that are easy to see but hard for the money to blow away. If you come back in 2-3 weeks and all the money is where you left it, than that’s a good sign this might be a remote spot that no one will likely come across by accident.

07 Jan
LED Grow Light

5 Time-Savers For Busy Growers-Part IV

Choosing a less time-consuming setup, getting the right gear and optimizing the grow space are good ways to save time for growers. We have two additional ways to help growers save more time: choose the right strain and do plant training.

4.) Choose the Right Strain

Each strain grows and produces a little differently. Some strains may be better than others for your purposes!

Choose a Hardy Strain

Many strains have been specifically bred to be able to handle a wide range of conditions. These “easy to grow” strains can handle heat, cold, high humidity and watering problems better than other strains. When you start with a known hardy strain, you can provide less than ideal conditions and care, but still get really great results. We’re not recommending you don’t care for your plants properly, but a hardy strain will let you get away with more without suffering as many consequences! There are tons of strains that are great for this purpose. When researching strains, the breeder will usually mention in the strain description if a plant is particularly hardy.

Consider Growing an Auto-Flowering Strain

With auto-flowering plants, there is simply less for the grower to do. There’s little to no plant training (which can take quite a bit of time, more info on that below). There’s no light schedule to worry about and your buds will be ready to harvest in about 3 months without needing any special environmental conditions.

Another nice bonus is you have the ability to access your plants 24 hours a day (as opposed to flowering photoperiod plants that need 12 hours of complete darkness every day in order to make buds). This makes it so you can check on plants when it’s convenient instead of waiting for the lights to come on!

The one downside to auto-flowering plants is they can become stunted if they run into major problems during the first 3-4 weeks of life. So if you do go with an auto-flowering strain, you definitely want to try to make sure you keep a close eye on your plant until the first month is over. You may not have to do any extra work, but you still should be on the lookout for possible problems. If possible, choose an auto-flowering strain that is known to be hardy!

5.) Plant Training

Growers train their plants because it’s a free way to dramatically increase yields indoors, sometimes up to 40% or even more compared to untrained plants. But although training increases yields, it does take time.

In our opinion, the best way to train your plant to get the increased yields without wasting a lot of time is using a technique known as manifolding.

Note: Manifolding adds extra time onto the length of your grow, but will minimize the amount of time and effort spent training your plants (while still ensuring exceptional results).

Why Manifolding?

All types of indoor cannabis plant training have the same goal – to create a wide and flat plant, with an even canopy like a table. This helps the plant get the most possible amount of light from the grow light. But there are many ways to accomplish this table-top shape, from simply bending stems ( Low Stress Training) to using screens (ScrOG).

Manifolding is one way to accomplish the table shape, and there are a couple reasons I think it’s the best way to train your plants without needing a lot of time:

  1. There’s less guesswork on your part compared to many other training techniques. You just follow the instructions exactly and it’s very clear without you having to think about anything.
  2. It only takes two sessions to make your manifold, which takes just a few snips of the scissors.
  3. After that you’re pretty much done. As the plant grows, your only job is to arrange colas to make sure they all stay exposed to the light and none of them gets taller than the others.

Note: Manifolding can only be done with photoperiod plants, not auto-flowering strains.

Or don’t train at all…

You might consider just skipping training altogether because you can still get great yields with untrained plants if you do it right.

Some growers use a technique called SoG (Sea of Green) to get the biggest yields without doing any training. Basically the idea is to just grow one or many untrained plants, and get them to make buds right away so you get a “sea” of plants with one main bud each. This can be a good choice for both photoperiod and auto-flowering strains, and in addition to taking no time training, harvest time comes quick!

One last tip…

Research before you start growing!

You can just put a cannabis seed in regular potting mix and deal with problems as you go along, and honestly that’s how a lot of people start growing.But doing it that way definitely ends up taking more time (and often money) because you end up running into problems or realizing along the way that you need to change up your setup.

We know this may be easier said than done, but if your goal is to grow cannabis without needing to spend much time each day caring for your plants each day, the best thing you can do is take the time to research before you even get your seeds! 

06 Jan
LED Grow Light

5 Time-Savers For Busy Growers-Part III

If you read our preivous blog, you will know that even people who don’t have time can grow cannabis. Choosing a less time-consuming setup and getting the right gear will help you to save a plenty of time. What can we do to save more time?

3.) Optimize the Grow Space

Some of these ideas are little things and may only take a few minutes to set up, but can end up saving you so much time and frustration during your grow!

Make Sure You Have an Easy Way to Get Water

When it’s hard to get water, not only are you just less likely to make up your water on time, it ends up taking more of your time.

  • Learn how to get water from a too-small sink. If your grow space is near a sink, but you can’t fit your water container under the faucet, you can install an easy-release adapter that lets you easily “snap” a hose onto your sink.
  • Get a good size water container to mix up nutrient water. If you’re making up several 1-gallon containers of water at a time, consider getting a bigger container so you can make more at once.
  • Don’t try to carry too much water at once. This doesn’t necessarily save time, but will save a lot of effort. If you can’t use a hose to get water directly to your grow space, try to think about how much water you’re expecting yourself to carry on a regular basis. One customer of ours used to use a single 5-gallon jug to make up water for his plants because he wanted to make a lot of water at a time. The problem was he had a hard time carrying a jug with 5 gallons of water in it. He switched to using two 3-gallon jugs because they’re easier to carry/handle than a single 5 gallon jug and that works a lot better for him!

Make It Easy to Dispose of Water

When watering cannabis plants grown in containers, you want to give your plants enough water every time to get 20% extra runoff water out the bottom. Making sure to water your plants thoroughly each time means you have to water less often, and cannabis plants grow faster when they get wet/dry cycles.

But in order to prevent soggy roots and plant drooping, you also want to make sure to remove that runoff water right away so your plants aren’t sitting in it. Sometimes that’s easier said than done!

If you’re growing with containers and each one has their own saucer, you have to physically pick up the plants every time you want to empty the saucers of runoff water. If you only have one plant it’s not really a big deal but the more plants you’re growing at a time the bigger of a pain this is.

You don’t want to have to empty each saucer one at a time after you water your plants.

One solution is to put all your plants on a tray that will catch water, and put something small like a block of wood under the tray opposite you to make an incline. This makes it so all the runoff water drains to the front of the tray.

These trays are on a slight incline so runoff water immediately pools to the front.

At this point, you can take something like a wet vac to quickly suck up all the runoff water without having to move the plants at all.

Easy Access to Plants

This may seem simple but when it comes to making sure you pay enough attention to your plants without having to spend a lot of time on them, it’s super important to make sure you can easily access your plants. Every extra obstacle between you and them is going to take a little extra time. So whenever possible try to make sure you have a clear path to the grow space, and that you have an easy-to-open grow tent, closet or grow box.

The main idea is to make it so when you check on the plants it only takes a second. That being said, don’t make your grow area easy to access for other people!

Make Sure the Tools in Your Grow Space Are Easy to Reach

You might not realize you’ve been wasting time going across the room every time you need to get your nutrients or a pH pen. When possible, you want every tool you use (measuring spoons, nutrients, pH testers, eye protection, grow journal, camera, etc) to be within arm’s reach so you don’t have to get up or move while tending your plants.

Taking a little time on a lazy afternoon to really think this one through and set things up right will save you a surprising amount of time and effort in the long run!

To be continued…

05 Jan
LED Grow Light

5 Time-Savers For Busy Growers-Part II

Some new growers are afraid growing cannabis will take too much time; The rest experienced growers may feel like caring cannabis is too time-consuming. As what we have discussed, there are setups can help growers to save a plenty of time day-to-day. The first step is to choose an easy setup, next is the second step:

2.) Get the Right Gear

When you choose the right gear it can help you save minutes here and there, which really starts to add up!

Get a Bigger Plant Container So You Water Less Often

One way to get away with watering your plants less often is to grow them in a bigger container. This is because your growing medium can hold more water at a time, so it takes longer for your plant to drink it all before needing to be watered again.

Some things to keep in mind: When growing in big containers, you’ll get the fastest growth by starting your plants in smaller ones first, then transplanting them to bigger ones as they grow. But that also takes time. It’s much easier to start your seeds directly in big containers from the beginning so you can skip transplanting altogether. The one downside to that is seedlings tend to start a little slower at first in big pots, but once your plant gets going they grow just as fast as any other container-grown plant and you’ll still get the benefit of watering less often.

Avoid Smart Pots & Air Pots

If your goal is to water less often, avoid using a fabric pot (Smart Pot) or a container with holes on the sides (air pot). Although cannabis plants tend to grow faster in these types of containers, the pots dry out much more quickly since the soil is getting air from the sides. This means you end up needing to water them much more often than a similar sized “traditional” plant container.

Get the Right Grow Lights

If saving time is your main goal, you most likely want to go with an LED grow light. These lights are powerful enough to grow your plant from seed to harvest with great yields, and don’t take a lot of adjustment on your part. You basically just hang the lights over your plants and forget about them, only needing to adjust the height of them a handful of times during your grow.

Don’t DIY Everything

Although doing things yourself can save you a lot of money, having to make your own tools for the job almost always ends up taking more time. It’s like if you decided to use a rock to drive nails into wood instead of a hammer. You wouldn’t have to invest money in a hammer, but using a rock is going to take you a heck of a lot longer and not do as good a job!

One simple example when it comes to growing marijuana is using plant ties, which are a tool specifically made for bending and securing stems for plant training. Plant twisty ties unwind from a spool and an attached cutter lets you easily cut each tie to the perfect length in seconds. They are made to be strong enough to hook onto your plants and secure stems where you want, but not strong enough to accidentally hurt them.

Save time by using specially made plant twisty tie to secure your stems, not some random item around the house like wire or pipe cleaners!

If you wanted to save some money, you could skip getting plant ties altogether and just find something from around the house to secure your stems, like pipe cleaners. They both accomplish the same thing in the end, but with pipe cleaners you would likely have to tie several of them together each time you need to secure a stem. An extra minute here and there starts to add up after a while!

In addition to the time savings, DIY stuff often doesn’t last as long or work as well as tools made for the job. For example plant twisty ties are made of smooth plastic that is unaffected by water, while pipe cleaners are “hairy” and can easily start molding or running into other problems from being exposed to moist conditions. Unexpected malfunctions with DIY stuff can cause problems that take time away from your busy life!

Other handy tools specifically made for growing purposes include plant yo-yos (for holding up falling plants), a convenient grow tent (easier than building a grow space from scratch), and rope ratchets(adjust lights up and down with a few clicks). Each of these grow room accessories are cheap but can shave off a few minutes when you’re tending to your plants!

To be continued…

04 Jan
LED Grow Light

5 Time-Savers For Busy Growers-Part I

Are you thinking about growing cannabis for the first time, but are afraid it will take too much time? Or maybe you have been growing for years, but feel like caring for your plants is too time-consuming.

Every single growing style has its pros and its cons. There are ways to grow cannabis that take a lot of time tending the plants, but there are setups that do a lot of the work for you so you don’t spend as much time on them day-to-day.

Even a few small adjustments can make a big difference!

As you go through this article you’ll realize that you can’t do all of these things at once, but this list will give you several ideas on how to shave off time depending on your personal grow style!

1.) Choose a Less Time-Consuming Setup

Your responsibilities as a grower change quite a bit depending on how you set up your garden in the beginning. I’ve included some info (and the pros and cons) for cannabis grow setups that tend to be the least time-intensive for growers.

Grow with Super Soil

“Super soil” is a term sometimes used in the growing cannabis community to describe amended & composted soil. Super soil is formulated to give cannabis roots an environment where you don’t need to worry about pH or nutrients.

In a lot of ways, growing with super soil is what people “expect” growing cannabis in soil to be like. You put your seeds in a pot with the soil, and water your plants when they’re thirsty. Other than that the soil takes care of providing nutrients to the roots.

Why super soil? Cannabis plants have unique nutrient needs and use such high levels of nutrients that you will quickly start seeing nutrient deficiencies when using other growing mediums (like regular potting soil or coco coir) unless you provide nutrients with your water and regularly check the pH (which makes nutrients more available to your plant). Measuring out nutrients and checking the pH can take several minutes every time you mix up your water.

With super soil, instead of adding nutrients to your water, you pack the soil with natural sources of nutrients that slowly break down over the course of your grow, feeding even the voracious nutrient appetite of a cannabis plant. Instead of managing the pH so nutrients are able to be absorbed by your plant, the composting process enlists the help of microorganisms in the soil to do that work for you.

Grow Hydroponically

Super soil and hydroponics are very different from each other. In fact you could say they’re pretty much on complete opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to grow styles. Yet they have one thing in common; they are both good at doing a lot of the work on their own so you don’t have to, even if they save time in completely opposite ways…

In hydro, the cannabis roots are grown directly in a reservoir of nutrient water.

When growing in a container, even with super soil, your plant roots enjoy wet/dry spells, and do best being watered every few days. Each time you water your plants, you ideally need to wait for extra runoff water to come out the bottom, then remove the runoff so your roots aren’t sitting in it. For us that can end up taking 10 minutes or more if we have a couple plants (we’ll share some tricks below on how to make that process go faster).

With a hydroponic setup your plant roots live in a water reservoir so you never have to worry about runoff water, and because a water reservoir can hold a lot of water at once it means you can go long periods of time without having to water your plants.

With hydro a large reservoir can hold enough water to last for days, or even weeks in the early stages of a plants life. Some days, all that’s needed is just a quick visual check-in if anything at all!

Additionally, if you make up big batches of water each time, you can often go a long time between having to mix batches. That way when your reservoir water does get low you can simply fill it up again with your “reserve” nutrient water. We’ll talk about this a little bit more below, but the type of non-organic nutrients that are used for hydroponics can be pre-mixed with water for several weeks without any problems. This lets you focus on caring for your plants and training them instead of worrying about mixing up new water all the time.

As a bonus, plant grow faster hydroponically than any other grow style,which means you spend less time waiting for harvest time!

To be continued…

03 Jan
LED Grow Light

Why Is One Plant Growing Slower Than The Others

A grower purchases 3 seeds of the same strain, and 2 of the plants are doing great, but one is struggling. For some reason even though it’s getting the exact same environment, it’s still growing slower than the others.

Why is one cannabis seedling is staying smaller than the others of the same strain in the same environment?

Why are two plants growing rapidly, while the third plant is growing slowly even though it looks healthy?

The most common reasons one plant is growing slower than the other:

  • Seeds Are Old – Seeds that are old tend to have lower germination rates and sometimes grow at a slower pace.
  • More Sensitive to Overwatering – One of the most common reasons seedlings grow slow is they are overwatered. This is often accompanied by general droopiness. Some plants simply drink more than others, and the amount of water that’s good for one plant may be too much for another plant. When one seedling is growing slower, watch it closely to see if it may be getting droopy after you water your plants.
  • PH is Off – The pH at the roots being too high or too low is the most common reason growers see deficiencies, but it can also slow down growth even if you don’t have any obvious symptoms. If you haven’t been checking the pH, do it now to see if that might be the root of your problem! It’s possible the pH at the roots is not the same for all your plants even though they are in the same conditions and environment!
  • Some Plants Are Just Runts – The fact of the matter is that cannabis plants are living things with natural variation between plants and sometimes it has nothing to do with you! Some plants just tend to grow better than others, while others are runts or duds right from the beginning. In fact, that’s why we recommend to always start more seeds than you plan to grow, so you can choose the strongest and most vibrant plants of the bunch to actually grow out! 

If you’ve covered all your bases, the best thing you can do is either toss the offending plants if you don’t have extra room, or if you do have the space it can be worth growing it out to see what happens! Some plants may not recover, but some plants start growing strong again after they get a little TLC!

02 Jan
LED Grow Light

How To Make The Best Growing Environment

What makes the perfect cannabis growing environment? What does it take to get the healthiest growth and best yields from your indoor cannabis plants?

5 Factors to Creating a Perfect Growing Environment
(from most important to least important)

  1. Light – Bright but not too bright
  2. Temperature – Comfortable for you, comfortable for your plants
  3. Air Circulation – Fresh air plus a gentle breeze
  4. Reflection – Cover your walls with a reflective material
  5. Humidity – Controlling humidity helps plants grow faster and can increase resin production

You need a great environment to produce the best harvest. A poor growing environment lowers both yields and bud quality!

Benefits of a great grow environment

  • Plants grow faster
  • Harvest bigger yields
  • Healthier, greener, and overall hardier plants
  • Higher bud quality (better bud density, shape, and trichome production)
  • Stronger bud smell and potency (THC and smells can get “burned off” if it’s too hot)
  • Plants are more resistant to common problems like over/underwatering, hermies, heat stress, light stress, bugs, mildew and bud rot.

Keep plants comfortable and they will reward you!

1.) Light

When growing cannabis, you want to give light that is bright but not too bright. The amount of light you provide is one of the major factors that will determine your yields, and with smaller grow lights your yields will be limited no matter what you do.

Light also changes how your plant grows. For example, the color spectrum of light can cause your plants to grow tall and lanky or more bushy and squat. Some grow lights like LED grow lights take advantage of a custom color spectrum to help your plants grow as optimally as possible. Some excellent grow lights: Shop

The amount of light you give your cannabis is the main factor that determines your yields. 

However, it’s also possible to give your cannabis plants too much light, especially with big grow lights, so it’s important to keep grow lights the right distance away.

2.) Temperature

The long and the short of it is: If it’s comfortable for you, it’s probably comfortable for your plants.

Cannabis plants like temperatures in the 65-85°F (19-30°C) range and can start to run into problems when the plants are experiencing temperatures outside that range.

3.) Air Circulation & Exhaust

Making sure your plants always have a gentle breeze and plenty of fresh air helps them grow faster. Good air circulation also helps prevent problems with white powdery mildew, bud rot, and common cannabis pests like fungus gnats o spider mites. 

Basically, you want a gentle breeze moving over, through, and under your plants if possible. If all the leaves are being gently rustled, it’s perfect. You don’t want to point a fan directly at your plants because that can cause wind burn, but you also don’t want any leaves sitting in stagnant or hot air. A small oscillating fan or two in the grow space can work wonders.

In addition to making sure there’s air moving around in the grow space, it’s also important to vent out heat from your grow lights, especially if it’s getting too hot for your plants during lights-on. For each light type, the higher the wattage, the more heat produced. If you notice the temperature is climbing above 85°F (30°C) on a regular basis, you should consider venting heat out of the grow area to keep the temperature under control. However, if the overall temperature of the entire grow room is too high, you may need to take more drastic actions such as getting an AC. Fans can move air around, but can’t lower the total amount of heat in a room.

4.) Reflection

You will get the most from your indoor grow lights by reflecting light at your plants. Instead of letting the walls of the grow space absorb extra light from your grow light, you can use a reflective material to bounce it back towards your plants. This allows you to squeeze more yields out of the same grow light without having to change anything else about your environment.

5.) Humidity

Unless it’s very high or low, humidity usually won’t cause any major problems with your cannabis grow. However, there are a few tricks with humidity to get faster growth and more resin production on your buds.

Note: The optimal seedling humidity is closer to vegetative plants than clones. Try to avoid letting the humidity get over 60% for seedlings or it can slow their growth.

Perfecting Your Growing Environment

It’s important to realize that there is no one “perfect” growing environment. Just like people, each plant is a little bit different and may respond better to some environments than others. For example, some plants can better handle the heat or cold, and some plants aren’t as picky about good air circulation. But by taking care of the 5 factors of a great cannabis growing environment, you will ensure that your plant will be comfortable no matter what the strain!

01 Jan
LED Grow Light

Which Room In The House Is Best For Growing Weed-Part III

It is crucial to choose the best room to grow weed in the house. From previous blogs: concealment, the exhaust system, space, noise and smell are all important for indoor growers. Here are the last points to note:

5.  Moving Supplies In and Out

No matter how well-concealed your room, you will need to move supplies as well as finished medical marijuana in and out each time you harvest. If living in a residential area, you can find a house with an attached garage so you can easily pull your vehicle in to unload. However, many growers with garages find it the optimal place for farming home grown weed (lots of space, minimal damages, and easy to hide from nosy guests).

If you’re growing in a room in your backyard, as discussed before, how will you get stuff in and out in front of the eyes of suspicious neighbors? How will you move harvested plants out? Smuggling stuff in boxes, contractor bags, and plastic totes at night could help provide the answer… Plan, plan, and plan some more!

6.  Running Electricity

Running electricity provides yet another challenge. The wiring in a spare bedroom may prove inadequate for running a set of 1000 watt lights as well as the other high-voltage electrical appliances like ACs. If you’re going for a big grow, chances are you’ll need to run a whole new source of power from the fuse box. And the farther you run that power, the more inefficient it becomes. Where will you run the power cables to keep them from being seen? Through the attic?  Under the house? Always consult with an electrician before attempting to make any changes to the electrical system in your house!

However, for a smaller hobbyist size grow your house will likely be able to handle the electricity! At that point, it’s more a matter of figuring out how much electricity is going to cost!

7.  Damages

Finally, damages to your home present another major concern for the indoor medical marijuana grower.  Measures for minimizing the effect of humidity and heat go a long way, but given time, these elements take a toll nonetheless.

Can you afford to sacrifice a little wear and tear on that extra bedroom? Using a room meant for utility purposes, like a shop or garage, could spare the home interior, or should you just take all the necessary precautions and set an additional fund aside for repairs later?

One thing that may help is to use a cannabis grow tent, since these are at least designed to contain spills and other common causes for damage!

But aside from a grow tent or building a room specifically for growing home grown weed, you will surely find that every room has its advantages and disadvantages. You cannot change that. But you can plan well in advance, and by foreseeing future challenges, you can come up with a plan that minimizes or dissolves all of them from the get-go!

To sum up, before starting indoor growing, you need to consider many possible problems, but these problems are not terrible since indoor growing is not a new project. Many people have implemented it and achieved success. As long as you make preparations and plans in advance, everything will gradually get on track.