Well, I finally went ahead and did it. After months of thinking about it, talking to people I work with and trust, and doing research, I bought and set up a grow operation in the closet of my studio apartment in Denver.

It started when I attended the first Saturday session of the THC University, Colorado’s first legal grow class. The roughly 6-hour class covered all the basic information you need to get growing: we discussed how your environment would impact the gear you choose and ultimately the kind of growing operation you want.

As a regular cannabis user turned professional medical marijuana sales clerk, I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying strains and noting the difference between their effects. However, I’ve never actually grown anything myself, so I was always fairly ignorant as to how marijuana grows. The chance to expand my knowledge in the vast field of marijuana cultivation was definitely a big reason for wanting to grow my own.

The main reason for starting my own marijuana grow, however, has less to do with the final product than you might think. While having my own stash of homegrown bud in a few months is obviously going to be awesome, I am actually growing marijuana primarily for another reason: to juice it.

Yes, you read that right. I am going to juice cannabis.

This all started with a video currently circulating on Youtube that features stories of people who have used cannabis juice as a (pretty much literal) cure for cancer. The video states that cannabis contains many different cannabinoids, with THC being the one that provides a psychoactive effect when it harvested and then heated by either smoking, vaporizing, or cooking into edibles. However, it is possible to extract “THC-A”, which is non-psychoactive, from fresh raw cannabis by not heating it. When heated, cannabis has 10 mg of THC; the same cannabis when not heated contains a whopping 600 mg of THC-A!

After meeting someone who gave me all the practical info I need at a Colorado medical marijuana industry event a few weeks ago, I decided to go ahead and actually start trying this for myself.

He told me that a standard dose of cannabis juice comes from 15 fan leaves. Since a healthy plant produces fan leaves that need to be removed to optimize flower growth anyway, anyone who is currently growing marijuana can juice. It is recommended to get some other fruits or veggies to juice with the cannabis, as you can imagine fan leaves don’t taste very good.

While I do not have cancer or any other chronic diseases, I have been more sick in the last few years that I really would care to be. After getting my tonsils out after several very painful and inconvenient bouts of strep throat (not to mention getting mono years before that I swear is still messing with my immune system), I have been trying to be more health conscious and take supplements like Vitamin C to boost my overall health. It’s working OK, but this seems like the answer I’ve been looking for to stay healthy all the time.

A grow hand where I work recommended getting the same light set up that she has already been using because it is simple and very affordable. In the age of the Internet, you can find bulbs, ballasts, and shades just about anywhere on Google, but as with any kind of gear, it’s always a good idea to get a recommendation from a trusted friend before ordering. I went to EBay and spent $215 on an all-in-one setup: ballast with adjustable wattage, shade, timer, a hanging system, and both a HPS bulb (for veg) and MH bulb (for flower). I also got a hand-cranked wheatgrass grinder, as well.

I’ve set all of this up in a small kitchen closet that I really have only used for minor storage up to this point. It can only hold 2 plants, but that’s all I really need. Upon getting my gear and setting it up, the first problem I had was temperature control. As I learned from instructor Ted at the THC University, the optimal temperature is between 65-75° F. The small space and no ventilation of the closet put me around 100° F when I first set it up.

My first thought was to just create some airflow naturally by drilling some holes in the ceiling. Luckily, this closet has an empty area above it with a flimsy wood ceiling, meaning it was easy for me to mess up the ceiling without having to worry too much about long term damage. Considering I’m in a rental apartment, the damage I created with the grow set up is relatively minimal and I’m confident I will be able to cover my tracks pretty well when I eventually move out. Word of advice to anyone who wants to try this at home from someone barely into their first week as a marijuana farmer: budget at least a few hundred dollars more then you think you need, and make sure to be realistic about your space and what you’ll be able to accomplish with it.

Drilling some small holes and adding a fan or two did help to drop the temperature to around 85° F, which was still a bit too hot. The aforementioned over-budgeting definitely would have come in handy, as I knew what needed to happen: I went back to the grow store with my credit card to get a blower, then went to Lowes and got some ducting.

By installing a blower and ducting, I was able to suck hot air out of the room and get the temperature down to below 80 F with the lights on (still a bit too high, but manageable) and a totally optimal 65 F when the lights are off.

Following the advice of most books I consulted and growers I trust, I am using an 18/6 light schedule during my veg (first 4-5 weeks when the plant gets rooted but before it starts to grow actual buds) and will switch to a 12/12 when I want to flower. This means that I have my light on 18 hours a day with 6 hours off, which will give the plants a good deal of light to help them get growing, but still gives them a few hours to rest and actually start rooting.

Just like humans, plants need “sleep” (lights off) and will do much of their growing at “night”. A longer period of darkness during the final flowering stage is meant to give them more time to produce the big buds that all growers want.

I got 2 clones of strains that I not only enjoy, but that I expect to be good yielders since I want to have as many fan leaves as possible: Triple Diesel (Sour Diesel x New York City Diesel x Sensi Star) and Killer Skunk Berry (Skunk #1 x Blueberry). Since I plan to juice the cannabis raw, I made sure to choose an organic nutrient line that is 100% all natural. A few weeks ago we had the maker of The Other Tomato, a line of organic nutrients manufactured in Colorado, giving out samples. After talking to him, I decided to try his nutrients out on my first grow. I am using tupur, a soilless mix that I’ve been told is one of the most stable mediums when not growing using hydroponics.

It’s been a week and everything seems to be going just fine. The temperature is steady at under 80° F, and I’ve been careful not to over-water or over do it on the nutrients (the schedule calls for a feeding only every 3-4 days).

I expect to make more modifications to the room as I go. The first will be to get some reflective material to put up inside of the closet to conserve light (as much as I love having Gandhi watch the plants, once they start really growing the reflective material will help them yield much better). As already stated several times, however, I’m going to have to wait for my next paycheck before proceeding with those kinds of updates (I know reflective stuff is cheap, fellow growers, but I need to pay rent and have money for…you know, food and stuff).

Expect LOTS of updates, Weedist readers, as I embark on my maiden marijuana-growing journey!

Prospero’s Grow – 15 Week Series: