The Beginning Basics

Okay, the first step in your quest to grow marijuana is to find a proper grow space. The author currently grows plants in an area 5’ by 10’. It is a closeted area located right next to the crawl space of the house which allows for proper ventilation. What you are looking for in a grow space is an area that is locked away from children, pets, and other unwanted intruders. It’s actually the law in Colorado to grow in a secured environment, so make sure to put a lock on the door into your grow room should that be your route. The next best solution for complete security and to prevent unwanted smells from nosy neighbors is to purchase a grow tent. You can get big or small tents depending on your grow needs and they can be placed near windows or other areas with good ventilation. They are usually a couple hundred dollars but can be used over and over for subsequent grows. The best part is that locking them isn’t a problem, you just lock the zipper so nobody can gain access. They really keep everything contained in one location as well. Grow tents can also be placed out in the open in your home without being an eye sore. The larger dispensaries have grow warehouses filled with hundreds of plants but you don’t need to start there!





Should you not go the grow tent route and you already have a suitable growing area, then this space should be as big as you can possibly make it. In the state of Colorado, 6 plants can be grown at once for most people unless you have extenuating medical circumstances. This means that 3 can be flowering at one time. An area 3’ by 3’ is just about the smallest area you could have and still flower 3 plants. If you have a medical license then you could be growing up to about 100 plants for edibles, hashes, and other concentrates. This type of a grow operation usually requires more than one person to manage and can be very costly. Hopefully you as the reader can adapt the techniques in this guide to maintain the number of plants you plan on growing for your needs.

When evaluating a grow area, it is also important to make sure you can properly clean and ventilate the area. For the cleaning part, it’s always good to use a pressure washer on the floors and walls if possible. Also, If you follow the recommendations of this guide, you will be using lights that emit a lot of heat. A properly ventilated grow room will help you avoid cooking your crop. It will also make sure that the plants are receiving fresh air at all times. What they are going to do is take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. If there isn’t a lot of air exchange, then the plants essentially can’t breathe properly. The room becomes way more saturated with oxygen and not enough carbon dioxide and things get out of whack. This can lead to lower yields and unhealthy plants. Proper ventilation is also important to get the marijuana smell out of the house. It is pungent and it will permeate the whole home unless you take the necessary steps to prevent this from occurring. They sell charcoal filters of varying sizes that essentially eliminate any smell whatsoever. They are a life saver if you desire to keep your grow on the down low. They are also needed to prevent greedy people from figuring out that you have thousands of dollars of high grade marijuana growing in your house. People will recognize your grow as a source of income and it’s very necessary to protect it from these types. With that being said, if you can find a grow space that is near a window, crawl space, or some other area where you can use a fan or fans to route old air out and bring fresh air in then that would be perfect.





It is also important that the floor of your grow room be some sort of material that you won’t mind getting wet. No matter how hard you try, you are going to be constantly spilling water and dirt on the floor and this can become a problem if it’s a carpeted area. While this type of grow room is not ideal, you can still grow effectively, but be as careful as you can with spills. One of the solutions to this water and dirt all over your floor problem is to purchase plastic tarps. These are a life saver to grow weed easy by keeping things contained. You can cut them to virtually any length or size of your grow room. It is ideal to cut the tarp into a piece a little bigger than the actual size of your grow room so that you can create somewhat of a basin to keep things contained. If you have a little extra money though, go ahead and purchase a grow tent because these keep everything contained naturally in one secure area. If for some reason the tarp or grow tent idea won’t work then they sell these grow trays as well that keep things cleaner.

Another factor is finding an area with a lot of height in the room. If you follow the recommendations of this guide, then you can expect your plants to grow anywhere from 4-6 feet tall when they are just about ready to harvest. Make sure you are going to have room. If you don’t have a tall area, then this is okay as well. More information on how to stunt your plants growth will be explained later on in the guide.

Time is also a factor for the grow room. Based on your growing technique, to take plants to maturity could take anywhere from 2.5 months to 5 months. Make sure you aren’t going to be needing the space you are using to grow for any other application.

Alright, so you’ve read the preceding paragraphs and maybe you live in an apartment or just don’t have any suitable place to grow marijuana. Don’t worry, not all is lost. There are various techniques for growing that will work with just a closet, a garage, or an attic even in the winter months. If you wanted to grow just one plant, then an area 1.5’ by 1.5’ would work just fine. As stated earlier, the plants can sometimes get pretty tall but if you don’t have an area that allows you to keep a 6’ plant, there are other ways to grow indoors. Keep reading because it will be explained later on how to deal with the “Not So Ideal” grow spaces. Whatever you do, don’t give up hope. The author has found that almost any environment can be used to grow high quality marijuana.





Pots

The bigger the better if you can. In the authors’ opinion, nothing less than 5 gallon pots should be used long term. The roots of a marijuana plant expand very rapidly and you want them to have as much room to grow as possible. The author has found that in every case, a smaller pot leads to smaller yields. They sell rubbermaid tubs on Amazon.com that make great growing pots because the roots can expand to their true potential. Another solution is to buy buckets that you can get in bulk here. Just drill a few holes in the bottom and they work just as good as pots. Aside from this, one of the easiest ways to get great results for your marijuana grow is to purchase grow bags. These are super easy to maintain and they allow the roots to really breathe resulting in stunning grows and even better yields. These bags can also be bought in bulk and are worth every penny.

Get yourself a tray to collect water runoff or a tarp, and you should be all set. The also sell very cheap plastic trays that slide underneath the 2 gallon to 5 gallon pots and can be found online for around a dollar each. Just about any plate, or Tupperware can be used to collect the water run off as well. So if you have read this entire paragraph and for some reason you just can’t find a 5 gallon bucket then again, not all is lost. Techniques will be explained further along in this guide to show you how to grow marijuana with a smaller pot.





The Grow Medium

This is a section that could be very long in a different growing manual. The author believes that every newbie should start out growing in soil. You could gradually gain more experience growing hydroponically but this is more complex and prone to human error. Hydroponic growing requires no soil, only nutrients and water. These are mixed together in the right amounts at the right time to feed the plant. The author has seen no evidence that either growing method produces any more yield than the other. Stick with soil for now and you will easily grow great yields with less effort and less cost than it would take hydroponically.

Soil

Soil is key, absolutely key. If there is one aspect of growing marijuana that you shouldn’t screw up, then it’s the soil. Don’t just use dirt from the backyard or any old soil from the hardware store either unless you have to. Marijuana soil should contain all the essential nutrients that this specific plant needs to grow. Picking good soil can also save you money because you’re picking dirt that has already been infused with desirable vitamins and minerals. This means you don’t have to buy expensive nutrients until later on. With that being said, the author uses Happy Frog soil almost exclusively to grow weed easy. It contains the right amount of ingredients to get the plants a solid start. He feels that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Happy Frog soil is by no means the end all be all of soils but happens to be what the author started out on and hasn’t changed since day one of growing. There are many soils which would be perfect but don’t pay too much for them. Also stay away from used dirt because the nutrients have been depleted already. Again, soil is key. Make sure to start your plants out right.





Temperature

The author has found that the temperature isn’t super important to the growth or yield of marijuana plants as long as it is kept between 60 and 80 degrees. He accomplishes this with the means of a portable heater in the winter time and strategic fans in the summer. If your grow area is very small and you are using high powered lights then an air conditioning unit is recommended. These can be a life saver if your grow room gets too hot and you’ve tried everything else. As long as you have a proper ventilation plan, you can purchase these portable AC units and keep the temperature in line. Growing indoors makes it a lot easier to keep the temperatures steady. Marijuana grows at around the same temperature that most people maintain their houses at. Also, don’t worry if you are growing indoors in the winter time and your grow room gets cold. You can easily go pick up that little electric heater from Amazon with an adjustable thermostat so that you don’t have to mess with it. Just set it to 65 degrees for instance and leave it be. Also, be aware that when you are flowering your plants, your lights will be on for 12 hours and off for 12 hours. When the lights are on, the grow room will heat up, and when the lights are off, it will get much colder. Be aware of this and make sure you adjust for these changes in temperature. Usually, experienced growers leave the lights off for 12 hours during the day and turn them on during the night. This really helps to reduce the heat buildup in your grow space. Timers will be needed for keeping a consistent lights on/lights off cycle. These aren’t too expensive and should be purchased unless you decide to turn the lights on and off at the same time every day. You need to make it consistent though because the marijuana plants are very sensitive to light and adjust better to a set schedule opposed to a random light cycle. Serious problems occur when you mess with light schedules or turn the lights on during the 12 hour off cycle. More about this later but let’s continue.





Lights

Wow, lights are a definite essential for growing just about any living plant. Marijuana is no different. Plants need the sun to grow and since you will be growing indoors, you will need to recreate the sun inside your grow room. Lights with the most wattage are best. There are a wide variety of different options but the author recommends using High Pressure Sodium lights, or HPS. This has been the cheapest and best light to use depending on where you will be growing. They work best if you have a well ventilated room though. A lot of people will tell you to go with LED lights but these types of lights are generally more expensive. However, they are another option to get the job done and reduce your electricity bill by a lot. They also do not emit half the amount of heat that the HPS lights do. If you don’t have a ton of ventilation options, then you should at least check out the LEDs and see if they are for you. The reason the author uses HPS lights is because we’re trying to cut down on growing costs in this guide. There are other options for lighting as well as those mentioned here but for the most part, they are more expensive and the author just sticks with what he knows.

Not a lot of detail will be given in this guide about lumens, or other technical knowledge about these grow light options. All you need to know is that the more wattage the light has, the better. The author is a big fan of 1000W HPS lighting fixtures. Under one of these lights you could grow between 4-6 plants and get somewhere in the range of 12-15 oz yield after 3 months of growing. A 1000W HPS complete setup can be found on Amazon for roughly 200 dollars. Very inexpensive and this includes the ballast as well as the hood. Some packages even contain the necessary bulbs. If you are serious about ventilation then you can get something like a cool tube. You will need an inline fan as well if you go this route but it’s recommended by the author. The cool tubes pull stale air and heat from the bulb out of the grow room very efficiently. Be aware that your electrical bill will go up once you start keeping your lights on for 24 hours a day but the benefits of having your own crop outweigh this expense. If you’ve been doing any research into growing marijuana besides this guide then no doubt you have found information about metal halide lights as well. It’s strongly recommended to uses metal halide lighting while keeping the lights on for 24 hours a day. This is only done while your clones or seedlings are in the veg cycle. There is a different spectrum that growing, but not budding, plants enjoy. This isn’t to say that you can’t use your normal HPS bulbs but it is indeed recommended to use metal halide during this first stage of growth. If you are lucky, you can find a lighting setup that can be used with a metal halide bulb as well as an HPS bulb. With the flip of a switch and a change in the bulb, you can use both. These types of setups are getting popular and can be attained rather cheaply. More about the vegging cycle later on in this guide.

Don’t worry too much about the type of bulb you buy either. The author has found that any horticulture bulb works. If your lighting setup doesn’t come with a bulb then a 1000W HPS bulb, brand new, can be found on Amazon for roughly $35 including shipping. Be careful of buying so called “New Bulbs” on Craigslist.org as you can’t tell if they are really new. It’s not much more expensive to just order a new one online and you will be assured that your bulb has a lot of life left in it. In general, one bulb will last you two grow cycles or about 6 months of use. It’s a good deal for the money. As far as how far away from your plants you want the lights to be, you should keep them as close to the tops of your plants as you can without burning them. The farther away your lights are, the more lumens you are losing. This lost light could be used to help the plants grow. The way to tell if you are close enough is to place your hand about the same distance from the light as your plants are. If it’s too hot to keep your hand there for 30 seconds, then raise the lights. You want to maximize the light energy but not burn the plant. In the common problems section, you will be instructed on how to recognize light burn on your plants. If you can’t get your hands on a 1000W HPS, then you can also get a 400 or 600 watt light fixture and these will also be sufficient. Don’t expect the same yield as you would get with a bigger wattage light though. Two to three plants would grow fine under smaller HPS light fixtures. There are also other very expensive light fixtures and bulbs that can get the job done. Not necessarily better than any ordinary HPS fixture but will reduce electricity costs and are more efficient. People have been growing marijuana with HPS for decades now though and have consistently seen large yields. Don’t get sold something that you really don’t need. Aside from HPS, Metal Halide, and LED’s, the author doesn’t have any further recommendations. Again, he has found a very effective lighting system and if it isn’t broken, then don’t fix it.





Water

The author uses regular Colorado tap water and has never had any ill effects. He makes sure that the water has a PH of between 6.0 and 6.5 but hasn’t spent the money on a filtration system. If you really want to use filtered water, then that would be ideal but be prepared to purchase some sort of RO/DI system or pre-filtered water which can get expensive. The most important aspect of the water you use is that it be within the optimum PH range for your plants. If it is not within the 6-7 range then your plants will suffer. They won’t be able to uptake any of the special nutrients you are going to be giving them. There are many affordable PH kits that you can use to both test and modify your water so that it is within the appropriate range. Any grow shop will be able to point you in the right direction but don’t pay more than $10-$15. Another useful device to make sure your water or tap water is okay for growing is a dissolved solvent meter. This great product will tell you how many dissolved solids there are in the water you are using to feed your plants. You will be adding nutrients to the water as well and you don’t want to over feed your plants. This leads to leaf burn and other problems such as lower yields and toxic soil. A tip of advice is to test the water after you have added the nutrients. This ensures that you get an accurate reading of what you will actually be feeding your plants.





Ventilation and Air Flow

Ventilation is important. You should have at least one fan in your grow room to provide circulation to your plants. You want them to sway gently in the wind. This makes sure that the oxygen they are releasing is blown away with fresh air and there is enough CO2 to absorb. The author uses a fan that rotates so that it blows evenly over the crop. The second reason to have good ventilation is because of heat. If you are using the author’s recommended 1000W HPS light, then you will have heat that probably will need to be removed from the grow room to avoid overheating. Different kinds of fans are used for this purpose. They are called inline fans and once again, can be found rather inexpensively on Amazon.com. Ideally, you will need 2 inline fans in your grow room. One to bring fresh air into the room and one to route the old, hot air out. This can be achieved with ducting you can find online for cheap. Just be sure to match up the inline fan sizes with the ducting. Popular fan and ducting combinations are 4”, 6” and 8”. The 8” combo is obviously better because it allows more airflow but if you don’t have a huge grow then it shouldn’t be a problem to use smaller sizes.







Watering

Watering is important. Assuming you start with some sort of marijuana clone or seedling, once it is transplanted into a mother pot, watering should be done with care. At first, make sure you don’t overwater. Get yourself a watering can here and carefully get the surface of the dirt completely wet. At this point you actually don’t even need a watering can, you could use a cup if you wanted. Later on though you will want to have a watering can that will be easy to reach plants in the far corners of your grow space. It’s worth it to spend a little more on a can with a long spout. One thing to realize is that when you are using nutrients in your water, you never want to expose fan leaves or buds to these chemicals. You want to only apply them directly to the dirt and roots. If you splash nutrients on these fan leaves then you will destroy them. They will burn within a few hours and will need to be removed. You want a watering can that will allow you to easily reach the root area without splashing or hitting these important leaves. You should be putting enough water in the soil so that you can see just a little exit as water runoff as well. As your plants grow, be aware that you will be using more and more water. Eventually you are going to be dumping water into your potted plants because the root structure has gotten so large. The more water you can use without over watering them the better. It’s definitely a delicate balance but you will get the hang of this. The author has never had a plant die because of overwatering but has seen some plants’ leaves droop as a result of too much. Scroll down to the common problems section for more info on what it looks like if you are over watering your plants. You don’t want them sitting in water all the time either. This leads to root rot and bug problems, maybe even mold at times. It is recommended to not leave standing water in the water runoff trays for very long.

Ideally, you will be watering your plants about every few days depending on how they look. It’s always better to under water your plants versus over watering them. If the first two inches of soil are dry, then you probably are ready to water them again. When you start to flower your crop, and the root system is very elaborate, they are going to soak up water like you won’t believe. This is perfect! Give it to them. Water is one of the most essential elements of growing marijuana. Under watering leads to smaller yields and less healthy plants that don’t grow as fast. You want to be as efficient as possible, so don’t be stingy on the watering. If you have any further questions about how much or how little to water, you can always get a water meter that takes the guesswork out of this process. Just place it in the dirt and see how dry it is!

Nutrients

A plant that is properly dosed with nutrients will be a healthy plant. Different nutrients will need to be used during the different stages of marijuana plants growing. During the vegging stage, you do not need to use anything special for the first few weeks, especially if you have bought some soil like Happy Frog or the equivalent competitor’s soil. These mediums are already infused with all the nutrients you need for the vegging plant. After the first few weeks, go to your local grow store or shop online and get yourself a “Vegging” nutrient supplement. Don’t go out and buy 10 different types of nutrients though. All you need is one supplement for vegging and a different one for flowering plants. Make sure you are purchasing from a reputable brand though as this will prevent you from getting unnecessary nutrient burn on your plants. After you purchase your preferred nutrient supplements, make sure to use about half of what is recommended on the bottle. These plants need nutrients but not too much. Almost every nutrient company out there over states the amount of nutrients that the plant actually needs. Use half the recommended dosage for optimum results for your marijuana grow.

Marijuana is a weed and will grow in virtually any type of medium with just about any dirt and nutrient combination. Be cautious and don’t fall into the expensive and unnecessary practice of inundating your plants with nutrients they don’t need. A great strategy is to use just one particular nutrient line such as Fox Farm. Again, they can be found in virtually any grow store as well but Amazon typically has them for cheaper.





The Smell

The smell of your grow could be of either great concern to you or not a concern at all depending on your living situation. Marijuana plants do smell though and even one or two plants can potentially stink up your house. The marijuana clones smell, the vegging plants smell, and the plants with huge buds on them smell. There is no way that you can avoid an odor when you are growing cannabis. The only thing you can do is either mask the smell or use proper ventilation and ducting which will take the air from your grow room directly outside. Certain strains smell stronger than others but as a general rule, expect the growing marijuana to smell and either prepare for it or maybe it just isn’t a big deal to you. If you do have a problem with the smell though, then purchase a carbon filter. There are many different types of carbon filters on the market today. You are going to have to evaluate your growing area and the fans you are using and purchase one or two based on your needs. You can purchase carbon filters, or sacks of carbon from any grow store, Walmart, or online. If you don’t have enough money for a carbon filter, place a bag of carbon behind an exit fan so that it pulls the smelly air through the filter and then outside. This will completely kill the smell or at least make it manageable.

Chapter 2 Overview: Find a location to grow your marijuana, the right size pot, good soil with nutrients, the right lighting, ventilation and WATER WATER WATER.