So you need to have a go at setting up your own marijuana grow room, but you don’t have quite a bit of financial support?
You’ve checked out the web and it feels like you have to burn through hundreds or thousands to get up and going? It appears to be extremely difficult to contribute so much cash?
Try and don’t surrender. It is conceivable to get a little grow room setup running without spending excessively; there are areas where you can spare cash particularly in case you’re set up to invest a little.
Deciding to Grow Marijuana Indoors
Marijuana can be grown indoors or outdoors. Growing outdoors provides a way to spend less money but isn’t always the right solution for today’s growers. When the marijuana is out in the open, there are a lot of potential issues that the grower could face, and that could mean that there isn’t a harvest at the end of the season. The flowers could be stolen, pests could destroy the plants, or there just may not be the right environment for the plants to thrive. Instead, many growers will prefer to start up a grow room inside so they get all of the benefits of growing indoors in a marijuana grow tent and avoid the many pitfalls of growing outdoors.
Benefits of Growing Plants Indoors
When a grower starts their own grow room inside, they can take advantage of the following benefits.
Able to Control the Environment – Indoors, it’s easier to completely control the environment. This includes temperature, humidity, lighting, and more. Better control over the environment can lead to healthier plants that grow larger.
Able to Sterilize the Environment – Those who are growing for medical purposes will need to ensure a sterilized environment for the plants to avoid contaminations. Even those who are growing for recreational purposes will be glad to have the opportunity to sterilize the environment to minimize the potential for issues.
Able to Grow in the Winter – Outdoors, the growing season is limited by the temperatures. Marijuana needs warm temperatures to grow and thrive. Indoors, this can be accomplished throughout the year, leading to more harvests per year.
Able to Closely Monitor Plants – When plants are indoors, they’re close by and easier to keep an eye on. This means any potential issues are spotted and taken care of early, minimizing the chance that an issue will cause a plant to die.
Able to Keep Pests Away – It’s much easier to keep pests away from the plants when they’re growing indoors. It is still important to keep an eye on the plants, but the potential damage from pests can be minimized.
Easier to Figure Out What Works – Since there are fewer hazards growing indoors and there is the potential to grow year-round, it is easier for beginners to figure out what works best for them and where they can improve. This can lead to larger harvests later.
Get Your Grow Room Kit Ready
As we have mentioned above, there are two major ways in which you can grow your marijuana. The first way is to grow your weed outdoors, in the open nature under the sky and leaving it at the mercy of nature. The weed that you grow outdoors is often a risky business because it leaves it in the public eye for anyone to see. While marijuana has gotten legal in several parts of the US over the years – for medicinal purposes in some regions and even for recreational purposes in the other regions, it still continues to be a major social taboo and people continue to look down upon weed growers. This is one big reason why farmers are preferring the second method of growing weed: growing it indoors.
Growing your weed indoors gives you not only privacy, but most importantly, it gives you a much better control over the crop that you are growing. You can be assured that you are providing the optimum quality of light, heat, water, and air to your marijuana plants. When you grow your weed outside, there is no guarantee that weather conditions will be optimum at all times. However, indoor growing ensures that. For getting a good growth in indoor growing, you would need to ensure that your marijuana grow kit is just perfect. Let us take a closer look at what we mean when we say a ‘grow room kit’.
WHAT IS A GROW ROOM KIT?
When we talk about a grow room kit, we are basically talking about all the elements that go into ensuring that your ‘grow room’ will provide optimum growing environment for your cannabis plants. This involves a number of things such as grow lights, grow tents, inline duct fans for air circulation, water sources, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, heaters, air conditioners, air purifiers, etc. All of these put together result in a good grow room kit. Let us now take a closer look at all these elements individually and see how they matter when it comes to growing healthy weed:
ELEMENTS OF THE BEST GROW ROOM KITS
Grow Tents: First and foremost, the most important aspect of a grow room is the multiple grow tents that you will be keeping in the room. These grow tents are important because this is where you actually store your weed for growth. They have a reflective surface on the inside and a thick exterior on the outside, which ensures that the light that you provide to the plants is received by them in full and there is no loss of light. These grow tents are also important because they play a crucial role in keeping your weed discreet from people as they resemble a cabinet from the outside and often have a carbon filter inside them to trap the odor.
Grow Lights: After grow tents, grow lights for weeds are the most important part of a grow room kit. This is because grow lights are the primary source of light (and often heat as well) for marijuana plants that you are growing. There are different types of grow lights that are available in the markets – and depending upon your requirement and the growth cycle of your plant, you can choose the ideal grow light. They are important because light is required by plants as they convert light into energy via photosynthesis. Grow lights also provide heat and help in the generation of pigments such as chlorophyll which are essential for the healthy growth of a plant.
Grow Tent Fans: Fans are an important part of grow tents and form a core part of a grow room kit. Using inline duct fans that are attached to the tents, growers can do multiple things – first off, these fans provide fresh air to the plants and they take out the stale air. Up next, these fans are also responsible for ensuring that any excess heat is dissipated. Most grow tent fans also come with a carbon filter purifier that ensures that the strong and pungent odor that marijuana tends to give off is captured by them.
Water Sources: The ideal grow room kit has to have a water source in it as well. A water source could be a barrel which has a pipe along with a nozzle attached to it so that water can be easily sprayed on and provided to the plants when needed. Water is essential for the growth of the plant and more importantly, water is necessary because it is in water that the nutrients are mixed and are then absorbed by the roots of the plant.
Sources of Humidity: Humidity is also very important to plants based on which stage of growth they are at and every grow room kit must account for that. Marijuana plants which are at an early stage of growth (all stages before flowering) require a humid condition for favourable growth so that water can be provided to them via the leaves. This is a situation which changes once the plant reaches the flowering stage and this is where growers reduce the humidity levels. This is because when humidity is high, plants absorb more water from the leaves via stomata and less water from the roots. However, during the flowering stage, the plants need more nutrients which are provided to them via the roots and hence when humidity is low they will take in more water from their roots. This is a reason as to why every good grow room kit needs to have a humidifier/dehumidifier to provide ideal conditions to the plants.
Heater/Air Conditioner: As important as light is, heat is also a critical part of a plant’s healthy growth. Heat can be provided either directly via grow light, or with the help of heaters for those growers who are planning to grow large volumes of cannabis. The right amount of heat helps promote the process of generation of various pigments inside the plant and helps them thrive. Some growers also put in an air conditioner to generate temperatures which are ideal for the plants during night hours.
Step 1: Find A Space
Here's what you should think about with every grow room setup:
Is It Big Enough?
Almost any space can be used as for grow room setup. You can either convert a whole room or cupboard into a grow room, or use a grow tent.
Are You Near A Power Supply?
For a one light or two light set up, a couple of normal double wall sockets will be fine. You can always use an extension lead if you need to.
Are You Near A Water Source?
You should never use unfiltered rain water - you never know what you're feeding plants. The best water you can use is pure, filtered water.
Will Noise Be An Issue?
Lights, pumps and your fan can make some noise. Bear this in mind with your setup.
What’s The Flooring Like?
Don't grow straight onto carpeted floors. They hold moisture (spillages!) and harbour bugs and bacteria. You can put reflective sheeting down, or grow in a tent.
Step 2: Create A Light Tight Environment
If there’s a small window or natural light source in your grow room setup
Reflective sheeting does two great things.
Firstly, it stops light escaping
Secondly, it keeps natural light out of your setup. This way it doesn't interfere with your lighting cycle.
Plants get confused and stressed if they're exposed to light on an inconsistent basis…like you would be if your room suddenly illuminated in the middle of the night!
Plants get confused and stressed if they're exposed to light on an inconsistent basis…like you would be if your room suddenly illuminated in the middle of the night!
Step 3: Configure Your Setup
Once you’ve found a suitable area, you need to work out how to configure your space.
Option 1: Use an entire room setup
Option 2: Create a room in a room (typically with a grow tent setup)
Option 3: Convert an enclosed space (like a cupboard)
Whichever option you choose, make sure the size of your area is suitable for the intensity of your grow lights.
If your light isn't intense enough, plants will under perform. If it's too intense, you'll likely have heat problems and harm your plants.
Option 1: Whole Room Setup
In a large, empty room, one grow light won't be enough.
You’ll need around 1 x grow light (lamp + ballast + reflector) for every 1.2m x 1.2m space as a minimum.
Option 2: Room In A Room Setup
The best and cheapest way to create a grow room is with a grow tent.
You’ll find it much easier to:
Maintain the optimum climate (e.g. temperature, humidity)
Prevent bug infestations and diseases
Minimise light loss
Protect the rest of the room from the heat and humidity in your tent
The tent you need dependd on what you’re growing, and what lights you’re using in your setup.
If you have high intensity lights or taller growing plants, you’ll need bigger, taller tents.
For mother plants, cuttings and seedlings, you’ll only need a small tent for your setup.
Option 3: Convert An Enclosed Room Setup
When you're planning on growing in a small space, you may encounter heat problems in your setup.
To prevent this:
Choose a high space (at least 5ft is good – ideally you want more)
Use nothing more powerful than a 250 - 315W Light
Ensure there’s a constant flow of new air in your setup
To get a constant flow of cool air:
Use an extractor fan to take hot air away from the top of the area
Make sure there are input holes (even better, with air input fan) to force new air in
Step 4: Get The Right Light System
There are lots of lights to choose from. You'll need at least one lof them
What's A Grow Light?
A typical grow light (aka lighting system) is made up of:
Ballast: for regulating and controlling the supply of energy needed to power the light
Lamp: for actually generating the light
Reflector: for guiding as much of the light produced down towards your plants
You will definitely need a main grow light. To improve your quality of light, people often use supplement lighting, too.
Conclusion
In short we are aiming at a lightproof, air tight grow room which has an air vent for CO2 to come in. The gas fills the atmosphere and leaves from another vent that is part of successful ventilation.
An efficient suction pump insures adequate amount of air supply while a modern ventilation system regulates the currents across the grow room.
The grow room is currently prepared for planting!