Kyle Kushman was a grower for nine years, employing soil and hyroponic methods. He is the author of cultivation articles for High Times magazine as well as answering questions on their website (WWW.HIGHTIMES.COM)
Whilst now retired from growing, he tries to stay active in the fight to legalize marijuana as well as spreading the knowledge of how to grow “The weed we all need.”
SETTING UP AN INDOOR GROWROOM
So many unhappy hempsters! Unhappy because it has become so expensive to acquire good quality cannabis. Fear of prosecution has driven the prices to disgusting highs rivalling gold and platinum! The answer is to grow your own.
The issue of security must be taken very seriously since your freedom could depend on it! You should only discuss the garden on a need-to-know basis! When you do talk about it, refer to the garden as your "project", and the plants as "the children". This will make an unfortunate slip in public much less noticeable. There will be times as your project progresses that in sheer excitement you may feel a need to shout your joy to someone. Don't!
Unless you will be living like a hermit, choose a space to grow that is completely hidden from any traffic that may happen to stop by. Don't make it easy for ANYONE to discover your secret! There is something known as "the sleep factor", this becomes more noticeable as you get closer to harvest. Depending on your temperament, and the amount of grass you are actually growing, your peaceful sleep will be affected more with each person that knows your little secret. I believe that the huge majority of people who get arrested for growing get caught because too many people know.
First lets consider the size of space you have available for growing. Cramming too many plants into a space will slow growth and lower your yield. Your grow-room can be as small as a closet, or as big as a bedroom. Just remember that the larger the grow room, the harder it is to conceal. If you are a first time grower you should definitely start small.
The most important tool the indoor gardener has is lights - the better your lighting, the better the return on your time and money will be. The more light you use, the higher your growth rate will be, potentially increasing your yield. Basically, WATTS plus FEMALE cannabis plants equals huge buds (KOLAS)!
The only choice for any, serious toker is High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps. When you use these lamps respect the fact that they can be dangerous. I think that using anything smaller than a 450 watt HID is useless. If you want to grow with small grow and show bulbs, or use a couple of fluoresent-tubes it’s going to take at least four months to grow some meager crop. Flourescents are great for seedlings!
There are two kinds of HID the indoor farmer will be interested in: Metal Halide and High Pressure Sodium.
Metal Halide is the best choice for single light gardens. If you grow with only sodium, your buds will elongate and seem fluffy. You should purchase a sodium conversion replacement bulb to switch to when flowering (it will burn in your Metal Halide ballast.) The best set-up would be to vegetate your plants with Metal Halide then add the sodium for flowering. If you use only the Metal Halide during vegetative growth, then add or replace with a high pressure sodium when you want to initiate flowering you will notice a more pronounced and quicker flowering of your plants. The big change in light mimics the late fall sun. The plants think winter is coming so they had better bear their fruit quickly! Quicker flowering means quicker finishing!
My choice has always been to have multiple lights if possible, mixing the use of metal halide with high pressure sodium. If you can't afford more than one light, there is a son-aggro sodium bulb available that is almost as good as blending.
I’ve never heard of a garden with too much light. I grew with five thousand watts in a ten by twelve foot bedroom. Four Halides for vegetative growth, and three Halides and two Sodium for flowering. For optimum results illuminate your space with as much light as you can fit, afford and, taking into account daily and seasonal climactic changes, how much heat you can dissipate. You must also take into account that each one thousand watt light will raise the temperature of your grow-space by ten to fifteen degrees with adequate ventilation. That means that if you want to keep the temperature in your garden at a balmy seventy-seven to eighty-two degrees, and you are burning two thousand watters, the temperature of the fresh air your feeding you’re garden with must be sixty-degrees. Sometimes we must make sacrifices. Once when growing in a second bedroom across the hall from mine, I had to leave my window open wide to provide fresh air to my five thousand watt factory. It was winter, and the temperature in my bedroom was a little chilly.
With good seed stock, and a 450 watt Metal Halide, you can easily grow two to four ounces of dried bud in three to four months. That means you break even from the very first harvest.
The use of one thousand watt HID will increase your yield, while decreasing the amount of time it will take. Again with good seed stock expect to yield six to twelve ounces of primo bud in only sixty-five to ninety-days from seed to harvest.
I acknowledge the application of cloning as a worthwhile endeavor, but I prefer to always grow from seed. With respect to yield potential and being resistant to stress a clone will always be slightly inferior to a plant from seed. Just as a plant grown indoors will always be somewhat inferior to a plant grown "au natural” outside.
If you have enough room, I suggest using the older style, 45inch vertical housing and reflector - very good for four hundred watters. But with a thousand watt light in a vertical reflector, and reflective material surrounding your garden, you can support four times as many plants under each light and have minimal loss of light. You must surround our plants with a reflective material in order to maximize reflection of light. This set-up will also allow you to blend your Halide and Sodium lighting better. If your only using the corner of a large room, build some stand-up walls from cardboard boxes. Cover them with mylar, a worthwhile investment. Surfaces painted flat white also reflect a good amount of light. The shiny side of aluminium foil is better than nothing.
Remember that a one thousand watt HID will raise the ambient room temperature by ten to fifteen degrees with little air circulation. You must employ “air flow technology" to keep temperature and humidity within acceptable levels. Heat can be dispersed by proper placement and use of fans. Improper placement of fans can hinder circulation. You want to create a flow where warm air escapes out the top, and cool air flows in from the bottom. The old trick when you wet your finger, then hold it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing works well. Check the air flow in several spots of a large garden to help set up your fans.
When growing with a thousand watts or more, it is advisable to use a space with enough room to stand up. You will probably spend significant amounts of time in the space and, more importantly, heat from the light must be able to rise above your garden.
You will still need to ventilate the space, but heat builds up much quicker when the ceiling is close to the light. Your air will more than likely come from the door or whatever entrance you use to get to it. Spare bedrooms work great because you can greatly increase the air flow by placing two box fans at the entrance. One on the bottom sucking cool fresh air in. and another either stacked on milk crates or hanging pointing out to suck out all the hot air.
As for someone noticing your electric consumption, it was never a problem in my experience. How would they know to look at your electric bill? They don't know if you’ve been baking cookies for your daughters bake sale all month. Or bought a kiln and taken up glassblowing.
A one thousand watt HID will draw nine and one half amps, four hundred watters half that. Check the circuit box for the amp rating of all circuits you will be using for your grow-room. A ten amp circuit will support one thousand watts and a couple of fans. No more! A fifteen amp circuit is a little safer. It can support your light and several fans and timers. Don't overload your wiring! Use appropriately rated, grounded extension cords to utilize sockets far away from the grow-space. Don't overload extension cords either! Try to spread the usage over several circuits if possible.
Clean out the space before bringing any equipment in. The cleaner your grow-space is, the less of a chance of infestations by bugs and molds. Indoor plant hanger kits are great for hanging lights. It's best to hang your lights with metal chains and an "S" hook. This makes it very easy to make adjustments to the height of your lights. If you do well, you will be raising your lights often, possibly every day! If the ceiling of your grow-space is not sturdy, or too high, you must construct a framework to hang your lights. You can make individual frameworks for each light. Or you can nail two by fours to studs in the walls, then set poles or boards across the space between them to wrap your chain or wire around. You will want to screw an eve hook in a strategic location, then take a twist tie, and tie-up the power cord so it doesn't touch or make the reflector hang crooked. However you decide to hang your lights, make doubly sure they wont let go a month into growing, crushing your plants, or even worse, causing a fire!
You must not be able to see light from your garden outside your home. You will want to inconspicuously cover any windows that your light(s) will shine through. Don't simply hang a blanket up. Put up a venetian blind in the window so it looks good from the outside, then staple up a blanket on the inside to seal it up. (Black plastic is a workable alternative.) Always inspect for any leaks from outside
Equally important is knowing that your grow room is completely dark when you need it to be. Any light that gets in during your night cycle will lengthen the time it takes to flower, and may increase internodal lengths. If you are really stupid, and feel the need to look at your plants when the lights should be off you could end up with Hermaphrodites! (plants that produce male flowers and pollinate themselves.) You could end up with a pound of seed instead of an ounce of bud! The only way to be sure is to close yourself inside during the bright of day, this allows you to instantly spot any leaks.
Other factors to consider are noise from ballasts. Ballasts are much quieter when raised off the floor. Use a milk crate or something similar to raise them even a few inches off the ground. This will also help to keep them cooler. If it is possible to have any or all ballasts either outside the grow-room, or raised above the level of your lights, you will find it easier to keep your garden cool.
Don’t attract any attention to anything! Burn incense constantly, it is the cheapest way to completely cover any odor from your photo-synthesizing beauties. Odor is most completely and easily concealed by taking up the practice of burning incense. Descent incense will mask the pungent aroma from the "dankest" herb garden.. If your not living amongst your plants, I suggest looking into a product called Ozium. It is a sanitizing spray available from auto parts store and grow stores. They are cheap at around twenty five dollars, and around twenty dollars per month for replacement cans.
Congratulations! You now have the knowledge to set up your own growroom, safe and secure. It s time to get the children started.
