Top 10 Essentials For Growing Marijuana Indoors

Top 10 Essentials For Growing Marijuana Indoors

Growing marijuana indoors is the only way to guarantee a high-quality yield from your plants all year round. One thing you have to do is become an entrepreneur, a farmer and a parent in one package before you can succeed. If you are doing it for the first time, you should get seeds that are more forgiving and which flower quickly, preferrable Indica-lying plants. Going for a high yield and nutrient-intense Sativa plants might ruin your first crop leading to apathy and that won’t help you. Your choice of seeds will be guided by the seed banks available to you and the flavour you need from your plants. Whichever seeds you choose, you have to ensure that these 10 essentials are secured to ensure a successful crop.

A grow tent

Growing indoors means that you have to play mother nature to your crops and that means being able to control every aspect of the growing environment. It will be harder to control the environment using just four walls meant for human habitation which is why a grow tent is so important. While some people recommend buying a small cheap tent for a start, we highly recommend buying your perfect tent for the long term because a tent will never fail. The tent should have large windows with high quality fabric to ensure that temperature and air flow are easy to maintain. Having a reflective interior also helps you get the most from your light source.

Humidifier/Dehumidifier

You need to keep humidity at 70% when your seeds are sprouting and as they enter into vegetation. You have to keep reducing gradually so that you are at 50 to 60 when they are growing rapidly and only 40% when they flower. To keep track of these, you can manually use humidity pads to improve and remove the pads to reduce. The best way to control the humidity in the room is to invest in a powerful humidifier that ensures that humidity is optimum at all times.

Grow lights

You have to replace sunlight in your tent which means having sufficient light at every inch of your grow tent. You need at least 18 hours of light daily until your plants start flowering when you can reduce it to 12 hours. Now, whichever light you use. Make sure that you have 50watts of power for every square foot of room you have so in your 4×4 ft room, you will need at least 800 watts of lighting. It is always smarter to have more bulbs for better placement for room coverage than a single powerful bulb which might heat up and also leave some leaves with no light access. In the modern era, LED grow lights are the smart way to go because they use less power and don’t heat up easily when in use.

Fans

When you watch plants growing outdoors, you will notice that each plant has its share of fresh air with the wind causing the plants to swing gently. Your indoor space has to resemble the outdoors which is your you need at least two fans to pump in fresh air rich in C02 and pump out the warm used air. Proper ventilation and fans also help keep the tent clean to reduce the chances of mildew, mould and pests accumulating. Your fans should be placed strategically to ensure that each plant is swaying. One fan should be low close to your intake to bring in the dense cold air while the second one should be placed

Potting containers

Most new growers assume that the old unused buckets and previous plant pots will be good for marijuana plants in a tent but that is not necessarily the case. The plants are demanding and you need to be able to test the nutrient density and pH of your growing mechanism regularly. You should therefore go for pots that only retain as much water as the plants need and also allow the medium to remain loose enough for roots to access nutrients. Our preferred pots are fabric pots, preferably placed in catching trays to retain any overflowing water.

Top 10 Essentials For Growing Marijuana Indoors

A growing medium

Soil is cheap and readily available as long as you sterilize it and make sure it is properly nourished before you put it in the pot. Soil alone doesn’t always offer the best yields though because it becomes compact with time preventing roots from accessing all nutrients. For a better yield, you should mix soil with a lighter medium such as coco coir or perlite. Hydroponics is another method that gives a big yield although it is a lot more expensive than soil.

Thermometer/Hygrometer

As we said in the beginning, growing weed indoors means you also have to be a parent and every parent needs a thermometer. You have to ensure that your plants are not freezing or boiling on your watch. The temperature should stay between 70° and 78° Fahrenheit during the vegetative stage and then 65° to 68° when flowering. The hygrometer also helps you keep tabs on humidity to know when you need to restart your humidifier or insert some humidity pads.

Nutrients

Cannabis is not a heavily demanding plant so you won’t need any special nutrients to keep your plants going. It is important to add ammonia-based fertilizer to the soil when planting. Make sure not to overfertilize to prevent burning your crop. You will then need to add NPK fertilizer or growth boosters when the plants grow their first four to five pairs of leaves. Your nutrient should also include magnesium. Don’t overuse your topdressing though as it can kill the plants or delay flowering.

CO2

Plants grow better when there is more CO2 than what you normally find in nature which is why large-scale growers use those large CO2 generators and pumps to deliver the air directly to their plants. If your tent is larger than 4×4 ft, then you should consider investing in a CO2 pump, especially during the flowering season. Otherwise, just get a CO2 bag for every 4×4 tent you have and your plants will be good to go.

Carbon filters

This is one requirement that many growers forget until they realize that the smell from the grow tent can filter to the rest of your home. Carbon filters also ensure that your plants have fresh air and also reduce the chances of air-born pathogens multiplying in your tent.

Do you have any tips for growing cannabis at home? Do let us know in the comments below!

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