What You Need to Know to Grow Cannabis Indoors

Here’s a look at the basics for growing your own cannabis plants at home, including lighting, nutrients, watering, and more.

While growing your own cannabis indoors can seem like a daunting task, with the right set of equipment and tools, even gardening beginners can succeed at producing a high-quality yield come harvest time.

While cannabis will grow outdoors, doing so makes the plants more susceptible to problems related to fluctuations in environment and exposure to pests. On the other hand, growing marijuana indoors gives you greater control over the growing environment, ensuring that your weed receives the ideal elements it needs to flourish:

• Nutrients
• Water
• Light
• Temperature
• Humidity

To help simplify the indoor cannabis growing process, here is a clear, easy-to-digest cannabis grow guide, which provides an overview of the tools a first-time grower needs to get started.

Grow Area Needs

A personal grow area doesn’t need to be big: a space about two feet deep, three feet wide, and four feet tall should be adequate for beginners looking to grow a couple of plants. Growers have been known to use cabinets or closets in their homes because a proper growing space needs to be shielded from light.

Here’s what else you’ll need:

Grow Tent

If you’d rather not use a cabinet or closet, you can purchase a grow tent and use it to create an enclosed, controllable space within a larger room.

Grow tents are your all-in-one indoor canopy. They have reflective inner walls and are designed to accommodate exhaust fans and light kits, and they’ll save you from having to staple or drill into your walls. Some growers opt to build their own type of “grow tent” out of lumber.

Buckets or Burlap Sacks

Quality buckets and burlap sacks work really well for growing cannabis. If using buckets, simply drill a few holes in the bottom for drainage, making sure any tray you place underneath doesn’t inadvertently seal those holes. Burlap sacks are ideal because they allow more air to reach the plant’s roots, which can encourage healthier plants and bigger yields.

Organic Soil Mix

Most high quality organic soils available at gardening and grow shops will provide your weed plants with the nutrients they need to be healthy. Avoid soils that indicate they provide extended release nutrients, which can wreck the balance of the nutrients, particularly during your plants’ late stages of growth.

Lighting Equipment

Lights for your growing space are essential, as they replace the sun in an indoor garden. Keep in mind, though, that lighting equipment will likely be your biggest expense in setting up your growing space.

Light Kit

For beginners and experienced growers alike, there are 400w high-intensity discharge (HID) light kits. The kits typically come complete with:

• Electronic ballast
• Bulbs
• A reflector
• Hangars

Kits can be costly, but are easy to set up, and produce great yields and the fastest grow time.

Environmental Control and Monitoring Tools

Exhaust or Small Circulation Fan

An exhaust fan pulls fresh air in and pushes warm air out of your growing space. This provides your weed with much-needed fresh air that circulates, which prevents stale air from building up and leading to mold and mildew. Constant fresh air moving through and around your cannabis will also assist in temperature and humidity control and strengthen the plant’s branches so they can hold up heavier flowers.

Thermometer/Humidity Gauge

A thermometer and humidity gauge should be used to regularly monitor the growing environment. Cannabis grows best between 72 and 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Too high of temperature can kill the plants, while too low of temperature can allow powdery mildew to develop.

The level of humidity is important, too, but, for best results, it should vary depending on the stage of growth:

1. When your weed is seedlings or clones, the ideal humidity is 65-70 percent.
2. During vegetation, humidity levels can be lowered, with a range of 40-70 percent.
3. When your cannabis is flowering, the humidity should be 40-50 percent.

You can lower humidity by increasing fresh air supply with your exhaust fan.

Feeding Needs

pH Meter or pH strips

A pH meter or pH strips test your soil’s pH, or how acidic or alkaline it is. A pH meter features a probe that is inserted into the soil and then provides you with a pH reading. Disposable pH strips are inserted into the soil and turn a specific color depending on the pH.

Both provide you with a pH reading on a scale of 0 to 14, with more acidic soils having a lower pH, more alkaline soils having a higher pH, and a pH of 7 being neutral.

Cannabis thrives in soil that’s neutral to slightly acidic, with a pH of 6.0 to 7.0, as it helps the plants more efficiently absorb the nutrients they need to flourish. If you find that your soil’s pH is outside the ideal range, you can adjust it by using “pH Up” or “pH Down” solutions found at your local gardening shop.

Nutrients

Cannabis plants need to absorb certain nutrients to produce healthy yields, among the most important of which are:

• Nitrogen
• Phosphorus
• Potassium

There are many nutrient product options to choose from, which can cause new growers to quickly become overwhelmed. Don’t despair – cannabis-specific pre-mixed organic soil nutrient solutions are ideal to make sure you get it right.

Can you Grow Cannabis Legally?

As cannabis laws continue to evolve throughout the United States, more and more people are looking into growing their own cannabis at home.

Today, more than half of U.S. states allow people to personally grow cannabis legally. Twenty-nine states and Washington D.C. have legalized medical marijuana, and eight states and Washington D.C. have legalized weed for recreational use.

You can learn more about the marijuana laws where you live by visiting our Overview of U.S. Marijuana Law page.

Learn More about Growing Cannabis

You can learn more about how to grow your own cannabis, including the best practices for produce healthy cannabis flowers and curing your cannabis through our Cannabis 101 page.

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George Scorsis Liberty Health Sciences

Originally posted on What You Need to Know to Grow Cannabis Indoors via George Scorsis Medical Marijuana News