videoman40
Well-Known Member
How to do a grow, for personal use and for under $500.00
Hey, it’s late and I’ve been toking….and drinking too…..and some other stuff too, but no matter. I got to thinking about growing and all the questions that keep getting asked, so I decided to sit down and write a how-to, be forwarned this is only for personal use and not a “for profit” grow. If you want to grow for profit, this is not for you.
There should be several factors to take into consideration before embarking on a grow, if you can afford to buy an oz or two of weed you can afford to grow it. If your buy fifty dollar bags all the time, this journal is not for you. I’m not trying to be mean here, I am just taking the liberty of have a realistic budget for the grow. My purpose here is an ongoing grow, meaning you’ll be doing several grows a year…for personal use of course, this way you can be self sufficient.
(1) You need someplace to grow it. I know this sounds obvious, but we have to start somewhere. The best solution is somewhere in your house that is already there, such as a walk-in closet. If you have this, your all set and you just cut one corner on your cost! Maybe you have a basement or a spare bedroom, no problem, but the price just went up though. You see the purpose of a “grow room” is to control the environment. What does that mean? It means that you control when they get light, or darkness, and co2 and ventilation. More on that later. If you need to build a grow room, a simple closet from home depot will work just fine. You can even buy two (if you want to) and bolt them together for a larger grow room. Here are some plans for doing just that, https://www.rollitup.org/newbie-central/8929-build-grow-closet.html Lets assign a cost of $100.00 on your grow closet. Once you have your closet, you need to think about ventilation. Your needs can vary from a simple one fan exhaust to several, depending on your lights. As a starting point, I am going to suggest one bathroom exhaust fan from home depot, cost is $12.00 for one of these. You’ll need to drill a 3” round hole at the top of your closet and a grab a couple of screws to install your fan. You’ll also need an extension cord & electrical tape, cost $3.00, cut the end off the cord and splice it onto the fan. You will also need to drill several smaller holes near the bottom of your grow room. If you made the closet, you want to use a small drill bit, and drill a series of holes along the bottom, the sum total of which is greater than the 3” hole we drilled up top. This is called a passive exhaust, as the exhaust fan blows out, it will suck in new air through these holes at the bottom, and as it does this, it will also be replacing the co2 in the closet that the plants have depleted.
Okay, so now we have a spot to grow in, and we have ventilation too. A very good start. Let’s move on now.
Okay, so now we have a spot to grow in, and we have ventilation too. A very good start. Let’s move on now.
(2) You are going to need a form of light to grow your plant(s) with. You can use CFL’s, but I am not a huge fan of them, and well after all, this is my thread, so we are going to talk about HPS lighting.( Obviously you are free to substitute CFL’s) They just won’t be covered here is all. Even with hps lighting, it’s been recommended to use Mh for vegging and hps for flowering, and if we buy both, our costs will skyrocket, and besides they’ve made some nice advancements recently with hps bulbs, so I am going to cut a corner here and recommend only to buy the HPS light. After all, the main purpose of our grow is to produce nice, big, beautiful buds! The hps will do just that. Besides the newer bulbs are enhanced for better vegging. Cost $120.00 Now we have a grow room, with ventilation and a light! Pretty cool so far huh? Best part is, we’ve only spent $235.00 so far. Don’t worry there’s more.
(3) You’ll need some containers with proper drainage, and you’ll also need some nutrients and some soil. All of which are easily available, my main thing here is to try to talk you into an organic grow, the nutes are gentler than chemical nutes, and it’s….better! There’s all sort of brands available, earth juice, foxfarm, advanced nutrients. While it’s not 100% organic, it’s pretty close and I like them, Foxfarm. They also make an excellent soil. As far as cost is concerned, I am going to allocate a cost of $100.00 which is on the high side, but you’ll have plenty of soil, nutes and containers. Foxfarm nutes are about $40.00 which leaves you $60.00 for soil and containers. A lot of people here use miracle gro soil with respectable results. A cost saving measure, you can re-use your soil, so long as you didn’t have any infestation previously. Just grab some new and mix it with your old, or start a compost bin, better yet.
(4) Allright, time out, let’s all of us fill a bowl for a second and digest everything……okay, I feel better now. Okay lets re-cap, we have the grow room built, ventilation is installed. We got the light soil, and nutes, and we’ve spent $335.00 so far. Not bad really. You want to do a test run, start up the light, close the doors and wait. Give it a four hours, than take the temp, if need be, make sure your intake holes are of a greater size than your exhaust. If the temp is rising too much, which, without additional co2 should be about 85 degrees maximum, you will need to install another fan. If you do have to install a 2nd fan, install this fan about halfway up, rather than at the very top. Run some dryer hose from the fan to the newly cut exhaust hole. Having it positioned here, will help displace most of the heat from your light. Also, if you bought the light from www.htgsupply.com for $119.00 it has a separate ballast that can be placed outside the closet, which will help with your temps too. Lets round our cost off at $350.00 now so we include our 2nd fan.
(5) At this point, you could simply grow some bag seed and most likely end up with some damn good weed, but….if you remember we allocated $500.00 and I am going to help you spend it all. You can go to www.co2boost.com and grab a bucket of co2 for about $100.00, which will do several things, 1st your closet can now reach temps of 90 degrees using co2, and it will, more importantly, increase your yield. If you use the co2, get ready, as your plants will expect more nutes than if grown with out the additional co2. So now were at a total cost of $450.00…what to do, what to do…..oh yeah, for $50.00 you can go to any reputable seed bank and pick up a really good high grade strain for your grow. A mostly indica strain will do better on an indoor grow as they grow shorter.
(6) All of this can most certainly be improved upon and/or changed to suit your needs. After you get going, maintaining a mother and working with clones will cut costs. In any case, this is a good starting point. I hope it makes sense to you.
Peace
Peace
