Cloning Your Medical Marijuana Plants

That’s right!  I’m going to cover cloning, step-by-step, for all you medical marijuana caregivers out there.  It’s really not too complicated.  Hopefully, you already have an established plant to take a clipping from or a trusty caregiving friend that will let you clone from their mother plant.  Remember, you can clone any time in during the vegetative stage.  You could cut clones like crazy, if you wanted to.  Just remember, every cut you make on your marijuana plant causes stress.  So, I wouldn’t recommend getting too wild.  Don’t cut too much right before flowering either.  It would be best to take a few clones off of the bottom of each strain of cannabis that you have.

Cloning Marijuana

• Get a bowl of water.
• Adjust the pH in the water to 5.5.
• Put a few drops of SuperThrive in the water (Advanced Nutrients has Organic B, which is similar, never used it though).  

Marijuana Grow Room Checklist

Weekly Grow Room Checklist

I can’t stress how important it is to keep a checklist!  Every marijuana grower should have a checklist.  You will only spend about 10 minutes per day on this, and it will provide you with productive growth.  This is probably the simplest thing you can do to ensure a successful grow outcome.  You’ll be able to see what you are giving your plants and how they are reacting.  You can determine what is working well for your marijuana plants, as well as problem areas.  Well, some of you are probably thinking, “I hate writing things down!  I don’t even know what I should be writing down, anyway.”  Well, I’m here to tell you exactly what you should write down!  If you absolutely hate writing with a passion, pull out your laptop, smartphone or tablet and keep an electronic log.  If you go this route, just make sure you keep it safe.  My point is, there’s absolutely no excuse to not keep a checklist.  If you don’t mind writing (remember it’s only maybe 10 minutes a day), get a composition book and record the following data:  

Important Aspects of Growing Medical Marijuana

Let’s just quickly go over some points, we’ve discussed so far on growing your medical marijuana plants.  Then, we’ll move on to bigger and better grow info.

• Rotate your plants every day or so.  This will promote even growth and foliage.
• Double your yield with good light distribution and rotation.
• Keep your plants spaced as far apart as possible.
• You’ll want to use some kind of reflector.  A reflective hood would be a good choice.  Some reflect better than others.  You can double your grow area with a good reflector.  A good hood can be close without burning your marijuana plants.
• As far as lighting, HPS through both vegetative and flowering stages is okay.  MH through both is okay.  MH for the vegetative stage and HPS for the flowering stage is very good.  MH and HPS through both stages is the best.  You’ll want to be heavier on the blue (~60/40) for the vegetative stage and heavier on red/orange (~60/40) for the flowering stage.  

Essential Nutrients for Growing Medical Marijuana

Proper nutrients are one of the most important components of a successful, productive medical marijuana grow.  You’ll get the nutrients to your plants through your water.  You need to have a reliable, clean source of water, which will be discussed later.  You’ll also need the required nutrients to help your plants grow and thrive.  Here, we will cover the basics of cannabis nutrition.

Nutrients for your Medical Marijuana

Choosing the right nutrient combination for your cannabis is key.  

Odor Control in the Marijuana Grow Room

Marijuana Odor Control

Odor control is an important concern in a medical marijuana grow room.  Many growers have brought unwanted attention to themselves by letting odors escape their grow quarters.  This is completely unneeded attention.  Even if you are a legal caregiver, it is crucial not to advertise this fact.  The easiest way for outsiders to find out about your grow, besides word of mouth, is by odors escaping your grow operation.  Here, we will discuss a few of the options for odor control in your grow room.These are the three main trusted odor controls for a grow room.  Of course, people will come up with a combination or other controls.  You need to consider the size of your room, money available and personal preference.  

The Importance of Air Circulation in your Grow Room

Air in the Medical Marijuana Grow Room

Fresh air is essential in all gardens.  It is extremely important that it be provided sufficiently, if you are growing medical grade marijuana.

You’ll need to ensure you have a fan, reflector and carbon filter.  If you don’t have sealed reflectors, the circulation won’t work as well.  It can be done without sealed reflectors, but it will only make your job harder.

You must have at least one passive intake.  This could be as simple as a hole in the wall or your tent.  Simply put, the passive intake is a way for air to pass into your grow area.  As long as the exhaust is running, there won’t be an outflow of cannabis odor through the intake.  Your intake should be one and a half times the exhaust size (i.e. 12″ exhaust = 18″ intake).  

10 Simple Steps to Creating a Medical Marijuana Grow Room

Let’s just lay out some simple steps that you need to start with for your medical cannabis grow room.

1. Choose an out of the way location to grow your marijuana.
2. Enclose the room (tents are an easy way to do this) you will grow in.
3. Make the grow room as reflective as possible (not the floor though).  

Main Considerations for Setting Up Your Medical Marijuana Grow Room

There are some simple points you will want to go over and consider before starting your grow room.

As far as setting up your medical marijuana grow room, the following are points to think about:

• Do you want to be able to construct your grow room in a day?
• The best location will be a basement, obscure corner or somewhere where you can maintain the temperature year round.
• An attic is good, except for the heat build up you will have to contend with.
• Garages, barns and buildings not attached to your main living quarters are a bad idea.  They will not be secure enough and likely will not stand up to legal requirements for caregivers.
• You’ll need to have an alarm system.  This is usually a legal requirement for caregivers.  

Basic Grow Room Lighting Setup

General Grow Room Lighting for Medical Marijuana

Most importantly, you need to make sure your lights are the right distance from your cannabis plants.  It is crucial to identify the proper wattage of your light system and thereby determine the appropriate distance they need to be from your marijuana.  A 400w light should be around 18″ or 1.5′ from the seeds.  For 600w lights, they should be around 24″ or 2′ away.  You’ll need to measure your distance daily.  This is simple to do.  You can use a string to measure between the reflector and the top of the plants.  It is really best to use a thermometer hanging on a string at the top of the plants.  This way, you can get an accurate measurement of the temperature at the tops of your plants.  You want to make sure the lights aren’t too close or far.  You must always be aware of the risk of burning your plants and also fire hazards.

Lighting will often be the limiting factor in the grow room.  Keep this in mind.  

Optimal Lighting for Your Medical Marijuana Grow Room

Optimum Grow Room Lighting

The best possible setup would have 60% Metal Halide (MH) lights and 40% High Pressure Sodium (HPS) inthe vegetative stage and 40% MH with 60% HPS in the flowering stage.  This would be hard to accomplish with most beginning setups.  This would work best with light movers.  If you’re not familiar with movers, check out this video of a grow room with them.  Light movers move the lamps along the grow room, can be closer to the canopy and increase bright light to more plants.  The movers on rails are better for space and can increase coverage by 25% or more.  However, this is somewhat more costly and usually will require a larger grow area.  The biggest problem with movers is cooling the air.Of course, more light = more bud, within reason.  

Grow Room Lights

HID Grow Lights

HID stands for High-intensity discharge.  There are two main HID lights that are great for growing medical marijuana.  They are Metal Halide (MH) and High Pressure Sodium (HPS).

Metal Halide (MH)

Metal Halide lights or MH are ideal for the vegetative stage of your plants.  They emit light that is heavy in the blue spectrum.

High Pressure Sodium (HPS)

High Pressure Sodium or HPS are optimum for use in the flowering stage.  They emit light that is heavy in the red spectrum.

Fluorescent

There are T12, T8 and T5 fluorescent lights.  

Starting a Grow Room

Where to start? There are just so many options and choices for getting started growing your own “green” room.

Most importantly, you need to determine the size of the location you are working with and the amount of startup cash you have. Once you know these important factors, you can move on from there.I can’t really help you with determining the size of your potential grow space.  Just pull out your measuring tape and get to work!  It’s as simple as that, if you really need direction in this area, you might want to think twice about growing…

Start Growing Medical Grade Marijuana

There are 4 main things to identify when starting to grow marijuana:

1. Establish your goal – How much to grow?  You’ll want to have an idea of how much you need for yourself and/or your patients.
2. Identify your limiting factors – Money, space, time.  Space will most likely be the most limiting factor.
3. Choose a medium – soil, hydroponics or aeroponics
4. Select a grow site

A small space would be best for hydroponics.