Hi there and welcome to my latest blog about Growing Marijuana Indoors. Growing Marijuana is an ongoing learning experience for me and I am always increasing my data base of horticultural information. For a while everything with my grow room was cool and my pot production evenly matched my smoke habits. But I guess I began smoking more than usual because I soon found myself over-running my crop and smoking my weed faster than I could replace it with fresh grown bud. Before I knew it, I began harvesting my plants earlier and earlier to have some bud to smoke. By cutting my plants sooner than optimum I was reaping less and less bud per plant. This became a vicious cycle and I eventually found myself purchasing smoke to stop myself from cutting my plants down too young. Not only were the buds shrinking in size as I cut them early, but I was also using up my vegetating plants too quickly as I went for them ahead of time. My veg plants were shrinking in number and shrinking in size as well. This could not continue of course, and I decided to do something about it. First, I tried switching from plastic pots to grow bags. I had read the latest hype about using fabric grow bags instead of clay or plastic plant pots/containers for indoor grow rooms. The sales pitch was that the fabric grow bags allowed for greater root growth than plastic pots. I tried the grow bags and found a small increase in overall plant growth with the fabric pots. But cleaning the many roots that seeped through the fabric was time consuming and after a few crops the grow-bags became soiled and dirty looking. The grow bags also allowed more moisture into the room because while water does not seep through the mesh fabric of the grow bags, moisture does. I eventually returned to solid pots for the cleanliness and convenience. As  I looked for other ways to increase my plant yield I changed out a 600-watt HPS for a 1000-watt HPS light system in my flowering chamber. That gave me two 1000-watt HPS bulbs in my bud room instead of only 1600 watts and the improvement in crop growth was immediately noticeable. Light strength is the gasoline that promotes speedy growth and lush vegetation in an indoor garden and more light is almost always better. I am currently running at about 60 watts of lighting per square foot of grow room floor. Because of the temperature build up from 2000 watts of light in a 6’ by 6’ grow space I moved to air-conditioning as well as vented hood lamps to deal with the heat. The air-conditioner cools the room but also dries out much of the moisture in the room resulting in about 45 per cent humidity and 70-degree growing temperatures in both winter and summer. Cannabis loving bugs don’t stand much of a chance in such a clinic-like environment and as an additional bonus my reading glasses no longer fog up when I enter my grow room. Along with air conditioning and brighter lighting I changed my feeding techniques by increasing the strength of my General Hydroponics plant formula from 1200 PPM to 1600-1800 PPM. I first tried the increase on a few plants in the vegetation chamber before deciding to continue with all my plants. Both the plants in my flowering chamber and the plants in my vegetation chamber have increased in size since I increased the strength of their feeding formula. I feed the plants every 2 to 3 weeks and water regularly between feedings. In another attempt to improve production I added a third step into my growing routine.  I originally started gardening indoors with two grow chambers. One for flowering and one grow chamber/room for vegetating cuttings. As I transplanted a cutting from the grow room to the bud room I would take another cutting from the veg’ing plants to replace it. That allowed me 2 months for my cuttings to grow in the 18 hour per day vegetation room before they were transplanted into larger pots in the 12-hour flowering room.  The vegetated plants then grew 2 months longer in the budding chamber before they were harvested of colas. Two months in the vegetation chamber and 2 months in the flowering chamber yielded four-foot plants at harvest time.  I knew I could increase my yield if I could increase the overall plant size to between 5 feet and 6 feet tall at harvest. To achieve this, I added two small trays of cuttings to my veg room. Each tray held 12 small cuttings in 4 ounces of Pro Mix.  The additional cuttings took no extra room in my growing chamber requiring only about 2 square feet of space. But when they were transplanted into larger pots a few weeks later the fully developed cuttings took off right away into full bore vegetation growth without the normal delay in rooting time. This meant my vegetation room was once again full of bushy plants ready for transplant to the bloom room. The additional rooting time of the cuttings in trays probably added at least two feet of growth to the plants at harvest time which added an easy 20% to 25% cent to my yield. My pot garden production now matches my demand and as a result I am no longer over-running my crop by smoking more bud than I can produce.

Rejoice fellow herb lovers as Canada legalizes cannabis this week on October 17,2018. It has been a long struggle. Too long. Lets hope that this new wave of marijuana tolerance washes away the injustices of the past. Happy toking everyone and check back with me in the future for additional pot growing tips.