Recently we’ve received a few emails about “bud washing” or essentially giving cannabis buds a “bath” to clean them after harvest.

Is bud washing necessary to grow the best cannabis?

Do marijuana buds need a bath after harvest?

Possible reasons to wash your buds

• Pesticides were used while buds were forming
• Plants had a bug infestation (bud washing can help remove bug poop and dead insect bodies)
• Remove large amounts of any other contaminants including hair, dust, fur, etc.
• Buds were grown outdoors and exposed to contaminants from nature

Essentially, bud washing is a last-resort option when buds need to be cleaned and you’re not willing to throw the weed away.

Bad reasons to wash your buds

• Most other reasons

➡ Jump Right to How to Wash Your Cannabis Buds

Some growers wash buds because it seems like a good idea. For example, you wash an apple from the store right? There’s a big difference. We wash produce from the store because we don’t know what it comes in contact with before it reaches our home. Most produce you buy was also grown outdoors without a personal touch. If you’ve grown your buds indoors in a clean environment, they shouldn’t be exposed to contaminants that need to be washed off.

Bud washing is a last-resort option when buds are dirty and you’re not willing to throw them away. In my opinion, the time to “wash” your buds is in the process of making bubble hash 😉

Not only is it unnecessary to wash clean buds, you run the risk of triggering mold. If you’re going to treat your buds with anything, stop to consider why. The best way to grow clean weed, in my opinion, is to grow weed in a clean environment.

How to grow clean weed indoors

• Grow tent – Growing plants in a tent typically produces cleaner weed than if the plants were grown in an open room.
• Air filters – There are air filters that proactively clean dust and pollen from the air. An intake filter is used to clean air that is coming into the grow space.
• Keep the grow room clean – It helps to be organized and put things away in their place. A cluttered grow room tends to get dirty over time.
• Vacuum – If you are seeing dust or pet hair on your buds, it makes a huge difference to vacuum the grow area on a regular basis.

You don’t need to wash buds that are already clean

What about outdoors?

Growing cannabis outdoors is one of the times where bud washing may be helpful. Unfortunately, nature is full of fun surprises including fur left by deer rubbing your plants, nettles or pollen, webbing from the occasional spider, and more. There are few outdoor environments that can produce weed as clean and pristine as what can be grown indoors.

For outdoor growers, bud washing can remove some natural contaminants from nature and give you cleaner buds. The jury is still out on how well bud-washing removes mold, fungus, or spores. Please contact us if you’ve ever done any lab tests that demonstrate the efficacy of this technique.

The dangling eggs on these cannabis buds are lacewing eggs. It’s good to see these eggs in the garden because lacewings are a natural predator of many cannabis pests. But you might want to wash them off after harvest.

What about pets?

It’s a good idea to keep any shedding animals away from your plants, but I love hanging out with my cat while working in the garden. However, I’ve noticed that as long as I vacuum and use a grow tent, buds come out clean. However, I’ve grown an autoflowering plant in a window before, and I noticed the buds had pet hair on them even though I vacuumed.

Use a grow tent in the flowering stage to keep pet hair off your buds

What about bugs?

Bugs are a fact of life. They love cannabis just like us and when they invade your grow room it feels violating. It’s relatively straightforward to get rid of bugs when plants are in the vegetative stage because you can use most pesticides and you don’t have to worry about anything getting on buds.

Learn about common cannabis pests

Can you save plants after an infestation? (these are aphids)

But if plants have already started making buds when pests move in, you have some hard choices to make. Do you throw away the plants? Do you treat them? Will buds be safe to smoke?

• Bad infestation – If the infestation is particularly bad, you might consider throwing the infested plants away. A really bad infestation is often hard to treat. Once bugs have taken over your plants, they seem impossibly good at surviving. This is especially true for spider mites (aka “The Borg”), broad mites, and hemp russet mites. Most other pests are survivable.
• Small to medium infestation – Look at the safe insecticide list and see if there are safe options for the type of bug you have. Some bugs are easier to get rid of than others. Additionally, bugs that come from other species of plants are typically much easier to get rid of than if your bugs came from another cannabis grow room. If you get thrips on clones you bought from the dispensary, they’re probably going to be much tougher to get rid of than some random thrips that wander onto your cannabis from outside.
• Flowering stage – The more buds have developed, the more it’s recommended you either toss plants or harvest them early and cut your losses. Even if you successfully treat an infestation without getting pesticides on the buds, the buds may still be covered in bug poop, eggs, webbing, dead insects, etc. Some growers choose to wash their buds at this point, but I personally recommend tossing plants just to be safe.

These buds are covered with mealybug bodies and the white fluff produced by their babies. Not good to smoke.

How to prevent bugs

1. Start with seeds – The most common reason growers get a bad infestation is because they brought an infected plant into the grow room from someone else’s garden. For example, a clone or plant from a dispensary or other grower. The best way to ensure you are not importing bugs with your plants is to grow cannabis with seeds. If you have no other choice, consider spraying or dipping new plants with a safe insecticide like a horticultural oil. After treatment, quarantine plants for 14 days to ensure they’re bug-free before bringing them into your grow space
2. Avoid using soil – You are much less likely to get bugs when growing in an inert medium like coco or hydroponics because many bugs need soil for their life cycle. The few times I’ve gotten bugs in my growing career were always when I was using soil (I’m pretty sure they were coming from my neighbor’s roses through a bad window screen…). It’s possible to get bugs in coco or hydro, but it’s much more rare. However, if you follow all the other tips on this page you can easily grow plants in soil without bugs.
3. Grow indoors – It’s much easier to protect plants from bugs when you’re growing indoors because you have much more control over the environment.

How to identify and get rid of cannabis pests

It’s easy to avoid bugs when you start with seeds, avoid soil, and grow indoors (especially in a grow tent)

Other tips

• Grow tent – Even indoors, a grow tent can help prevent outside bugs (for example your neighbor’s rose bush) from getting to your plants. However, this is only marginally effective because you’re still going to be opening the tent to check on plants. Plus some bugs are small enough to crawl through the mesh air holes.
• Keep grow room windows closed – If you have a lot of plants around your home, it can help to make sure the windows are closed in the grow room.
• Don’t walk into the grow room from outside – Along the same lines, don’t check on plants as soon as you get home. Avoid going from outside directly into the grow room.
• Inspect new plants or flowers – If someone gets a bouquet of roses or a new houseplant, take a minute to make sure they don’t have bugs before you let them in the house.

A grow tent offers some protection from bugs and greatly reduces dust/hair getting on buds

Now you know how to grow beautiful, sparkling buds without a hint of contamination. No bud baths are required.

But if you have read through this tutorial and bud washing your cannabis seems like the right choice for you…

How to Wash Your Buds (tutorial by Doc Bud)

This forum thread goes into some of the specifics of bud washing (which I haven’t personally tried myself), including commentary from Doc Bud, the self-described creator of the technique.

Directions from Doc Bud from this thread (posted October 5, 2013) – The following text is the property of Doc Bud and is published here for reference purposes. 

I’m glad to see people are adopting my bud washing technique!

Yes, I “invented” it. I shared it with you folks here on 420….and nowhere else. I’ve never met, spoken to, or heard about anyone else doing it before I tried it…..and I enjoy freaking people out by putting fresh buds in a bucket of water….

But as many have said here, the results speak for themselves!

Let me put it to you like this:

Let’s say I grew lettuce, cucumbers, tomatos and carrots in my basement. It’s dusty down there, I’ve got fans flowing all around….battled with some PM, had some mites…..every now and then I get some rot or other disease on my plants….bugs flying around, dead skin cells, hair…..and I spray the plants with compost tea, fish fertilizer, kelp meal, etc.

So, you wanna come over for a salad? We’ll just pull the veggies out of the ground, plop ’em in a bowl and start eating! No need to wash…..right?

The first time you wash your harvest and see all that brown crap left behind you’ll begin to see the light! Then, when you smoke your first washed harvest, you’ll understand.

For those who are new to this, here’s my method:

4 buckets total. (5 gallon buckets are perfect)

Bucket 1: 3 parts RO water to 1 part 3% H202.
Bucket 2: 5 gallons of RO with 1 cup baking soda, 1 cup Lemon Juice
Buckets 3 and 4: RO only.

Cut down plants, pull off fan leaves by hand, remove any necrotic leaves. Leave sugar leaves and anything with frosting on the plant.

Fully submerge in bucket 1 (H2O2) for 30 seconds. Submerge for a full minute if you had ANY sign of PM or bud rot. Let water drip from buds and then…..

Fully submerge in buckets 2 through 4 for 30 seconds each…lightly agitating the whole time.

Allow produce to drip dry. You can blow a fan on it if you like, just make sure it’s blowing clean air.

Hang and dry per usual.

Final manicure of buds is best done after they dry. It goes very fast and you’re left with washed, highly resinous trim….makes superb joints. I’m also educating my customers to select untrimmed buds, which are actually better than the manicured ones because they still have sugar leaves attached. The trichomes in the leaves have more THC than those in the buds…..so it’s good to get the whole spectrum in there.

I give instructions for this in my journals, as I do it every single week, on every single harvest. Once you try it, you’ll never go back.

This works so well for a couple reasons:

1. takes off dirt, foliar sprays, bugs, fiberglass dust, etc.
2. fully hydrates the leaves, allowing photosynthesis to occur for a day or two on cut and trimmed buds. I recommend leaving a light on the buds for the first day or two after washing.

This results in very, dense, clean burning, smooth tasting produce! That’s the basic recipe….and I’m tweaking and changing it all the time.

Warning: Do NOT use an “organic produce wash” that is based on oils! They sell these in grocery stores and health food stores, and while they might be good for lettuce and cukes….the oil removes resin from the plants…..don’t use it!

Water will not harm resin….oil can and does.

Anyone who wants to know more about my methods is welcome to ask me about them anytime!

Doc Bud

Ben’s Experience with Bud Washing

I recently received this email from a reader sharing their experiences and processes for washing cannabis buds. I thought it was helpful so I’ll share it here.

Hi, I liked the article on bud washing and thought I could add my experience.

When I Wash Buds: I wash all plants grown outdoors and all indoor plants that were sprayed for any reason or if there was mould any where in the grow.

Water Source: If the plants have not been sprayed and don’t have bugs on them I just use rain water to wash.

Mould: I have often washed buds over the years and have not had a mould problem and the end result does not seem degraded. I have regularly had bud in storage for over two years that does not get mould. ( I don’t recommend keeping bud that long. No matter how well cured or stored, it seems to start degrading after a year.)

Process: In my washing process I have a step where I soak buds in a 3:1 mix of rain water and white vinegar for 20 to 30 minuter then do a rain water rinse.

Drying Buds After Bud Washing: When I have finished the wash I put the buds in a salad spinner to remove the water. From the spinner the buds go on racks in an air conditioned room where I run the air conditioner on the dehumidifier mode. If there had been any indication of mould I also run an air purifier that has an ultra violet function in the room during the drying stage.

Making Extracts: An air conditioner on dehumidifier mode also works well for drying keif if you are making bubble hash or rosin.

Thank you for all the great articles.

Regards,
Ben

There you have it, straight from cannabis growers with bud washing experience.

What do you want to learn more about next?

• Bigger yields
• Better bud quality
• Higher THC
• Higher CBD
• More trichomes (sparkle)
• Bud density

The post Bud Washing: Should Cannabis Growers Wash Their Buds? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

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You may be asking yourself these common growing questions:

“How do I grow marijuana indoors?”

Read this guide on how to grow marijuana indoors. Or check out this article to learn what materials you need to get started growing your own marijuana!

Luckily, it’s really easy to get a cannabis seed to sprout!

“How much money will it cost to get started?”

If you’re considering growing weed, it costs as little as $300 to get started growing or a bit more for a semi-automatic, high-yielding bubbleponics grow system. See examples of yields to expect, electricity use & startup costs for different setups. Read this article to see even more growing styles with different price ranges.

“Where can I get marijuana seeds?”

Check out our How to Buy Marijuana Seeds Online Guide (with delivery to every state of the USA) to safely get your hands on good genetics. Starting with good seeds lets you choose the looks, smell, and effects of your buds!

Learn where it’s safe to buy cannabis seeds online (2026 update).

What do good cannabis seeds look like?

Learn about the best marijuana beginner strains and how to research and find the right strain.

Cannabis buds are generally green, but can also be pink or purple with certain strains.

“How much will electricity cost each month?”

If you’re just growing a few marijuana plants for personal use, it will cost you $20-$100+/month for electricity, depending on what grow lights (electricity) and nutrients you use. On average, I’d say a hobby-size grower might pay about $50/month to grow, but it depends greatly on your setup and local electricity costs! How much will electricity cost each month?

“How can I increase my marijuana yields?”

We have quite a few techniques to choose from or combine! See some of our most popular pages:

• Super Cropping – A simple technique to bigger yields
• Simplest Guide to Growing Short & Bushy Marijuana Plants
• LST (Low Stress Training) – Training your plants can easily double your harvest!
• Or check out our page on the controversial defoliation technique

Even More Ways to Increase Cannabis Yields

1. Increase Light Intensity (plus choose right light for desired yields & possibly add CO2)
2. Manipulate How Plants Grow (a free way to yield more bud indoors)
3. Provide Right Nutrients (low Nitrogen in the flowering stage, and remember sometimes less is more!)
4. Control Growing Environment (let the growing environment work for you)
5. Harvest Plants Properly (most importantly, don’t harvest early!)
6. Lastly, it’s important to remember that the strain has a major effect on yields!

Two small cannabis plants can yield several ounces of premium weed!

“How can I grow weed privately?”

Read guide on growing weed indoors without anyone knowing. But remember the most important factors to stealth growing: “No tell, no smell, no sell.” Never tell anyone, not even your best friend, that you’re growing. Be on top of preventing smells, and never ever sell cannabis. Breaking one of those 3 principles is how 99% of growers get found out!

“What if my plants get sick?”

The most common issue a grower runs into is a pH imbalance. Barring that, your marijuana plants likely either have a nutrient deficiency, heat or light stress, or are being attacked by some sort of marijuana mold, pest or bug. Whether you call it weed, cannabis, sinsemilla, skunk, pot, marijuana, or something else, the plant known as Cannabis Sativa is a hardy weed in the wild and can actually be easy to grow indoors at home when you know what to do.

Growing Medical Marijuana

“Medical marijuana” has become a household name. The body of evidence for medical marijuana in the treatment of cancer and other illnesses is growing every day. And for those who need medical marijuana, growing weed indoors is the perfect way to ensure a safe, regular supply of buds, for cheap.

In fact, when you grow weed indoors for personal use, you often end up with way too much. If you catch the growing bug like I did, and if you start enjoying the process of tending your cannabis garden just for the sake of gardening, you’re going to have to find a way to press, cook, freeze, and concentrate all your extra buds. 🙂

As you probably know, both medical marijuana and recreational cannabis have been decriminalized or legalized in many places around the world and weed is becoming legal in more places every day! Yet there still aren’t many simple indoor “how to grow weed” guides for beginners (even for those who legally grow, such as medical marijuana users and those who live in places where marijuana is legalized for personal use).

If so, I know how you feel. It can be hard to weed out all the bad information on the internet and find well-researched, free tips or instructions on how to grow your own cannabis. That’s why Grow Weed Easy.com aims to be a simple online resource that explains from start to finish what you need to do when growing cannabis so you can learn how to grow cannabis with great yields and potent buds, even if you only have a small grow space like a closet or even a computer case.

We’ve grown cannabis out of closets and have gotten ounces of buds and you can too. Grow Weed Easy.com covers many popular cannabis cultivation topics, including:

• A comparison between different cannabis grow lights including experience-based information about LED grow lights
• A page that teaches you the basics of how to grow weed
• Detailed how-to weed growing tutorials
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• Grow 4 oz with a 100W LED <– An Easy Way to Start Growing!
• Our famous grow guide that teaches you how to grow weed using bubbleponics (hydro).

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Looking for a growing book?

If you are interested in doing a bit of reading or would like to know more about the science behind marijuana hydroponics or horticulture, I strongly recommend viewing our page of Marijuana Grow Book Reviews. Read reviews of marijuana grow books. We would love to hear about your experiences with growing cannabis. Whether you are a pro grower already or are just starting your first plant, we have learned so much from our readers both beginners and masters! If you have any suggestions, comments, concerns, or just want to ask some questions about your marijuana grow, please contact us!

Happy Growing!
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This article is all about how to hide your marijuana plants when growing weed outdoors. First, here’s a quick summary of the stealth ideas for outdoor cannabis growers. Click the links to jump right to outdoor tutorial of your choice, or just keep reading the outdoor stealth tutorial from beginning to end. By the end of today’s article, you’ll know the most common tactics and techniques for hiding cannabis in outdoor cultivation. Let’s go!

How to Hide Sight of Cannabis – Visual ways to hide cannabis plants outdoors

• Hide Plants from View
• Camouflage Your Plants
• “Stealth Strains” (Funny-Looking Leaves)
• Grow Cannabis Plants in a Greenhouse
• Change Natural Growth Patterns with Bending
• Watch Out for Anyone Taking Interest of Your Plants

How to Hide Smell of Cannabis – How to hide the fragrant odor of cannabis outdoors

• Low Smell Strain
• Plant Other Fragrant Species of Plants
• Physical Barrier
• Strategic Planting Times
• Wind Direction Awareness

Growing Outdoors in Remote Spot Away from Home

• Scope Out the Spot
• Far from a Visible Path
• Test the Spot for Potential Visitors
• Camouflage Plants
• Low Odor Strain

Bonus: Outdoor Cannabis Growing Tips

• Easy to Visit
• Access to Water
• Lots of Sunlight
• Gentle Breeze
• Consider the Heat
• Consider the Cold
• Provide Your Own Soil
• Don’t Forget Nutrients

Always consider stealth when growing cannabis outdoors! Not only is law enforcement a consideration, it’s common for thieves to steal plants right before harvest time! 

Outdoor growing has some incredible benefits, including the availability of free light. Light is like food for cannabis plants and in the flowering stage, the amount of bud produced is directly proportional to the amount of light received by the plant (especially at the bud sites). The plant is converting light energy into buds.

Sunlight provides free energy for growing cannabis plants. No need to spend money on electricity to power your grow lights!

Indoor growers have to provide all their own light, typically by using specialized grow lights. However, grow lights produce heat and use a lot of electricity (how much electricity does it take to grow weed indoors?), and indoor grow rooms need a space that’s easily hidden to visitors yet has easy access to water.

When it comes to outdoor growing, instead of setting up a grow room, your job is to pick the perfect place to grow weed. This is one of the most important things you can do not only for plant health, but also for stealth and security!

Not only is this extremely not stealthy, light from the window will likely prevent the plant from flowering (making buds). Light pollution is a common problem when growing outdoors on your own property. Plants need complete darkness at night to start making buds!

Outdoor Stealth – Growing on Your Property

Visual ways to hide the sight of cannabis plants

Growing on your own property is much more convenient than hiking to a remote grow spot, but the stakes are much higher because if the plants are spotted it’s easy to determine that you are the owner. Make sure to take every precaution!

Hide Plants from View 

Think about looking into your yard from outside the grow space. You want to go outside and make sure that plants are not visible from someone’s window, from the street, a neighbor’s yard, etc.

Keep plants shorter than your fence to help hide them from neighbors or thieves.

Camouflage your plants!

In addition to making sure no one can see your plants, it’s still a good idea to try to camouflage them so that if someone is on your property for some reason, the plants don’t obviously stick out.

This grower actually cuts the tips off all the leaves of their plant in order to make them look less like typical leaves. This is pretty effort-intensive, but there’s no doubt they look less like cannabis plants!

Plant bright flowers nearby, so it looks like the cannabis plant is producing the flowers.

Consider planting your cannabis in a decorative planter or container that causes it to grow in non-typical growth patterns. Adding flowers to some of the empty pots would complete the illusion.

This marijuana plant has been placed in the middle of an area that naturally has lots of trees and other types of vegetation.

Even having a few plants nearby will make a big difference compared to growing the cannabis plant all by itself.

One cannabis plant peeks up above many other types of plants.

Stealth Strains with Funny-Looking Leaves

There are some interesting “stealth” strains that naturally don’t look like typical cannabis plants, which can also help increase the illusion.

Learn more about “Ducksfoot” and other “Duck” and Stealth Strains.

This is a Frisian Duck plant in the vegetative stage. “Duck” or “Duckfoot” strains have 3-finger leaves which makes them look less like cannabis leaves. As a result, these strains can look like other types of plants at first glance.

Grow Cannabis Plants in a Greenhouse

Some growers put plants in a greenhouse or other outdoor structure that lets light in but obscures the inside from view.

A greenhouse can not only help keep plants warm in cool climates, they help obscure the plants. Some greenhouses are built opposite this one, with opaque sides and a clear top so sunlight comes from above yet plants can’t be seen from the sides.

However, consider that a greenhouse might look suspicious if it’s all by itself in the middle of the yard, especially if you don’t typically do a lot of yard work or gardening

This outdoor cannabis grower used tarp to allow sun to get to these autoflowering plants, while also hiding plants from view.

Change Natural Growth Patterns with Bending

Consider bending or otherwise altering the overall shape of the plant so it has less of a “Christmas Tree” shape, which is the most typical shape for cannabis plants grown naturally. This change of shape can cause the plant to look less like cannabis overall. You can also use bending to prevent plants from getting too tall.

Low stress training can be used to grow marijuana plants in any size or shape. This grower trained his outdoor cannabis plants to grow flat like hedges by training stems to grow along a ScrOG net.

Watch Out for Anyone Taking Interest of Your Plants

Be aware of anyone looking over the fence or otherwise spending time hanging around your property.

Even if it’s not someone who will report you to law enforcement, they may still be a problem. They might tell a friend who reports you. Or even worse they may be a thief. Nothing is more heartbreaking than growing plants all summer and then losing them to thievery…except jail.

Remember, even if a person doesn’t take your plants right away, many experienced thieves who understand the life cycle of cannabis plants will wait until just before harvest before they steal your plants.

This plant does not have any buds to steal now, but thieves may take note of your plant and come back in the fall when they know it’s getting close to harvest time. Stay vigilant!

How to Hide or Mask Cannabis Smell – Be a good neighbor!

Consider that people might be able to smell your plants. Some plants smell a little “weedy” in the vegetative stage, but by the time your plant is flowering and getting close to harvest, the smell can be overwhelming, especially with certain “high-smell” strains.

Grow Smaller Plants

I know that many growers want to get the biggest yield possible. But at least for your first grow outdoors, sometimes it can make things a little easier on your to grow somewhat smaller plants. For example, if you keep plants in 5-gallon pots, they can still produce many ounces, but won’t grow into giant monsters.

You can still get excellent yields on smeller plants with careful planning. This grower used manifolding to get his plant to grow like this.

This beautiful purple outdoor cannabis plant of LSD-25 didn’t smell much, in part because it’s small. Additionally, it doesn’t have the traditional “cannabis” skunky smell, which further helps keep it from immediately giving away the presence of weed to the neighbors.

Low Smell Strain

Choose a low odor strain for outdoors that stays small if you’re looking for something very stealthy. Auto-flowering strains can be a good choice because they’re easy to grow, won’t get very big, have a quick time-to-harvest and there are several stealthy looking and low-smell varieties that are suitable for growing outdoors. Auto Duck is an example of an auto-flowering strain that is great for outdoor stealth growing due to its smell (or lack thereof), growth patterns and quick time-to-harvest. Some examples of photoperiod strains that stay small and low-odor include Northern Lights, Papaya (smells tropical), Jock Horror, Ice (smells like jet fuel), and Blue Mystic. Smells are usually more intense when things get hot and humid.

Read about Low Odor cannabis strains.

This Chem Dog cannabis plant was surprisingly low smell.

Plant Other Fragrant Species of Plants

Plant lots of other types of plants nearby, especially ones with bright and smelly flowers. Some companion plants are smelly and may even help cannabis plants grow better. This may detract attention away from both the appearance and smell of a typical cannabis plant.

Physical Plant Barrier

If you plant a row of tall, dense plants that act as a physical barrier, it not only helps hide cannabis from view, but acts to help contain the smell within your yard.

Greenhouse with Carbon Filter

A greenhouse isn’t just great at hiding plants from sight, it also helps you contain the smell of plants. If you put a carbon filter inside of a greenhouse, it’s possible to have a smell-free grow right in your yard.

This DIY structure was meant to protect these cannabis plants from the rain, but it also helped to contain the smell. Add a carbon filter in there, and you would further reduce the smell.

Strategic Planting Times

Align your growing season so buds don’t develop during the hottest part of summer. This is easiest when growing autoflowering strains, as they let you time your outdoor harvest. Cannabis plants tend to smell the most when it’s hot, and also heat tends to lower the quality of buds (maybe partly because their smell is evaporating away into the air). However, if you have a warm spring where you live, you can time your harvest to happen in late Spring or early summer where it tends to be cooler.

Wind Direction Awareness

Be mindful of the wind directions in your area. If possible, plant your cannabis downwind of your neighbors to direct the odor away from their homes.

Growing Outdoors in Remote Spot Away from Home

What if you can’t grow on your own property, and need to grow in a more remote spot? A good outdoor grow spot has a few important factors….

This remote outdoor cannabis plant is living its best life.

Outdoor Stealth – Choosing a Safe Place to Grow Outside Your Property

Scope Out the Spot

Check out any possible grow spot at least 3 different times, and on both weekdays/weekends to make sure you never see hikers or other people in the area.

Far from a Visible Path

Stay far away from any path, and make sure not to leave tracks or marks when visiting plants – if you make a visible path, other people might follow it to see where it goes.

Test the Spot for Potential Visitors

I‘ve heard a grower say to securely leave a twenty-dollar bill in a few places around the chosen area, where they can be easily seen by a human but won’t blow away. If they are still there when you get back after a week or two, it’s unlikely there are many people passing by because they would have picked up the money.

Camouflage Plants

Even if you’re certain no one will be around except yourself, you should still try to camouflage your plants as best you can by using the tips given above.

Bonus: Outdoor Plant Health Tips

These factors are important to making sure your outdoor plants grow as fast and healthy as possible. They don’t necessarily contribute to stealth, but you must make sure to consider these factors if you want your outdoor marijuana grow to be successful! Since this article is all about picking the right spot for your cannabis plants, I thought it was important to also touch on this.

Easy to Visit 

You should be able to visit the spot at least once a week to tend to your plants.

Access to Water

Plants need to drink, but water is way too heavy to carry long distances. Therefore, you’re looking for a spot with easy access to fresh, clean water. If there’s no hose, you’re looking for a brook or stream with moving water. Some growers collect rainwater near the grow site. Don’t use water that looks or smells bad to you.

Lots of Sunlight

The spot gets 8+ hours of direct sunlight each day (the less direct the light, and the fewer hours a day, the smaller the plants and buds will be).

Gentle Breeze

A gentle breeze provides airflow and cooling, which helps prevent heat stress, mildew, bud rot and bugs compared to the plant living in stagnant air. You’re looking for leaves that are rustling. There shouldn’t be enough wind that plants are waving around.

Have a Way to Protect Plants from Rain

One simple way is simply to make a barrier. Another option is to plan your harvest time (especially with autoflowering strains) to get it so buds are ready to harvest before your local rainy season.

This grower made a makeshift greenhouse for his plants protect his plants from the rain.

Consider the Heat

If it gets very extremely hot where you live, you want to consider making sure there’s a way to at least partially shade your plants on the hottest days. Learn how to care for heat-stressed outdoor marijuana plants.

Consider the Cold

Will your plants be ready to harvest before it starts getting cold and/or rainy where you live? High humidity, rain and temperatures under 60°F (15°C) are the leading causes of bud rot, which can take out an entire harvest in just a day or two! Frost and freezing temperatures will actually kill some plants (though some strains are more resistant than others). Make sure that you can protect your plants from cold or rainy conditions, or even better, make sure you get a strain that will be ready to harvest before your local bad weather begins!

Auto-flowering strains can be a good choice for growers with short summers because they are typically ready to harvest just 3 months from germination. However, there are also many ‘standard” (non-auto-flowering) strains with short flowering periods that only need 3-4 months before they’re ready to harvest.

Provide Your Own Soil

Even if the ground soil appears to be a good quality, you’ll often get the best results by providing your own soil which has been formulated for a plant like cannabis. This will contain the right ratio of nutrients so plants grow fast and buds get as big as possible. Many growers put their plants in containers with soil, which makes it so plants can be easily moved around. Some growers will dig a hole in the ground and fill it with good soil, though raised beds often perform better because the plant will use the “good” soil for longer, and it can be easier to water the plants.

What kind of soil is good for growing cannabis?

Don’t Forget Nutrients

Cannabis plants should have an adequate amount of nutrients. Although high-quality soil will typically provide everything your cannabis plant needs for nutrients during the vegetative stage, it’s typically a good idea to provide the plants with extra plant food during the nutrient-intensive flowering/budding stage! Plants need a surprisingly high amount of nutrients to produce the biggest buds!

Learn everything you need to know about cannabis nutrients.

The post Stealth Ideas for Growing Weed Outdoors appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

Which Cannabis Growers Should Use a Grow Tent?

Create the Perfect “Pop-Up” Environment

What Size Grow Tent?

How to Set Up a Grow Tent for Ultimate Stealth

Who Should Use Grow Tents?

Grow tents keep things simple for a hobbyist cannabis grower. A 4’x4′ grow tent can produce 1-2 pounds per harvest with a 480W+ grow light, and as a bonus, a grow tent with a carbon filter keeps all smells inside so no one knows you’re growing.

Cannabis grow tents are designed for growing a lot of weed in a small space.

Grow tents come in many sizes, to fit your current grow goals and space limits.

For growers who want to grow a ton of weed at a time, there are also bigger cannabis grow tents, up to the size of a small room.

Pros of Growing Cannabis in a Grow Tent

• Relatively Cheap – Prices are around $70-150 for your average grow tent. Setting up a grow space to have all the same characteristics (reflective walls, air-tight vents, lightproof, a waterproof tray at the bottom to catch spilled water, etc.) can easily cost the same amount or more. Plus it’s difficult to DIY a space so that it works as well as a grow tent (which has been designed for this purpose) and it will often take more time, planning, and effort than simply buying a pre-made tent.
• Easy & Quick to Set Up – Assembling your grow tent and getting completely set up to start growing weed will take about an afternoon and can be done by just about anyone (full instructions below). Overall, the work of setting up a grow tent reminds me of putting together an old-fashioned camping tent, only weed comes out of it a few months later!
• Stealth – A grow tent prevents smells and light from escaping the tent when set up properly, and can be tucked away in a big closet or the corner of a room without necessarily drawing a whole lot of attention.
• Perpetual Harvest – Grow tents work very well if you want to keep two separate grow spaces, for example, if you want a separate vegetative and flowering chamber for a perpetual harvest. Grow tents create a completely self-enclosed environment that can be managed separately.
• Helps Prevent Bugs – The intake holes of most grow tents are covered with mesh, which allows air to pass but stops many insects. This helps prevent incidental bugs like spiders or carpenter beetles from getting to your plants. A grow tent with strong grow lights is also a pretty hot and inhospitable environment for many cannabis pests!
• Keeps Buds Clean – In addition to preventing bugs from getting on your plants, the mesh intake holes help keep out dust and impurities. The sticky trichomes on cannabis buds are surprisingly good at holding on to fibers, animal hair, and anything that floats by. A surprising amount of random debris can get onto your buds even if you keep your grow room pristine. A grow tent helps keep buds clean and looking good!

Example of a happy cannabis plant in a grow tent.

Some grow tents don’t look particularly suspicious. On the left is a homemade stealth grow cabinet and on the right is a 2’x4’x5′ grow tent that looks vaguely like a clothes wardrobe. They’re just about equally nondescript!

When all is said and done, a stealth cabinet with fans on the inside (even one done very professionally so it’s completely lightproof) is only marginally more stealthy than a black grow tent with a zipper down the middle. When it comes to stealth, don’t expect any grow tent or cabinet to be stealthy enough for someone to be hanging out in your room without noticing the fact that it’s emitting light/noise/heat. Instead, you’re looking for something that can fool someone who is quickly passing by it for a moment or two.

Grow tents also let you easily set up a perpetual marijuana harvest. This grower (Manzfoo) keeps young plants in the purple LED tent, and older plants in the yellow HPS tent. As soon as he harvests the big plants, he rotates in the young ones and starts a new batch. This lets him harvest every 2 months or so!

If you’ve seen the examples and want to keep it simple and get a grow tent, here’s more information on how they quickly create the perfect environment for your growing marijuana plants!

Quickly Create the Perfect Cannabis Environment

When used correctly, a grow tent lets you recreate nature under its ideal conditions! Possibly the most challenging part of being able to grow cannabis in these ideal conditions is getting set up. However, once everything is set up, it’s mainly a matter of planting a seed and watering your plants until you harvest bud!

If you’re trying to create a cannabis growing environment from scratch, you may have to do some DIY which can feel overwhelming if you’re just getting a grasp on growing. Utilizing a grow tent takes care of a bunch of environmental factors in one fell swoop.

• Maximize Your Grow Lights – A grow tent has reflective walls and the reflectivity is equal to or often even better than what you could do yourself. Reflective walls ensure all the light from the grow light reaches your cannabis plants, which can increase your yields.
• Designed for Common Grow Equipment – It’s easy to hang and adjust your grow lights, hook up your fan, find ports and vents, etc. A grow tent accounts for most growing situations.
• Light Proof – A grow tent is constructed to prevent light from leaking in or out of the tent. Not only does this help your plants (cannabis needs complete darkness at night to make as many buds as possible), but it also prevents light from spilling out; you don’t want to possibly alert others that there are some very bright lights inside your home! Sometimes DIY light proofing a space can be tricky, and a grow tent takes that problem out of the equation.
• Waterproof & Easy to Clean – A grow tent usually has a waterproof floor that contains regular spills so you don’t have to worry about water leaking out onto your floor. It’s also easy to wipe down the walls and floor of a grow tent, making it simple to keep things clean.
• Designed for Airflow – The sealed nature of the tent combined with vents and air-ports make it so you can set up a whirlwind of air in the tent simply by installing a strong exhaust fan in one of the included ports. This constantly pulls fresh air in to circulate through the tent from the intake vents near the floor, replacing all the air in just minutes while giving plants plenty of CO2 and preventing problems from heat buildup.
• Smell-Proof – Grow tents make it really easy to take advantage of a carbon filter. The negative air pressure caused by the sealed space prevents any smells from leaking into the home as long as the carbon filter is attached, the exhaust fan is on and the doors are kept closed.

At its simplest, a grow tent just needs an exhaust fan and a grow light. At this point, you’ve already created a great cannabis-growing environment! See a grow journal in this setup!

What Size Grow Tent for Your Cannabis Grow?

There are hundreds of models of grow tents, and they come in many different sizes. It can be confusing to know which one to get for your situation, and which ones are best overall. This should help clear things up!

Best Hobbyist Sizes – 2’x2′, 2’x4′, and 4’x4′

When it comes to cannabis grow tents, three of the most common sizes (in the US) for hobbyist growers are the 2’x2′, 2’x4′, and 4’x4′ tents. These are also made to fit the most common grow lights.

I believe a 2’x4′ is one of the best sizes for new growers because it gives you enough space for decent yields (get up to several ounces a month) but it isn’t big enough to be overwhelming. You get easy access to all the plants, including the ones in the back, but still get all the advantages of a full-size grow light. You can start with a small LED grow light in this size tent and still have room to eventually upgrade up to a 300W grow light.

For bigger growers, a 4’x4′ grow tent is great because it can be used with the next class of grow lights up to some of the biggest grow lights. It can support a 600-1000W HPS or LED grow light as long as it’s 6-7′ tall.

If you want to double your yield from a 2’x4′ but don’t want to have to set up a whole grow room, a 4’x4′ is the way to go! It’s big enough for monster yields (a pound or more!) but still small enough to be manageable by just one person.

Height Helps – At least 4-5′ tall, and 7′ is better

Short spaces are difficult to grow in because you have to worry about your cannabis plant “growing into” the grow light. A 6′ tall tent will support up to a 300-400W grow light, and even with smaller grow lights, more height makes things a little easier. Having an area that is 7′ tall makes it unlikely you’ll ever be limited by the height of your grow space. A little extra height can increase your potential yields, in some cases, because a taller space lets you support more powerful grow lights and grow larger plants.

Short marijuana plants can only yield so much even if they’re completely covered in bud.

Extra height lets you use more powerful lights and grow taller plants (with bigger, longer buds!)

Cannabis Grow Light Compatibility

• 2’x2’x4′ – LEDs up to 100W.
• 2’x4’x5′ – LEDs up to 200W, 250W HPS
• 2’x4’x6′ (same size but taller) – LEDs up to 300W, 250W or 400W HPS
• 4’x4’x7′ – LEDs up to 650W, 600W or 1000W HPS

Examples & What to Look For

It can be tempting to try to get a really expensive grow tent with all the “bells and whistles” because you want to give your plants the best possible home! But honestly the cheapest grow tent has 90% of the features of a far more expensive grow tent. If you’ve never grown marijuana before and are reluctant to invest a lot of money, I recommend starting cheap when it comes to tents!

If possible, I recommend getting a tent that’s as tall as you can support so you never have to worry about running out of height. A 6′ tall grow tent easily supports up to a 300W or even 400W grow light. However, taller tents are relatively rare and it’s much more common to see grow tents that are only 5′ tall or shorter. The shorter versions will also do the trick (and can support bigger lights if you have a great exhaust system to vent heat and use careful plant training). Another advantage is that smaller tents are a little less conspicuous looking and people sometimes mistake them for a cheap Ikea-style clothing wardrobe. Just remember, with a short tent, to keep a close eye on plant height to make sure you don’t run out of headroom as plants get taller.

2’x2’x4′ – Example of Cheap Yet Effective 2’x2’x4′ Grow Tent (~$55) – I love the CoolGrows branded tents. I’ve tried them in a few different sizes and they are generally higher quality (better zippers, more sturdy) and yet cost less on average than many other brands. However, almost any grow tent by any brand works well to grow cannabis plants.

Grow Light Compatibility

• Small LEDs (up to 100W power draw) like Spider Farmer SF-1000

Spider Farmer SF-1000 LED grow light in a 2’x2′ grow tent. Check out the full setup.

2’x4’x5′ – Example of Cheap Yet Effective 2’x4’x5′ Grow Tent (~$90) – Vivosun branded tents are inexpensive and get the job done. However, almost any grow tent by any brand should do the trick.

Grow Light Compatibility

• Small LEDs (up to 200W power draw) like Spider Farmer SF-2000

Spider Farmer SF-2000 LED grow light in a 2’x4′ grow tent

2’x4’x6′ – Example of Cheap Yet Effective 2’x4’x6′ Grow Tent ($100) – This is the same size except for a bit taller. The extra height is useful in case a plant grows unexpectedly tall, or if you have a grow light that needs to be kept far from plants like some LEDs.

Grow Light Compatibility

• Mid-size LEDs (made for 2×4 size, typically 200-300W power draw and dimmable)
  • 200W LED – Spider Farmer SF2000
  • 300W – Mars Hydro TSL2000 or newer Mars Hydro SP3000
• HID grow lights – these get hot!
  • 400W HPS (dimmable 400W MH/HPS fixture plus 400W HPS bulb)
  • 315 CMH/LEC (dimmable 315 CMH fixture plus 315 CMH Bulb)

An example of marijuana plants I grew under the Mars Hydro TSL2000 in a 2’x4’x6′ Grow Tent

Exhaust Fan

At this size, grow lights put off significant heat that will raise the temperature in the tent by several degrees. Luckily it’s an easy fix. Get a 6″ exhaust fan to vent the heat out of the tent and bring in fresh air for your plants. Full instructions with pictures are below. I use the AC Infinity S6 exhaust fan (big and expensive but effective and quiet). Before that, I used a 6″ iPower exhaust fan (smaller and cheaper but much louder).

4’x4’x7′ Tent – 4’x4’x7′ Cheap But Effective Grow Tent ($80) – Another CoolGrows tent. This size tent can support even the legendary 1000W HPS but I personally think it’s the perfect size for a 600W HPS or LED grow lights with a total of 500-700W power draw. LED examples that would fit this tent:

Grow Light Compatibility

• Large LED fixture or two mid-size LEDs (450-700W total power draw and dimmable)
  • 480W LED – – Mars Hydro FC-E4800 (great results and produces less heat than most LEDs for a 4’x4′)
  • 600W LED – HLG 600 R-Spec (I’ve received excellent bud quality and high potency when I’ve grown weed under this light)
• HID grow lights
  • 600W HPS (dimmable, on a 6″ hood”) hooked up with 6″ ducting to a 6″ exhaust fan.
  • 630W CMH (dimmable, double 315W bulbs) hooked up with 6″ ducting to a 6″ exhaust fan.

Exhaust Fan

This much grow light power puts off a ton of heat. You need an extra strong 6″ exhaust fan like the Vivosun 6 inch 390 CFM fan and carbon filter kit (this kit actually includes a carbon filter and ducting so you can set your tent up to filter all smells) and if you want a quieter fan you’ll have to bump up to the 8″ size of AC Infinity as the 6″ version isn’t strong enough.

How to Set Up a Grow Tent for Stealth

What You Need

• Grow Tent (examples above)
• Grow Light
• Exhaust Fan
• Possibly Ducting
• (Optional) Carbon Filter (get this if you want to filter smells)

1.) Clear Space & Put Together Tent

Before getting started, take a minute to clean up the space where you will be building your tent. It’s easier to do it all in the beginning as opposed to while you’re working. Make sure to put together your tent at its final destination. You don’t want to build it only to realize it doesn’t fit through the doorway 🙂

Build tent at the place you plan to keep your grow tent. You don’t want to move it after it’s been assembled.

Lay out all the parts. Your grow tent should also come with directions.

Start assembling grow tent according to instructions. The directions should tell you which pole to put where. If you’ve ever put together a camping tent, this should seem familiar.

First you build the base.

Add the side poles. If you get confused, the poles should be labeled, and the directions will tell you which one goes where.

Add the top poles. You’ll notice you add two extra poles crosswise. These give you a place to easily hang your grow light. The full frame is now complete. Now you need to put on the reflective covering, kind of like giving your tent a jacket. Set the frame in the bottom.

Pull the jacket over the bars.

Add the waterproof tray to the bottom. This can catch up to several gallons of water, which protects your floor in case you ever spill water in the tent.

Your tent is now fully assembled!

2.) Hang Grow Light

It can be difficult choosing exactly which grow light you want, but once you’ve made your decision at least it’s easy to hang your light. Compare different grow lights

Example of LED Grow Light Hanging In Tent with Rope Ratchets

The best way to hang your grow light is using rope ratchets if you can; they are cheap and easy to set up. Your grow light may have come with some, or you may need to get them separately.

Rope ratchets make it incredibly simple to adjust your lights at any time without the chance of dropping the light on your plants. They let you quickly and easily move your grow light up or down. This can be useful if you want better access to the back of the tent without the light beaming on your head, or even just to take better pictures of your plants.

Make sure whatever you use to secure the lights (again, use rope ratchets!) can handle at least twice the weight of your grow light, just to be safe!

Cheap rope ratchets allow you to move a grow light up and down with a few clicks, so you never need to hold up your light or worry you might drop your light on your plants. This ones can hold up to 150 lbs, which should be plenty for any modern grow light.

3.) Hang the Exhaust Fan

Hang the exhaust fan with rope ratchets from the top bars inside the tent to help muffle the sound of the fan running. This is also the most efficient setup for removing heat because it creates short straight path for the air to leave the tent.

Use strong nylon rope or rope ratchets to hang your exhaust fan inside the grow tent from the top bars to dramatically reduce sound and vibration. Your fan will sound louder if it’s located outside of your tent and not hanging.

These days, most growers will be using LED grow lights, which have heat sinks that help direct heat up and away from your plants. This means your exhaust fan, which is located near the top of the tent, should already be well positioned to remove extra heat.

If you’re using a grow light that has an air-cooled hood that contains all the heat, like many MH or HPS grow lights, you can connect the exhaust fan to the hood directly for extra efficient cooling. This lets you vent hot air directly out of the tent so heat is never beaming down onto your plants.

Learn how to set up a hidden exhaust for MH/HPS grow lights.

You can continue ducting out a window to vent the heat completely out of the room

For the best results with any grow light, make sure there is a way for fresh air to get in. Grow tents almost always have adjustable vents near the bottom of the tent to let in fresh air. Some growers remove the covers completely, but that increases the chance the light will leak into the tent.

To get better airflow without light leaks, you can make a little “window” or light trap facing down (using the built-in intake vents) to let air through, but not light

4.) Connect Carbon Filter – No Smells!

Although some growers don’t use a carbon filter, that can unintentionally make a “smell trail” leading straight to their grow. Carbon filters ensure that no smells whatsoever escape to where they aren’t supposed to be. This provides peace of mind even if you aren’t worried about stealth. Plus some cannabis plants smell so hard the smell can get baked in your hair and on your clothes.

Just like the exhaust fan, I recommend hanging your carbon filter with rope ratchets because a carbon filter is surprisingly heavy, and rope ratchets make it easier to make adjustments.

It’s important that there is an air-tight line from the carbon filter to the fan (without any air leaks) in order to prevent smells from escaping the tent.

Growers often hang a carbon filter in the back of the tent so it’s less in the way.

Sometimes it makes more sense to tuck the carbon filter behind or above the grow light.

If you have an air-cooled hood you connect the carbon filter > light > exhaust fan. This is considered a “complete” exhaust system because it cools the grow light and scrubs all smells in one fell swoop while keeping everything completely inside the tent. Notice how the carbon filter is tucked behind the light and connected to the grow light with ducting.

If you don’t have space in your grow tent (for example you’re grow tent isn’t very tall), you can put the carbon filter at the “end” of your exhaust and sit it on top of your grow tent. This isn’t quite as effective as keeping the carbon filter in the grow tent, but as long as you don’t have any holes in your ducting or other ways for air to leak out besides through the carbon filter, it gets the job done.

Put the carbon filter after the fan on top of your tent if starved for space inside the tent. Note: This configuration gives you the most space inside tent, but is often louder since fan is outside tent. It’s very important to have a tight seal at the outlet, or the fan won’t effectively pull air out of the tent and through the filter.

Alternatively, hang the fan in the port, and use ducting to connect to the carbon filter on top. Note: Quieter than above option, but can be a bit less effective at smell filtering, since the air doesn’t push as strongly through the filter.

Remember: Carbon filter must be at ends (either the beginning or end of the line). If you put it in the middle, it doesn’t work!

No matter how you end up doing it, the main idea is to ensure any air leaving the tent must pass through this carbon filter and then have no air leaks or holes in the venting until the air is completely out the tent.

As long as you keep the tent closed and the fan on, you should never be able to smell cannabis in your home or outside. The negative air pressure caused by the sealed tent prevents any air inside the tent from leaking out.

Note: When you open the door of the tent it breaks this seal, which means smells may flood out the door or get pulled into the exhaust fan prematurely. To deal with smells when you open the tent, you can use a product called ONA gel, which is surprisingly effective at covering up odors on a short-term basis. However, if you put one of these inside your grow tent, the smell will get on your buds, so only use this as a “spot treatment” and not your main way to cover up cannabis smells..

Also, here’s a trick I learned from a dispensary owner: set up a carbon filter with a fan attached inside the room itself (in addition to the one in your tent), and run it alongside some ONA gel whenever you need to make sure all smells are gone quickly in the room, even if you’ve opened the tent. It works to keep a dispensary smelling neutral and it works just as well in the home!

If you have a smell emergency, you can use an exhaust fan directly attached to a carbon filter sitting on the floor. This isn’t as effective as a “real” exhaust system, but it will clear an entire room of smells in just minutes. Some growers who can’t fit a carbon filter in their grow space have even used this technique to control smells for a whole grow!

5.) Sound, Stealth, and Safety Check

You’re at the home stretch! Your grow tent should already be set up, and now it’s just a matter of double-checking everything and adding your plants!

Sound Check

You can dramatically reduce the sound of fans by hanging them as opposed to letting them sit on something. Keeping fans clean will also make them as efficient as possible while preventing sounds from developing.

For both air and water pumps, it makes a difference to place them on something besides directly on the ground. For example placing them on a piece of wood will muffle the vibration.

Light & Smell Check

You want to make sure no light or smells will make it outside the tent!

After everything is set up, turn on your grow light and exhaust fan for a day to test out your new space.

• The sides of the tent should bow inward slightly when you turn on the fan. Inward bowing means you have created negative air pressure, which is perfect because it will prevent smells from leaking into the home as long as the tent is kept closed.
• Ensure that your carbon filter is securely attached to your exhaust fan, with no way for air to leak in or out. A strong seal between the carbon filter and the fan will ensure that any air leaving the tent passes through the carbon filter first, which will completely scrub it of any smells.
• Take a minute to check around your house to see if you can hear anything that seems odd when your equipment is on. A constant hum or rattle can be suspicious, so listen carefully.
• Go outside and walk around your house once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night to see if there’s any noticeable sounds or if you can see suspicous looking light from outside.

Safety Check

Lastly, take a good look around inside the tent. Everything should be secure. Make sure that any electronics are off the ground (power strips, ballasts, wires) just in case there’s ever a water spill.

A good rule of thumb is to keep all electronics above the waist, while anything to do with water is kept below the waist. Don’t leave cords hanging around in the tent. It’s not only safer, but it looks a lot nicer when you wrap cords up neatly and secure them in place 🙂

Learn more about electrical safety!

Get Started Growing! You Are Ready!

Now that you’re all set up, the major work is over! Here’s a very quick summary of what’s next:

1. Add container with growing media (soil, coco coir, hydroponics)
2. Add seeds
3. Give nutrients and water regularly
4. When plants are about 6 weeks old, put your grow lights on a timer so they turn off for 12 hours each day. Buds will start growing in 1-2 weeks.
5. Harvest sweet, sweet buds a few months later!

Get step-by-step instructions for the rest of your marijuana grow or read the 10-minute beginner’s guide to growing cannabis!

The post Complete Guide to Grow Tents for Cannabis appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

What Should I Expect On My Electricity Bill?

• Figuring Out the Cost of Electricity
  • Electricity Cost Calculator (try it out!)
• Estimated Cost Per Month for Common Grow Room Items (lights, fans, pumps, AC, etc.)
• How to Figure Out Cost Per Grow (and cost of each ounce you harvest)

Electrical Safety Tips

Tips to Save Electricity Without Sacrificing Yields

What Should I Expect On My Electricity Bill?

How much electricity does it take to grow cannabis indoors from seed to harvest, and how much will you be paying for electricity each month?

When growing marijuana indoors, knowing the cost of electricity is essential. However, it can be confusing trying to predict how much it’s going to end up costing you.

Luckily, it’s relatively straightforward to figure your costs in electricity once you have the right information. Let’s go!

Quick Examples of Common Growing Setups

We calculated these electricity prices at the US average electricity cost of $0.12/kWh. Depending on where you live, it can be higher or lower. I’ve heard from growers whose electricity costs half as much, but also some who’s electricity costs twice that or more.

2’x2′ Grow Tent – Small

• Ultra short edition – 3′ tall
  • 65W – HLG 65 LED Grow Light – Electricity Cost: $9/month
  • 1-3 oz per harvest
  • $300 to get started
• Room to grow – 4′ tall
  • 100W – SF-1000 LED Grow Light – Electricity Cost: $11/month
  • 2-4 oz per harvest
  • $430 to get started

Example of a 2’x2′ grow tent

2’x4′ Grow Tent – Medium

• Standard Power – 5′ tall
  • 200W – SF-2000 LED grow light – Electricity Cost: $22/month
  • 5-11 oz per harvest
  • $555 to get started
• Max Power – 6′ tall
  • 300W – Mars Hydro TSL2000 LED – Electricity Cost: $31/month
  • 7-13 oz per harvest
  • $575 to get started
• Over Power – 6′ tall
  • 300-400W range (dimmable) – for growers who go crazy with power
  • Up to 16 oz per harvest
  • $495 to get started with a 400W HPS – Electricity Cost: $46/month
  • $745 to get started with 315 LEC – Electricity Cost: $33/month
  • $890 to get started with HLG 350R (Massively overpowered LED) – Electricity Cost: $40/month

Here’s my current grow inside one of these right now. I think this is the perfect size for most home growers because it can yield many ounces up to a pound per harvest depending on the grow light you use.

Example of cannabis plants I grew under a 300W LED grow light

3’x3′ Grow Tent (Square shape is better in some spaces) – Medium

• Max Power – 6′ tall
  • 300W – Mars Hydro FC-E3000 – Electricity Cost: $31/month
  • 7-13 oz per harvest
  • $475 to get started with FC-E3000
• Max Power (cold grow room) – 6′ tall
  • 315 LEC or 400W HPS (dimmable)
  • 7-16 oz per harvest
  • $745 to get started with 315 LEC – Electricity Cost: $33/month
  • $495 to get started with a 400W HPS – Electricity Cost: $46/month

Example of a single hydro plant growing in a 3’x3′ grow tent with a 400W HPS. You could fit more plants if you use pots instead of hydro.

4’x4′ Grow Tent – Large

• 1+ lb LED Producer – 6.5′ tall
  • HLG Blackbird 600W LED grow light – Electricity Cost: $61/month
  • 11-22 oz per harvest
  • $995 to get started
• 1+ lb HPS Producer 6.5′ tall
  • 600W HPS (dimmable) – Electricity Cost: $61/month
  • 10-21 oz per harvest
  • $495 to get started

Example of a 4’x4′ grow tent (easily yield a pound)

See more cannabis grow setup examples!

Figuring Out the Cost of Electricity

This guide will teach you how to determine how much electricity you’ll be using each month for your garden. Once you know how much power you’re using, you can easily figure out the cost. I’ll also share a few estimates for the electricity cost of grow lights, fans, ACs, and more, so you’ll have a ballpark figure even if you’re not sure exactly how much you pay for electricity.

You need this information:

• Cost of electricity where you live – this should be on your electricity bill and is usually measured in kWh
• Wattage of light/fan/pump – If you’re not sure, the wattage information is typically on the box. For example, it might say 35W, 150W, or 600W.
• Number of hours the appliance will be running – For example if it’s on 18 hours a day and you want to know how much it will cost each month, then you’d calculate 18 hours multiplied by about 30 days or approximately 540 hours/month.

Here’s the formula which can be used not only to figure out the cost of electricity for the marijuana grow but also the cost per month:

Cost of Electricity x Number of Hours x (Watts / 1000) = Total Cost

Note: You need to divide the watts (W) by 1000 to plug it into the cost formula; this is to convert your number to kW so it plays nice with the kWh measurement you get from the electricity company. I’ll explain below with a few examples.

Real-Life Example with 250W Grow Light
($161 in electricity for the light during the grow)

Let’s look at a previous grow of mine. View the complete grow journal if you want to check it out!

• Cost Electricity – $0.37/kWh (this is what we get charged for electricity, but it’s more than twice the average cost nationwide so you’d probably pay far less than this!)
• Number Hours: 1,746 light hours (total hours with 250W HPS turned on)
  Veg: 41 days of 18/6 = 738 hours
  Flower: 84 days of 12/12 = 1,008 hours
• Wattage/1000: I used a 250W HPS light. So, if I divide that by 1000 I get 0.250 kW for the formula.

Cost Electricity x Number of Hours x (Watts / 1000) = Total Cost

$0.37 kWh x 1,746 hours x 0.250 kW = $161

However, one thing that’s very important to remember when doing any estimations is that although your grow light may account for a lot of your electricity bill, fans and pumps and other things in your grow room also take electricity. It can really start to add up if you don’t pay attention, giving you a much higher-than-expected electricity bill!

Remember to Calculate Energy Cost for Everything That Uses Electricity, Not Just Your Grow Light!

Continuing the above example, in that same grow I also used an exhaust fan, two circulating fans, and for my hydroponic tub I also used a water pump and an air pump. Although they seem like pretty small items, they can start to add up over the length of the grow.

Cost of Electricity for Other Items
(Additional $117 Over the Grow)

• Water pump – $6.12
• Air pump – $3.33
• Exhaust fan – $41.07
• 2 Oscillating fans – $66.60

You can view the full breakdown here. But you can see that these other items cost 3/4 as much electricity as the grow light at $161!

Electricity Cost Calculator

If you want to skip doing all that math, you can plug your information into the calculator below and it will tell you how much money you can expect to spend on electricity. Make sure to look up your local electricity prices as they vary significantly between cities, states, and countries

Estimated Cost Per Month for Common Grow Room Items

Here are more examples to give you an idea of possible cost projections.

Compare Various Fans @ $0.12/kWh

Amounts are for if the fans are kept on for 24 hours a day for 30 days (720 hours):

• 6″ Clip-on fan – 13W – $1/month
• 10″ tabletop fan – 35W – $3/month
• 4-Inch Exhaust Fan – 60W – $5/month
• 6-Inch Exhaust Fan – 70W – $6/month

Hydroponic Pumps and Accessories @ $0.12/kWh

Amounts are for if the pumps are kept on for 24 hours a day for 30 days (720 hours):

• Air pump – 3W – $0.25/month
• Water pump – 27W – $3/month
• 1/13HP Water Chiller – (Capable of lowering an average 20°F in a 26-Gallon tank) – 192W – $17/month

Air Conditioner Examples @ $0.12/kWh

​Amounts are for if the ACs are kept on continuously for 12 hours a day for 30 days (360 hours) – hopefully, you don’t have to keep your AC on this often or this long!

• 8000 BTU Window Air Conditioner – 670W – $29/month
• 10,000 BTU Window Air Conditioner – 890W – $39/month
• 10,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner – 1150W – $50/month <– Portable ACs aren’t as efficient as window ACs, but may be the only choice if you can’t put an AC in the window where you live.
• 15,000 BTU Window Air Conditioner – 1270W – $55/month

Figuring Out Cost (Per Grow)

When it comes to figuring out an estimated per-grow cost I recommend planning on it taking 5 months to get to harvest time (even though the average grow is usually about 3-4 months). Although you will hopefully get to harvest sooner, it’s better to estimate for too much money and have it cost less than the other way around!

Five months gives you plenty of time to mess up in the vegetative stage, use a long-flowering strain and still be ready for harvest. After you get some experience you’ll have a much better idea of how long it usually takes to get to harvest using your personal style and preferred strains. One other thing to remember is you’ll use less energy in the flowering stage because your lights will only be on 12 hours a day. You can figure that time out separately if you want, but I’m just going to pretend the lights are on 18/6 to make things simpler.

So now that you’ve begun to figure out your per-month prices, you can multiply them by 5 to get an estimate of how much a whole grow will cost you for each item!

Example Setup ($0.12/kWh)
This is the average cost of electricity in the USA. Remember to look up your local electricity cost because it could be significantly higher or lower.

• 400W LED Grow Light – $26/month
• 2 x 6″ Clip-on fans – 13W – $1/month x 2 = $2/month
• 10″ tabletop fan – 35W – $3/month
• 6-Inch Exhaust Fan – 70W – $6/month

Monthly Electricity Cost: $37
Electricity Cost for 5 Months: $185

That’s a total of $37/month in electricity, so if you multiply that by 5 months you get $185 cost of electricity for the whole grow.

Once you’ve had a grow or two under your belt, it’s a good idea to start looking at cost and reward to make sure you’re producing what you need for the price you want.

Let’s say you spend $185 on electricity in the grow, but produce 5 ounces of bud, that means you’re paying $37/ounce for electricity (plus the cost of setup and supplies). If that’s a reasonable price for you then you can celebrate a good harvest, but if you’re not getting the right prices in your grow, it’s a good idea to evaluate and figure out what you need to change to get the results you want!

How do I determine my yields?
(What’s my limiting factor and how do I fix it?)

For example, in this previous grow I spent about $280 in electricity throughout the grow (if you add everything together). I harvested a little over 6 ounces which, means I spent a little under $50/ounce in electricity. Considering it costs around $350 for a high-quality ounce in my area, that’s some pretty significant savings! And we have some of the most expensive electricity in the nation.

Another thing to consider when trying to estimate costs is how long a specific cannabis plant needs in the flowering stage before it’s ready to harvest. Some plants need up to 3 months in the flowering stage, so when determining cost it’s a good idea to factor in that extra time. Sometimes it’s worth it to pay more for better buds, but you should know that’s what you’re getting into!

Now that you’ve got a handle on figuring out your costs, let’s take a brief moment to talk a little bit about electrical safety.

Electrical Safety Tips

• If for some reason your electrical equipment is in contact with water, don’t touch it! You could get zapped!
• Keep your grow area dry and quickly clean up any spills.
• Keep everything as neat as possible. Try to put away anything that you don’t actually need in the grow room.
• Keep all electronics off the floor and make sure to untangle any wires, and it’s a great idea to tie them in place. A good rule of thumb is “electricity above the waist, water below the waist.”
• Use a surge protector. Many surge protectors are built with holes in the back so they can be mounted directly to a wall. Note: a surge protector offers protection for devices plugged into it; it doesn’t protect humans (although one with GFCI does)!

Smoke Detector

• Always have a smoke detector in your grow room. They’re way too cheap to pass up!

GFCI

• Get a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter(GFCI) – Many indoor grows involve having water somewhere near electrical outlets and a GFCI will protect you. A GFCI power strip stops power from flowing to the plug in the event of current-leakage (current-leakage equates to severe danger…electrocution!). If you don’t want to use a power strip, you can get outlets with GFCIs built-in (for those who have experience in changing outlets).

• Check your circuit breaker to make sure it can handle the amount of electricity you plan to use.

If you’re getting set up with a new grow room, or just getting started growing in a space for the first time, there are a few things you need to do before you ever plug anything in! In addition to standard electrical safety precautions inside the grow room, you want to make sure your grow space can support the amount of power you need.

Once you know which plugs you’re going to use for your grow, you need to calculate how much energy your grow lights and fans will need (as explained in today’s article). Armed with that knowledge, you can make sure your outlets can support that much energy usage.

All electrical outlets in your house are on a circuit, and each electrical outlet in your grow room belongs to a circuit. Often the circuit breaker box has labels for which outlets in the house are on each circuit, but sometimes you need to figure it out yourself.

Once you know which circuits your plugs are on, the next step is to open your circuit breaker box and see what number is listed next to the circuit(s) you plan to use.

Let’s say you’re using 120V outlets like most standard American outlets. If you have 15 Amp circuit breakers, that means that circuit can handle 1800W worth of appliances (15A x 120V = 1800W). If you have 20 Amp circuit breakers, it means that the circuit can handle 2400 watts (20A x 120V = 2400W). For 30 Amps it’s 3600W.

If your appliances on a circuit combined add up to more than those total watt numbers, you’re going to trip the circuit breaker at some point and everything on that circuit will shut off as a safety precaution.

Important: With all this in mind, it’s crucial to note that the limit of how much load a circuit can take is 20% lower for “continuous loads”. A “continuous load” is something that needs power for 3+ hours, so pretty much ALL of the power you will be using is a continuous load. That means you’ll want to split your power usage between circuits (not just outlets) when needed and stay below the following wattages:

• 1444W on 15A circuit breakers
• 1920W on 20A circuit breakers
• 2880W on 30A circuit breakers

I have examples of different wattages listed in the main article, but consider that a 1000W light + 10,000 BTU air conditioner is already enough to go well beyond the 1444W safety limit if you have a 15A circuit breaker and even surpasses the 1800W maximum load limit!

Because of this, we once had to power an AC with an extension cord that went to another room. That made it so it wasn’t using the same circuit as the lights and fans! Believe it not or, this is safer than putting extra load on an already overburdened circuit.

• Use your common sense; if something doesn’t seem right, or if you have any second thoughts about safety, you should listen to your conscience. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

Tips for Saving Electricity

It’s impossible to do all of these things at the same time, and sometimes you’ll have to choose between strategies, but this should help give you ideas on ways to cut electricity use during your grow!
Plant

• Keep your plant growing fast and healthy to potentially shave weeks off your grow. Every day you are powering your grow room adds to the amount of electricity you’re going to use during the grow.
• Choose a strain with a shorter flowering stage – some strains need as little as 8 weeks of the flowering stage before they’re ready to harvest. Although there’s nothing wrong with paying a little more to grow a longer-flowering strain! Some of the best strains need a little longer and it can be worth it to pay a little more.
• Choose an auto-flowering strain – these strains will get you to harvest in about 3 months, sooner than any other strain.
• Pick up a “Kill-A-Watt” Electricity Usage Monitor – you can use this cheap device to accurately measure the amount of electricity used by a device. Test your other non-growing devices, too!

Growing

• Have your lights on during the cheapest time for electricity – Many electricity companies have certain times of the day that are cheaper than others when it comes to electricity, so if you have your lights on during those cheaper hours you will save!
• Consider putting plant on 18/6 over 24/0 light schedule in the vegetative stage – that extra 6 hours a day without your light on can make a big difference on your electricity bill each month, and your plant will still grow healthy and fast with 18 hours of light!
• Choose a more efficient grow light – growers using fluorescent lighting might consider switching to a more efficient light. For example, if you’re using CFLs, you’ll get almost twice as much yields per watt by switching to an equal wattage HPS. So if you had 150W worth of CFLs, you could about double your yields by switching to a 150W HPS (without changing anything else). Learn more about upgrading your grow lights for better yields/watt.
• Get the smallest grow light you need to produce your result –  If you’re already growing more bud than you need, you might consider moving down in grow light size. If you’re using HPS grow lights, consider that a 600W HPS is more efficient than a 1000W HPS (600W HPS is actually the most efficient in lumens/watt of all HID grow lights), so if you could get enough bud from the 600W HPS you’d be getting more light per watt, and therefore more yield/watt. Why aren’t my yields bigger with the light I have now?
• Lower the power of your light initially, (or start with fluorescents) until plants get big enough to need more light. Some grow lights allow you to reduce their power output to 80% or 50%. If you have a seedling that’s just a few inches tall, it doesn’t need a big light and you can reduce your power without slowing growth down at all, but you’ll be using far less electricity. Same thing with fluorescents; even if they’re not the most efficient lights for producing buds, they are very low power and work perfectly for growing seedlings.
• Keep lights the right distance away – Keeping lights too far away from your plant will prevent them from getting all the light they can for the wattage used.
• Fill space under light using plant training so you’re using as much light as possible to increase yields. You want your entire grow space under the light filled with a flat canopy of buds for the best results indoors under grow lights.
• Consider training techniques with less down time. For example, more advanced training techniques such as manifolding can add 2-3 weeks onto your grow, while something more simple may take a little more physical work on your part in the long run to manage your colas, but it won’t add much if any time to your grow so you’ll end up saving on electricity.

Using a less powerful grow light while your plants are young will save electricity!

Manage Temperature / Air

• Smart fan placement – place your fans where they will be most effective so you don’t need as many of them running at the same time
• Straight-line exhaust – Keep your exhaust as straight and short as possible. Bends in the ducting, and long distances for the air to travel will make your exhaust system much less effective. If at all possible try to aim for an efficient exhaust system over an air conditioner! AC’s often use as much as, if not more electricity than your grow lights. Although you can’t keep your tent cooler than the air in your room, there’s a lot you can do to help even the temperatures out before you have to invest in an AC! Even with an AC, it’s a good idea to minimize how often you turn it on.
• Use time of day and fan speed to help manage temperature. For example, if it’s hot during the day you might consider putting your lights on at night when it’s cooler so you don’t need to turn on the AC.
• Grow at temperate parts of the year if possible so you don’t need an AC and can keep your lights on during the parts of the day when it’s cheapest instead of when it’s warmest.
• No fans until they’re needed – Chances are you don’t need any fans in the beginning of your plant’s life. As long as it’s not very muggy, seedlings and young clones should be just fine without a breeze until they get a little older and actually start getting bushy.
• Learn more about how to control temperature in the grow room!

For your exhaust system, try as best you can to keep ducting in as straight (and short) a line as possible – this makes it much more efficient at removing heat!

I hope that helps get you started with figuring out the cost of electricity and setting up your grow room so you spend as little as possible while producing the results you want! Let us know if we missed anything!

Jump to….

7 Rules to Stealthy Growing

Diagnose Your Sick Plant

How to Train Your Plants for Bigger Yields

Tips for Growing Top-Shelf Buds

The post What’s the Cost of Electricity to Grow Marijuana? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

In addition to the search bar, this link guide helps you navigate through the Grow Weed Easy website. Learn about growing topics you won’t find anywhere else! This is a shortened list of all our cannabis growing tutorials, as the website has over 500 articles and tutorials!

Full List of EVERYTHING on GWE  ← Over 500 Articles & Growing Tutorials!

Start Here – Beginner Grow Guides

• Complete Beginner’s Guide
• How do I start growing my own weed indoors? (get help choosing your setup)
• How to Grow Weed in 10 Steps
• Simplest Cannabis Grow Guide Ever!
• How Long Does It Take to Grow Weed? (Marijuana Growth Timeline)
• 3 Steps from Beginner to Legendary Grower
• Complete New Grower’s Shopping List

Cannabis Life Stages

• Germination
• Vegetative Stage (Getting Bigger)
• Flowering Stage (Making Buds)
• Harvest

Choosing…

• Best Type of Nutrients
• Choosing the Best Grow Light
• Soil vs Hydro
• How Many Plants Should I Grow?
• What Part of the House Should I Grow In?
• What Setup Should I Get?
• Best Strains for Beginners
• Where to Get Seeds (including the U.S.)

Common New Grower Topics

• How Much Will Electricity Cost?
• Stealth Growing: How NOT to Get Caught Growing Weed
• What Equipment Do I Need?
• Germinate Your Seeds
• 7 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I First Started Growing Weed
• How to Save Money When Growing Weed
• How to Store Weed Properly (so it never loses smell or potency!)
• Ask Questions & Get Answers From Real Growers! (In Our Free Growing Community)
• Cannabis Grower’s Glossary

Problems & Symptoms

• Cannabis Problems Guide
  • How to Help Yellow Seedlings
  • How to Fix Yellow Cannabis Leaves
  • How to Fix Curling and Clawing Cannabis Leaves
  • What Causes Dry or Crispy Leaves?
  • What Causes Brown Spots on Cannabis Leaves?
  • What Causes Bananas (“Nanners”) on Cannabis Buds?
  • Is This Nutrient Burn on My Marijuana Plant?
  • What causes red stems in cannabis plants?
• Diagnose Your Sick Plant
• Bugs & Other Cannabis Pests
• How to Prevent Nutrient Deficiencies
  • Which Nutrient Deficiencies are Caused by pH? (picture guide)
  • How to Stop Flowering Stage Nutrient Deficiencies
• 7 Reasons Why Cannabis Plants Grow Slow
• 5-Step Remedy That Fixes 99% of Grow Problems
• All-Natural Pesticides – Safe Up to Harvest!

Plant Training (Indoor Tricks for Bigger Yields)

• Simplest Plant Training Guide Ever!
• How to Control Height of Indoor Cannabis Plants
• Complete Plant Training Guide
• Breakdown of Techniques​
  • Low Stress Training (LST) Tutorial
  • Topping vs FIMing Tutorial
  • LBH’s Famous ScrOG Tutorial
  • Supercropping: Magic Technique to Control Cannabis Plant Height
  • Sea of Green (SoG) Tutorial
  • 12-12 from Seed – Flowering Plants Early
  • Nebula’s Manifold Tutorial
  • How to Manifold Clones
  • Nebula’s Bud-Based Defoliation Tutorial
  • Alternate Defoliation Tutorial ​
  • What is Re-Vegging / Monstercropping?
• How Can I Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• 7 Unfortunate Plant Training Mistakes

Grow Mediums

• What’s the Best Growing Medium?
• Soil vs Coco vs Hydro
• Basic Soil Guide
• Organic Soil Compost Guide (Super Soil) – Just Add Water!
• Coco Coir Guide
  • Coco Coir: The Most Flexible Cannabis Grow Medium
• Hydro/DWC/Bubbleponics Guide
• “True” Organic Growing vs Just Using Organic Nutrients
• Can You Use Miracle-Gro?

Nutrients

• Which Nutrients Are Best For Growing Cannabis?
• Soil Nutrients
• Coco Coir Nutrients
• Hydroponic Nutrients

Grow Lights

• 5 Best LED Grow Lights 2025 (Yields, Speed, & Bud Quality)
• Compare Types of Cannabis Grow Lights
  • Fluorescents (T5s) – Good for Seedlings Only (not powerful enough to produce potent buds or big yields)
  • CFLs (Spiral Bulbs) – Not Recommended (LEDs are much better)
  • LED Grow Lights – Recommended for Most Home Growers
  • MH/HPS Grow Lights – Good Alternative to LEDs, But Run Much Hotter
  • CMH / LEC Grow Lights – Good Alternative to LEDs, But Run Much Hotter
  • Plasma / Magnetic Induction Grow Lights – Not Recommended (poor cannabis growth)
• How Does Light Spectrum Affect Marijuana Plants?
• How Far Away Do I Keep My Grow Lights?
• You Can Actually Give Plants Too Much Light?!
• Grow Light Upgrade Guide: Yields & Potency Explained
• Cannabis Grow Lights: What’s the Best Size?

Best LED Grow Light Articles

• 5 Best LED Grow Lights 2025 (Yields, Speed, & Bud Quality)
• LED Grow Lights: Too Much or Not Enough Light?
• LED Grow Journal: Mars Hydro TSL-2000W vs Spider Farmer SF-2000
• LEC vs LED Grow Lights: Side-by-Side Cannabis Grow Journal
• Nebula’s Auto-Flowering Grow Journal (Topping vs Natural) – cannabis plants are grown under LED grow lights

Environment

• Create the Perfect Growing Environment
  • Temperature Tutorial
  • 5 Secrets to Heat Control
  • Control Humidity for Better Buds
  • How to Use Reflective Walls to Increase Yields Indoors
  • How to Make Plants Grow Faster with CO2
• Where’s the Best Place in the House to Grow Your Plants?
• How to Control Odors
• How to Set Up an Exhaust
• How to Set Up a Grow Tent for Better Yields (and Stealth)

Plant Care Tutorials

• Cloning
  • How to clone weed in a cup of water (easy!)
  • How to make cannabis clones with an aero cloner
• Intro to Plant Training for Bigger Yields Indoors
• How Often to Water Plants
  • The Easiest Way to Water Plants & Remove Runoff
• How (and When) to Transplant Cannabis
• Male vs Female Plants
• When to Harvest?
• Drying & Curing

How to Improve…

• Yields
• Bud Quality
  • 7 Environment Effects on Bud Quality
  • The Secret to Excellent Bud Quality
• THC Levels
• CBD Levels
• Smell/Taste
• Density
• Bud Color (How to Grow Pink or Purple Buds)
• Glitter (Make Buds Sparkle with More Trichomes)
• Bonus: What Determines Yields?

Buying Seeds

• Where to Get Seeds
• How to Find the Right Strain
• What are “Feminized” Seeds?
• Which Breeders to Trust?
• Photoperiod vs Auto-Flowering Cannabis Strains
• Bag Seed vs Hype Seed: Is it worth it to buy cannabis seeds?

Recommended Strains

• Best Autoflowering Cannabis Strains for Yields & Potency
• List of Sugar-Dusted Strains (Heavy Trichome Genetics)
• 10 Cold-Resistant Cannabis Strains
• 14 Heat-Resistant Cannabis Strains
• Which cannabis strains stay short? (Best strains for small spaces)

Auto-Flowering Strains

• Nebula’s Guide to Cannabis Auto-Flowering Strains (Photoperiod vs Auto-Flowering)
• Should I “Top” or Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• What’s the best light schedule for auto-flowering strains?
• Nebula’s Auto-Flowering Grow Journal (Topping vs Natural)

Edibles

• Decarboxylation: How to Decarb Your Weed (crucial step for just about every edible recipe)
• Best Weed Butter Recipe
  • How to Make Great Brownies with Weed Butter
• Canna Caps
• How to Make Cannabis Gummies (Weed Gummy Bears)
• How to Make Cannabis Tinctures
• How to Make Hash Oil (aka Cannabis Extract Oil, Rick Simpson Oil, or RSO)

Extracts (No Solvents Used in Any Recipe)

• Solventless Extraction Showdown – Bubble Hash vs. Dry-Ice Hash!
• Dry Ice Hash (Made with Dry Ice)
• How to Make Bubble Hash (Made with Ice Water)
• How To Make Your Own Homemade Rosin (dabs)

And Lots More!

• How Long Does it Take to Grow Weed?
• Vegetative vs Flowering Stage (Long Days vs Long Nights)
• Germination & Seedling Mistakes
• Simple Guide to Plant Training
• What’s the Best Pot / Container?
• Perpetual Harvest
• What Determines Yields?
• 5 Time-Savers for Busy Growers
• Breeding Techniques
• 7 Gift Ideas for Cannabis Growers
• Grow Journals
• How long can I store nutrient water?
• What is High-Frequency Fertigation?
• Where is it legal to grow weed in the USA?
• See EVERYTHING on the Site!

Safety & Preparation

• Fire Protection in the Grow Room
• Electrical Safety Tips & Tricks
• Prepare Yourself for Growing Emergencies
• Stealth Growing Indoors: How to NOT get Caught Growing Weed

Just for Fun

• Weird or What? Cannabis Mutations & More!
• Creatures on Cannabis (Cute Photo Gallery)
• 10 Gift Ideas for Cannabis Growers

Submit Pics

• Submit Trophy Pictures of your Plants!
• How to Take Better Plant Pics
• How to Fix Yellow HPS Pics

Want More?

• Complete List of EVERYTHING on GWE  ← Full List (Over 500 articles & growing!)

Thanks for visiting! We hope our website helps you find the growing tutorials you were looking for. We’ve written hundreds of growing marijuana articles and unfortunately we can’t fit them all on this page, so we encourage you to use the search bar on the right side (or top of the page for mobile users) to search for articles you don’t see here.

Happy growing!
Nebula & Sirius

Use this “Navigation” page to find the pot growing topic you’re interested in, or click here to see every single page on the website!

The post Link Guide to Growing Cannabis Tutorials appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

What Are the Benefits of Great Air Circulation?

Fans: Everything You Need to Know

• Small or Oscillating Fans
• Exhaust Fans (plus how to calculate CFM and which fans are quiet)

Temperature & Humidity Cheat Sheet

Deep Dive into Airflow & Exhaust Systems (transpiration, CO2 injection, suction, seals, and negative air pressure)

How to Control Smells

How to Set Up a Stealthy Exhaust System

How to Make a Hidden Window Exhaust (Examples)

• Fake AC Unit
• Wicker Blinds
• Homemade Fake Window

Cannabis plants love a nice breeze and fresh air. When growing cannabis indoors, you have the ability to control the air circulation and use your exhaust to create the perfect indoor environment for your garden that mimics the best parts of nature.

A good growing environment copies the best parts of nature. This tutorial will show you how to create happy cannabis plants with the perfect environment

This air circulation and exhaust tutorial teaches you how to recreate an environment that makes cannabis thrive, and as a bonus it’ll prevent some types of bugs and mold. By venting out the hot air from your grow lights and pulling in fresh air, you increase your cannabis plant’s speed of growth and yields. Good ventilation pays for itself.

Here are some important points about great air circulation…

Plants Love It

• Faster Growth, Bigger Yields – Plants in the right environment grow faster and produce more buds
• Temperature & Humidity Control – An exhaust system helps control the temperature and humidity levels in the grow area by venting out hot and humid air, while replacing it with fresh air. Fans within the grow area circulate the air to prevent hot or humid patches.
• Prevent Mold & Pests – Many molds and pests like stagnant air, high humidity, and heat. Fresh, cool air blowing over and under your plants will reduce the chance they attack your plants.
• Stronger Stems – A breezy environment strengthens stems so they’re less likely to droop and fall when buds get heavy.

During my first indoor cannabis grow, I didn’t pay much attention to air circulation or creating an exhaust. I had a fan blowing directly on my plants and thought I was good to go.

I found out that growing weed plants without any way to exhaust heat caused the grow area to become too hot and humid, even with small grow lights. This led to several issues, including root problems, white powdery mildew, and heat burn. It could have been much worse because these same conditions can also lead to bud rot, fungus gnats, spider mites, and other unpleasant guests in the grow room.

This grow tent was too hot for optimal growth. I added a cheap ducting fan to vent hot air out and the temperature came down several degrees. A huge improvement.

But there was still a major hot spot directly under the grow light. I added a lot of small fans in this grow space, which helped.

But as soon as I upgraded to a stronger exhaust fan, the inside of the tent turned into a wind tunnel (in fact I had to turn the fan down). I was able to get rid of the small fans and plants still got more than enough fresh air. Bonus: Connect a strong exhaust fan to a carbon filter and completely erase smells before the air gets vented out. With this setup, you can’t smell the plants even in the same room.

Once I started exhausting out air from my grow area, cannabis plants grew faster, and certain problems like persistent droopiness and inexplicable nutrient deficiencies disappeared. It made me realize how many indoor cannabis growers may be unintentionally hurting their plants and yields by missing a few key points about air circulation and creating an exhaust to vent out heat.

Tips for the Best Environment

• Blow Hot Air Out – When it comes to cooling, typically it’s far more effective to blow hot air out of the tent than to try to blow cool air in. Just like how a computer fan is always pointed out.
• Exhaust Fan is Most Important – Small fans in the grow area move air around, but can’t reduce the overall temperature or humidity. On the other hand, a good exhaust fan not only keeps the air moving, but vents hot air out and draws fresh air in. That means if you can only afford one type of fan, it’s better to get a good exhaust fan. Venting and air movement are both important, and a good exhaust fan can do both.
• Use Powerful Fans with Big Plants or Hot Grow Lights – Each leaf is constantly adding water vapor to the air and raising the humidity. If your grow space is full of plants, you need a strong breeze to move the humid air. Along the same line, the more heat produced by your grow lights, the more powerful the fans need to be to move all the heat.
• Erase Smells with a Carbon Filter – If you connect your exhaust fan to a carbon filter, the smells get filtered out of the air before they leave the grow space. This is the most common setup to keep your cannabis plants from stinking up the place.
• Exhaust Systems Can Be Cheap & Stealthy – There are cheap and stealthy ways to create a great ventilation system without a lot of time, money, or effort. You have more options than drilling holes or ducting, and many window exhaust options are undetectable from the outside. Learn how to make a stealthy exhaust!

A grow tent is an inexpensive sealed grow space with built-in holes to vent heat. With a strong exhaust fan pointing out, you don’t need any other fans to get excellent air circulation. This gives you more room in the grow space for your plants.

Looking for a quiet exhaust fan?

If noise is a concern, the AC Infinity Cloudline series fans are a great choice. They’re essentially silent on lower settings, and still pretty quiet at full power compared to traditional exhaust fans.

Make sure to get the right size. AC Infinity fans are quiet but also less powerful than regular exhaust fans like the CanMax. If in doubt, size up.

The AC Infinity Cloudline Series is the quietest exhaust fans we’ve used. In my experience…

• the 4″ version can handle up to a 2’x2’x5′ grow tent and 200W of light*
• the 6″ version can handle up to a 2’x4’x6′ grow tent and 400W of light*
• the 8″ version can handle up to a 4’x4’x7′ grow tent and 600W of light*

*when I used smaller sizes for these setups, the fans couldn’t keep tents cool enough when attached to a carbon filter.

Air Circulation

Air circulation (the way air moves around in your grow space) is an important ingredient in creating a perfect growing environment for your cannabis. Indoor growers strive to create a better-than-nature environment for their plants. The way that air moves has a surprisingly big effect on how your plants will grow.

In nature, cannabis plants thrive in a gentle breeze

Why is Air Circulation Important?

Indoor cannabis plants are normally grown in a relatively sealed environment such as a closet, tent, or room dedicated to growing. The lack of wind indoors can cause some problems compared to growing outside. Outside, in ideal conditions, there’s a breeze flowing through plants, giving them fresh air and strengthening stems. Photosynthesis requires CO2, and a steady supply of fresh air helps cannabis grow faster. Air movement protects plants from certain pests and molds.

Benefits of good air circulation and an exhaust system include…

• Protection against mold, bud rot, and white powdery mildew

• Some protection from pests like fungus gnats and spider mites

• Stems get stronger due to bending & swaying (like in nature)

• Better heat & humidity control for faster growth and bigger yields

Reduce Chance of Mold, Bud Rot & White Powdery Mildew

As air blows over the leaves, it carries away moisture released during transpiration. This allows your plants to drink more water (and pull in more nutrients) at the roots. This regular removal of moisture on the leaves also greatly lowers your chance of running into mold, bud rot, or white powdery mildew.

Protects Cannabis Against Spider Mites & Fungus Gnats

Air flowing over the plants and soil fights against nasty garden pests like spider mites and fungus gnats by making it hard to fly and drying out the top layer of soil.

Spider mites and fungus gnats both love stagnant air and have trouble living in a strong breeze. A breeze also creates a lot of air circulation over the plant containers, which keeps the top layer of soil relatively dry. Dry topsoil makes it hard for pests like fungus gnats to breed (moist topsoil creates a perfect breeding ground for molds & fungus gnats).

Whether growing inside or outside, growers with a nice breeze blowing over their plants and soil tend to get less pests.

Temperature & Humidity Control

Great air circulation combined with an exhaust system helps disperse water vapor and heat evenly throughout the grow space. Small oscillating fans blowing above and below the plant canopy helps equalize the air so there are no hot or humid spots.

An exhaust system ensures that all the air in the grow space is replaced regularly, so plants stay cool, get a fresh supply of CO2, and live in the right humidity. It’s important for plants to be exposed to fresh, moving air for the best growth rates. Learn more about temperature and humidity.

Strengthens Stems

A nice breeze strengthens stems by allowing them to bend and sway like in nature. This builds up the strength of stems over time, which comes in handy when plants start to get big and heavy from buds.

Placing Fans In The Grow Area

Many indoor cannabis growers use small fans to blow air around within the grow area. This creates a nice, breezy environment that cannabis plants love. If your temperature and humidity is under control with your grow lights on, small fans are all you need.

Placing Fans

• Ideally, you’d like a nice breeze surrounding the main canopy, which means you want air blowing above and under the plants.

• Don’t point a strong fan directly at plants because too much wind can damage the leaves and stems. Sometimes you get the best air movement by pointing fans directly at the wall. This disperses the breeze so it’s not too strong.

• After placing fans, gaze around the grow area to make sure that all parts are getting a slight breeze. If you feel stagnant air or a lack or breeze, you may want to adjust your fans.

• Small oscillating fans provide a breeze to a relatively wide area without blowing on any one part too long.

Be Careful! Too Much Wind Causes Clawed Leaves

When there’s too much breeze, the affected leaves will start getting “wind-burned.”

Wind-burned leaves are often curved under and form “claws.” They can look like they’re droopy from overwatering, underwatering, or possibly a nitrogen toxicity, but you know you’ve got wind-burn when the leaves in front of the fan are making claws while leaves further away from the fan look fine.

Just for reference, here’s what too much wind/fan looks like!

Too Much Fan!

Choosing the Right Exhaust Fan & Exhaust System Tutorial

Even when you’re not worried about heat, it’s still important to regularly replace all the air in the grow area, which means you need a way to vent out old air. An exhaust system uses fans and often ducting to move hot and humid air out of the grow space.

Designing an efficient exhaust system will be much simpler if you take the time to understand airflow in a room – the whole idea of setting up an exhaust system is to create negative airflow in the grow space or grow tent so that any hot air is regularly replaced with new, fresh cool air.

All the air in the tent should be replaced by new air every 1-3 minutes for the best results. I recommend aiming to replace the air every one minute unless you live in a cool place. You can calculate the strength of the exhaust fan you need based on the dimensions of your grow space.

In order to move air out of the tent and vent it outside, you need to use at least one strong fan as part of your exhaust system.

How to Calculate Exhaust Fan Strength

In the US, most exhaust fans have a “CFM” rating. This means “cubic feet per minute” and is talking about how much air the fan can move each minute. It’s important to get a fan with the correct CFM rating for your size space.

In addition to CFM, there are 3 sizes that exhaust fans come in as far as diameter (how wide the fan is). They usually come in 4”, 6” or 8”. Generally it’s recommended to get a 6” for most setups since most air-cooled hoods and ducting have a 6” opening. You can also use converters if you need to convert a 6” hold to a 4” fan. 8” fans are usually used for more high-powered grows.

Here’s a short equation to help you roughly determine what CFM rating you need for your fan in your space.

How to calculate CFM needed

1. Determine the cubic area of your space by multiplying Length x Width x Height. You want to exhaust this amount of air at least once a minute.

2. Exhaust Efficiency –  Every exhaust system has some level of inefficiency, which will lower the amount of air being moved by the fan. This step tells you how much extra air-moving power is needed to compensate. In an efficient exhaust system, air goes in a short, straight line after passing through the fan. An inefficient path is when air has to go a long way after leaving the fan, or if the air has to go around turns instead of being in a straight line, or if it has to go through a carbon filter. This step will help make sure your fan is moving enough air to properly ventilate your space.
   • Efficient path / No Carbon Filter- multiply previous number by 3
   • Inefficient path / Carbon Filter- multiply previous number by 5

3. Pick your fan. Inline exhaust fans are measured by CFM (cubic feet/minute), so you need a fan that has a CFM higher than the number you figured out in the last step. However, not all CFMs are equal. If something is listed as a “Booster” fan, it typically is no nearly as strong as an inline exhaust fan with a similar CFM.

Fan CFM Rating Table
(here are some examples of possible setups using the equation above to figure out CFM)

* Of course fans don’t come in these sizes, so round to the closest fan size available.

You’ll generally need a higher CFM rating if your grow space tends to get hot or humid, and it’s usually better to get an exhaust fan that is too big than one that is too little since you can turn it down if necessary.

For example, I used the following exhaust fan in my 2’x4’x5′ tent with a 250W HPS. It’s stronger than I needed by far, and I usually have it set to Speed 1 or 2, but it’s better to have too much airflow than not enough. There have definitely been times, such as during heat waves, where I’ve turned it up all the way to control the temperature.

Some fans are very strong, like this Can Max 6-inch inline fan with 334 CFM. This is the fan I use and I’m very pleased with it even in smaller tents like the 2’x4’x5′. If you get an extra strong fan with a variable speed controller, it means that you can turn the power of the fan up or down at will. This can come in handy if you have a heat wave. For an extra investment, you get a lot more power. This fan has a 201 CFM “low” setting, which uses about ~60W watts, a “medium” 264 CFM setting, and a “high” 334 CFM setting which uses about 75W of electricity.

Avoid “Booster” fans like the one below. I’ve used them before because they are just so cheap (often only around $25 brand new), and the truth is they are better than nothing. BUT, they use a surprising amount of electricity considering how little airflow you get, and you can’t really trust the strength of their CFM ratings. The following 6″ Booster fan uses 37W of electricity for “240 CFM” and yet the airflow is extremely weak compared to the Can Max fan above on its “201 CFM” low setting.

When do you need a booster fan? Most indoor growers with hobbyist-size setups won’t ever need to do this, but if the exhausted air has to travel a long way after going through your fan before it’s vented outside (for example the air has to go through several feet of curved ducting after passing through the fan), a single exhaust fan might not be enough. You may need booster fans along the way to keep the air moving especially around long stretches or tight turns.

Bigger Grow Lights Need Bigger Fans

HPS grow lights are known for producing a lot of heat. This 600W HPS grow light needed a powerful exhaust fan but I was able to keep it cool and breezy with a Can Max 6-inch 334 CFM inline fan.

I quickly need to dispel the common myth that LEDs don’t produce any heat. Although LEDs are known to run cool, even ultra-efficient LEDs produce significant heat at higher wattages. The electricity use of a grow light hints at the amount of heat it will produce. If one grow light draws 300W from the wall, it will generally produce significantly more heat than a grow light that pulls 200W from the wall, regardless of the type of grow light. In other words, power draw from the wall is a rough indicator of the heat to expect from a grow light whether it’s CFLs, LEDs, HPS, or CMH/LECs.

These plants grew under 600W of LEDs (the same electricity as the 600W HPS above) and grown in the same grow tent. Although they produce less heat than the HPS, they still make the tent hot enough that I used the same size exhaust fan. The heat reduction wasn’t enough to allow me to go down a fan size.

If you’re concerned about heat, pay attention to the real power draw when shopping for grow lights.

NOTE: When using a powerful exhaust fan, hang the fan from the top bars inside of your tent to help keep it quiet. If you set a fan on top of your grow tent it will make it sound a lot louder. Learn more about setting up a grow tent for cannabis.

Hang your exhaust fan from inside the tent to help reduce noise

The AC Infinity Cloudline Series are the quietest exhaust fans we’ve used so far.

In my experience…

• the 4″ version can handle up to a 2’x2’x5′ grow tent and 200W of light*
• the 6″ version can handle up to a 2’x4’x6′ grow tent and 400W of light*
• the 8″ version can handle up to a 4’x4’x7′ grow tent and 600W of light*

*when I used smaller sizes for these setups, the fans couldn’t keep tents cool enough when attached to a carbon filter.

When in doubt, it’s usually better to get a bigger exhaust fan than you need, as long as you can adjust the fan speed. You can always turn down the fan if it’s moving too much air. You could also use a speed controller or put the fan on a timer if the exhaust fan is moving air out of your space too fast. There are often times during a grow where it’s helpful to be able to move more air, so size up if you can when it comes to exhaust fans.

In addition to the exhaust fans above, these are two more examples of suitable choices for exhaust fans. These are loud but very effective:

• 4-Inch Exhaust Fan – 195 CFM <– You need a separate speed controller to change the speed of this fan since one is not already built-in.
• 6-Inch Exhaust Fan – 440 CFM <– Not as high quality as my trusty Can Max 6-inch 334 CFM fan listed above (which I prefer), but it’s quite a bit cheaper

This 4-inch exhaust fan is good for small tents with up to ~200W grow light (true power draw)

This 6-inch exhaust fan is good for 4’x4’x7′ tents with up to ~600W grow light (true power draw)

A cheap ducting fan may have a high CFM rating (this 6″ duct fan says it moves 240 CFM) but they don’t have enough power to move a lot of air. If a fan looks like this, it’s going to be much weaker than you’d think from the CFM rating.

Don’t get this type of exhaust fan if you can afford something better!

Passive Intake

A passive intake means that you have a hole for cool air to get in, but aren’t using an intake fan to help bring in extra fresh air.

With every passive intake, make sure your intake holes are in total 3-4 times bigger than your exhaust hole to achieve proper suction and prevent your fan from working too hard blowing out air it can’t replace. You can also help bring air in by having more than one passive intake hole. In other words, the holes/spaces for new air to come in (vents, intake fans, doors, windows) should be bigger than the hole/space where the air is being pulled out of the tent by your exhaust fan.

Active Intake

An active intake simply means that you’re using an extra fan to intake more air. So in addition to your exhaust fan, you also have a fan at your intake hole blowing air in. With an active intake, it’s not as important to have a huge intake hole, since the intake fan will help replace the air. An active intake is often a good idea if your intake hole is the same size as your exhaust hole, or if your exhaust fan is struggling to move all the air.

Keep your grow tent closed if using an exhaust fan. Opening the tent reduces suction and actually prevents the fan from being able to pull the hot air out.

Easy “Exhaust System” Example (No Ducting)

A lot of people want to grow a lot of cannabis but are not willing to install ducting or make a real exhaust system. I understand why – most exhaust systems do not look “stealthy.” Ducting looks incredibly out of place in the home environment. But here’s how to control heat for relatively smaller grows.

Main Idea: Vent hot air directly into the room, then use a window fan to blow it outside

What You Need

• Relatively small grow light (under 300W)

• Access to a window (for example a grow tent in a bedroom)

• Exhaust fan – An exhaust fan that matches your grow light and grow space (examples above)

• Window Fan – I use the Bionaire BW2300 Twin Window Fan because it moves a lot of air and actually fits my huge windows. Another option is the Holmes Dual 8″ Blade Twin Window Fan. Any strong fan that fits your window will work.

A small grow tent provides a great growing environment for smaller grow lights but doesn’t look too suspicious. A few people have seen this grow tent and didn’t mention it.

Here’s what you do (it’s easy)

1. Set up your grow tent with grow light inside

2. Install your exhaust fan at the top of your tent, blowing air out. Make sure there’s an intake hole for new air to get in. The intake hole should ideally be bigger than your exhaust, and should be located on the bottom of the tent on the opposite side of your exhaust fan. This isn’t always possible, but ensures the best results. Most grow tents already have a suitable intake hole, so this is another reason I like grow tents – less work needed on your part to make a good environment for your plants

3. Install window fan blowing air out in the same room as the tent. This window fan will only be effective if the room has an intake hole, just like your grow space. For example, you could open the door to a cooler room or hallway. If it’s cool outside you could open another window in the same room, though be aware if bugs can get in. Basically, there just needs to be a source of cool fresh air to get sucked in when the window fan blows hot air out. In some cases with certain window and room setups, for example if you don’t have a good source of cool fresh air indoors, you might find it more effective to have the window fan pointing in. Experiment if you’re having trouble. Sometimes small changes make a big difference.

This may not be a permanent solution, but it gets the air moving through the tent and keeps the air moving out of the house. You’re basically building an exhaust system without the ducting. It’s not as efficient as using ducting, but for a lot of growers with just a few plants, it’s all that’s needed to control temps in the grow room and tent. As long as it’s cooler outside than inside, the window fan will cool down the room.

This window fan is a “Bionaire BW2300 Twin Window Fan” but any strong window fan will work. They’re available in hardware stores, Best Buy, Walmart, and on Amazon.com. They have extenders so they’ll fit any window snugly, without gaps on either side.

What about smells? All the normal techniques used to control smells will work for this system. The best option to control odors is to create an exhaust system that gives your tent good suction/negative air pressure. Then have your air pass through a good carbon filter just before going through the fan and leaving the tent. With a good strong exhaust system and a quality carbon filter, this will prevent smells in the bedroom or outside except when you actually open the tent. Learn more about carbon filters and controlling smells

Now for growers with bigger grow lights, such as 400W and greater, usually a more robust exhaust system is needed to keep lights cool if the grow space isn’t naturally cool.

Temperature & Humidity Control Cheat Sheet

1.) What is the temperature and humidity where the plants are? If the plants are experiencing temperatures above 85°F (30°C) or humidity above 60%…

• You need to vent air out of the grow space and replace with fresh cool air (full tutorial below)
• Remember that the inside of the space near the grow light is always going to be a few degrees warmer than the room. No amount of fans can make the grow space cooler than the temperature of the room itself
• That means if the room itself is getting warm, you need to find a way to cool the room before you can achieve a cooler grow space

2.) What is the overall temperature and humidity of the grow room? If the grow room feels hot or humid, you can either…

• Vent air out and replace with cool fresh air (for example venting out a window), or
• Use equipment that will actually change the overall temperature/humidity
  • Air Conditioner (AC) – Lowers Temperature, Lowers Humidity
  • Swamp cooler (Evaporative Cooler) – Lowers Temperature, Raises Humidity
  • Dehumidifier or Heater – Raises Temperature, Lowers humidity
  • Humidifier – Raises Temperature, Raises Humidity

Transpiration – Leaves Adds Humidity to the Air

When it comes to air circulation and exhaust, humidity is something you need to pay attention to in addition to temperature.

Leaves are constantly giving off water vapor into the air; in fact, that’s how the plants bring up water from the ground. As the water transpires through the leaves, it pulls up more water from the roots like a straw.

This is known as “transpiration.” Transpiration is a process where leaves give off water vapor. That means that the humidity will always be rising in your grow area unless you find a way to vent that humid air out (or use a dehumidifier to remove the extra moisture).

Transpiration happens via the stomata, little pores that are located on the leaves of the plant. Stomata let oxygen and carbon dioxide in for photosynthesis, while letting water vapor out. A closeup of a single stoma from a tomato plant is pictured to the right.

Plants will open and close the stomata based on the environment. Stomata generally are open during the day and are much smaller at night (when there’s no photosynthesis happening and no need for CO2). Stomata get smaller when the air or roots get dry, which helps the plant stop losing water. By maintaining the proper humidity, your plants grow faster and healthier.

Stomata get bigger when there’s bright light and high humidity since leaves need air for photosynthesis and the plant isn’t “worried” about losing too much water vapor in humid conditions. Because stomata must be open as part of the photosynthesis process, it also means that photosynthesis stops when the plant gets too dry.

Stomata must be open for transpiration to happen, so when the stomata are closed the plant has a hard time taking up water and nutrients through the roots. When there’s too much water in the plant, sometimes the stomata can’t let enough water vapor out, which is part of what causes the symptoms of being overwatered.

Plant leaves can’t get access to CO2 and constantly lose water when the stomata are open, so the plant can’t take in CO2 without also letting water vapor out.

So what you need to remember is that leaves are constantly adding humidity to the air. It’s important to remove this humidity from the grow area if the humidity climbs too high, or it can set up conditions that cause mold, bud rot and powdery mildew.

• To Lower Humidity – Vent out humid air via an exhaust system – the humidity will drop (as long as the new air is less humid)

• To Raise Humidity – Plants can usually adjust to low humidity but if it’s really dry you can turn down the exhaust fan to help raise humidity. Typically, once plants get bigger they’ll be giving off enough water vapor that you don’t need to worry about too-low humidity.

• Large plants raise humidity fast – Small plants don’t put off a lot of water vapor, but larger plants have a lot of leaves releasing water vapor into the air, causing the humidity to rise quickly unless the humid air is being vented out. Remember that most of the water you’re giving to your plants is being released into the air of your grow space, so you need to find a way to get that humidity out, especially in the flowering stage when high humidity can lead to bud rot.

• Dehumidifiers and humidifiers can help control the humidity when an exhaust system isn’t enough

Aim to keep humidity at these levels…

How to control humidity in the grow room: https://www.growweedeasy.com/humidity

CO2 Injection Requires a Sealed Grow Space

In order to use CO2, it’s important to completely seal up the grow room. CO2 is only effective at very high amounts, and you need a sealed grow space to get the concentrations up high enough to benefit plants.

More importantly, CO2 is dangerous to humans at the levels that are recommended for plants. Sealing the grow area is incredibly important to prevent CO2 from leaking into the home.

Learn more about how to use CO2 here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/co2

Suction, Seals & Negative Air Pressure

As far as seals, it’s important that you seal the entire exhaust system after air passes through the exhaust fan. This helps keep the exhaust system efficient. If you’re using a carbon filter, this also makes sure that all air passes over your filter before being vented out of the grow space. A sealed exhaust system along with a carbon filter will prevent smells from escaping outside.

Negative air pressure is something you can create to keep smells from escaping the grow room, so you don’t have smells leaking into the rest of your home..

In order to create negative air pressure, you seal the grow space except for the intake and exhaust holes, which creates suction when you turn on the exhaust fan.

In other words, suction is what you create with seals and negative air pressure.

When your grow tent is bending in from the exhaust fan, it means you’ve got good suction going in there and have created negative airflow. You can also check by burning incense near the intake hole; if the smoke is moving straight to the intake hole you know that you’ve got good negative air pressure bringing fresh air inside.

When you’re in an open grow space without suction like a room or closet, there are not as many universal principles. You may have to experiment with a few different exhaust system setups until you find the best way to manage heat.

Controlling Smells With Your Exhaust

The best way to control smells in the grow room is to use a carbon filter. It is the only method of controlling smells that I recommend for everyone, because it is the most effective and can actually completely scrub smells from the air so they never escape the grow area, either inside or outside the home.

But when using a carbon filter, the way you set up your exhaust is important. Most importantly, the air from the grow area should pass through the filter and be brought straight outside. It needs to completely air-tight after air passes over the filter.

You can set things up a few different ways:

• Carbon Filter (inside) > Air-Cooled Grow Light > Exhaust Fan
• Carbon Filter (inside) > Exhaust Fan 
• Exhaust Fan (inside tent) > Carbon Filter (outside tent)

Important: The Carbon filter needs to be either at the beginning or the end of the line to be effective at reducing smells.  Here are examples of effective carbon filter setups.

Example of carbon filter with air-cooled hood (old fashioned). Note: This worked but the system would be much more efficient with shorter ducting (the longer the air has to travel, the less efficient the system)

Air-cooled hoods are much less common these days. In that case, connect the carbon filter directly to the fan.

Here are some examples:

Carbon filter inside, Fan outside

Carbon filter inside behind light, fan in port

Same setup from a different view. This allows you to move even a big hood almost to the top of the grow space.

An example with an LED grow light

If you’re using a carbon scrubber, it’s important that all air from the grow room goes through the carbon filter before it gets outside. If there are air leaks at any point in the system, smells will escape and the system won’t efficiently cool. By ensuring an airtight exhaust with good suction in the tent, you’ll prevent smells from making it outside or inside the house.

Learn more about controlling smells in the grow room: https://www.growweedeasy.com/how-to-control-smell-when-growing

How to Create a Stealthy Exhaust System

The carbon filter (to scrub smells) isn’t needed in all setups, but the principle for all exhaust systems is the same: Intake cool air and vent out hot air.

What you need:

• Grow Tent (or any sealed grow space with a way to hold up lights and carbon filter)
• Rope Ratchets to hang grow light and carbon filter (usually comes with your grow light, but it’s nice to have extras)
• Grow Light – compare cannabis grow lights
• Exhaust Fan – discover which fan is right for your space
• 6″ Ducting with Ducting Clamps (if you plan on using ducting)
• Carbon Filter (if you want to prevent smells from leaking out of your grow tent) – learn about carbon filters
• A way to hide exhaust vent from outside (if needed, explained below)

Step 1: Set up your grow tent

Step 2: Install both fan and carbon filter(if you plan to use one). These items are often tough to install after the grow light, so get these parts in place before you go to the next step

Step 3: Install your grow lights in the tent with rope ratchets. Don’t plug in anything until you’re about to start growing.

Step 4: Inside the grow tent, connect everything with ducting if desired.

Step 5: Outside the grow tent, install ducting to bring air from fan to exit outside. Use ducting to connect the exit port on your fan to wherever you’re going to exhaust hot air. Try to create a short, straight path that’s as air-tight as possible until air is safely outside.

Step 6: Ensure an intake hole is open so new fresh air can enter the tent. Also make sure that there’s a window or door open in the grow room so fresh air can come inside to replace the hot air being vented out.

The following exhaust system ideas take heat from the grow light and vent it directly out a window with ducting

Tip: Make sure there is no extra slack in the ducting if possible. you will need extra ducting to be able to adjust your lights, but use something like binder clips or chip clips to bunch together extra ducting.

Keeping a straight path that air has to go through will help make the whole exhaust system more efficient.

If things are getting too cold in the grow area (for example in winter months), you can exhaust the heat back into the grow room to help warm things up, or you could turn down the overall air being moved by your fan by putting it on a timer or using a fan speed controller. Some growers even exhaust the heat into the house in the winter for free heating.

Building a Stealthy Exhaust

The next big problem is that a lot of people want to be able to exhaust their hot air without anyone being able to tell from the outside.

Here are some ideas for setting up a stealthy exhaust in a window that looks completely normal from the outside while allowing air to pass through easily.

Fake window AC unit – Use window kit to disguise the exhaust from a grow area.

This method takes advantage of the fact that portable air conditioners come with a special window kit that fits into most windows. This looks completely normal from the outside.

A portable AC usually looks something like this. Notice the classy window fitting.

You can buy a replacement window kit and install it in your window. It has a hole to vent air outside, but looks like you just have an AC. While most ducting won’t fit it without extra help, you can use adhesive foam to help the ducting make an air-tight fit with the exit hole.

What You Need

• Window kit for a portable AC
• Adhesive foam, duct tape or hot glue to connect ducting to window kit
• A way to blackout the rest of your window (for example blackout curtains that don’t let light through but look like regular curtains)

Here’s an example of a window kit available on Amazon.com

This is what a fake portable AC vent looks like in your window from the inside

Wicker Blinds to Hide Exhaust

Having trouble finding a cheap & easy way to stealthily exhaust out hot air from your grow tent? I used a combination of the following items to create an awesome exhaust system for about $45 (just add your fan).

This method takes advantage of the fact that wicker blinds do not allow anyone to see in, but they do allow air to pass in and out.

Wicker blinds offer privacy but still allows air to pass through

What You Need.

• wicker blinds that fit your window
• foam about the size of your window (usually cheaper to buy in person at a hardware store like Lowes or Home Depot)
• corrugated plastic sheet about the same size as your window (also known as “Twinwall Plastic Sheet” or “fluted polypropylene sheet” or “plastic cardboard sheet”). This is often cheaper to buy in person since you can only buy packs of them online. This item can be replaced with another sturdy backing material like wood since you are using this to give structure to the foam, but corrugated plastic is simple to work with and can easily be cut with sharp scissors or a box cutter (no special tools needed).
• duct tape
• 6″ ducting (should match the width of your fan, but the most common exhaust fan size is 6″)
• super glue or hot glue (with any glue, it’s a good idea to read the directions even if you’re already familiar as they sometimes have helpful hints and tips for different types of surfaces)
• staple gun

*All these items can be found at a home improvement store, as they are common items for upgrading around the house

First, hang the wicker blinds in your window like normal. Air can escape through these blinds, but you can’t see through them to the other side. They are commonly used in bedrooms and other windows that lead into private areas.

I bought a huge sheet of foam and glued (super glue and hot glue for best results) it to a sheet of corrugated plastic. You can buy both these items for a few bucks at a home improvement store like Home Depot.

Next, use some ducting to trace a round, duct-sized hole on the foam/plastic. Note: Cut out the duct-sized hole in the foam/corrugated plastic near the top of where it will be mounted. Remember, heat rises, so having the air exit near the top of the window is most efficient.

Run the ducting through the hole you cut, and right up to the wicker blinds. The ducting should be butted up against the wicker blinds so that heat escapes directly outside (since it will be able to pass through the blinds easily). Use duct tape to hold the foam/plastic in place, then use more duct tape to hold the ducting in place. At the end, after everything is placed and you’re happy with how everything looks, you will use a staple gun to staple all your duct tape in place, but don’t worry about that yet.

I also used duct tape to secure the foam to the window because it’s cheap, easy to use, and is very durable when combined with staples.

Normally you want to ensure ducting is as straight as possible, but in this case, make sure that the ducting bends a little during its path. The bends act as a “light trap” to prevent light from being visible behind the wicker blinds.

Use a staple gun to reinforce anywhere you use duct tape, including where the ducting goes through the hole you made in the foam.

I like using foam + corrugated plastic because it’s inexpensive and easy to cut the hole for the exhaust. Having the foam/plastic combo in the window increases the suction in the room so more hot air is vented out and blocks light (no light gets in or out). As an added bonus, the foam dramatically reduces the noise of the fan (so you can just barely hear it even when you’re standing right outside the window).

Awesome Homemade Fake Window

Sent in by a reader named Ray. Love this idea!

This grower needed an entry and exit hole in this window, which is why there are two holes cut out. The hole at the top is going to become the exhaust port to vent out hot air. The hole at the bottom will be how new fresh air enters the grow space.

With a small entry hole like this, the grower would need an intake fan to help move air into the grow space. If this were just a passive intake (no intake fan), then the intake hole should be about 4 times the size of the exit hole. This helps prevent the exhaust fan from working too hard, and will cool the area more efficiently.

This next picture shows the side that will become the front (outward-facing) part of the fake window. This setup allows air to pass in and out freely but blocks light from both sides.

After adding some fake curtains, this secret window exhaust is really starting to come together.

Here’s what that window looks like from the inside when it’s been hooked up. The heat exhaust is on top while the intake is on the bottom.

Completely undetectable from the outside. No one would ever give this window a second glance.

From the grower: “I prefer to use mini blinds, but these curtains were all I had at the time.”

Jump to…

Secrets to Stealthy Growing

How to Control Smells

Choosing the Right Grow Light

MH/HPS Grow Light Tutorial

The post Air Circulation & Exhaust Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Why Temperature Matters to YOU as a Grower

• Problems With Cold Temps
• Problems With Hot Temps
• VPD: Relation Between Temperature and Humidity

Optimal Temperature at Different Life Stages

Choose the Right Grow Lights For Your Space

How to Control Temperature – Step-by-Step

Introduction

Cannabis plants like a temperature similar to humans, or a little warmer – not too dry, not too humid.

For a lot of indoor growers, that is all you need to worry about. If it feels too hot or too cold for you in your grow area, it’s probably too hot or too cold for your cannabis plants as well.

Cannabis plants like about the same temperature as humans!

If your grow room feels warm or cold, humid or dry, that is a sign that you may want to look into changing the temperature or humidity of your grow area.

Generally, cannabis plants prefer temperatures in the 70-85 °F (20-30 °C) range during the day when lights are on. When grow lights are off (their “night”), cannabis plants are happy with slightly cooler temps.

Optimal Temps For Growing Cannabis

Vegetative Stage: Young growing cannabis plants in the vegetative stage like it a little warmer in the 70-85°F (20-30°C) range. More about temps in the vegetative stage.

Flowering Stage: In the flowering stage (when cannabis plants start making buds), it’s best to keep temps slightly cooler, around 65-80°F (18-26°C). This isn’t for the plants themselves as much as to ensure the best bud quality. Slightly cooler temperatures in the second half of the flowering stage helps produce the best bud color, trichome production, density, and smell. To really bring out colors, aim for a 10°F (8°C) difference between day and night. More about temps in the flowering stage.

Proper temperature brings out colors and can increase bud quality

7 Essential Concepts About Temperature Control

1. Venting is your friend – Hot air should vent out of the grow space if heat is a problem. Vent air to the outdoors if you want to prevent the hot air from being recirculated around the grow room.
2. Fans only push air around – It’s a common misconception that fans bring down the temperature, but fans don’t cool the air. They provide a breeze and help level out the temperature within an area. If it’s hot in your grow tent but cool in your room, then a fan will help equalize the temperatures. But if your entire room is too hot overall, then fans won’t bring the temperature down.
3. ACs and Evaporative Coolers bring the temperature down – Besides exhausting your heat outdoors, the only way to bring the temperature down is to use an AC or Evaporative Cooler. Note: An AC will work in any climate, but evaporative coolers need dry air and only work when the humidity is under 30%.
4. Strain makes a difference – Heat and cold bother certain plants more than others. The strain has a significant effect on a plant’s heat or cold resistance. Get a list of heat-resistant strains.
5. Choose the right light schedule – Too hot during the day or too cold at night? Switch your timer’s on/off cycle, so your grow light is on at night and off in the day. Switching the time your grow lights are turned on will help equalize day and night temperatures. It may even reduce your electricity bill as some people get charged less for electricity used at night. Keeping grow lights off during the day will help with heat, while your grow lights being on at night will keep plants warmer when it’s the coldest.
6. Get Extra Help – Here are 3 supplements that help cannabis with heat stress, and here are some tips for growers dealing with the cold.

Why Temperature Matters to YOU As a Grower

Why Is temperature critical when growing cannabis? Can cannabis stand freezing temps? What happens if your grow room gets too hot?

Different afflictions can happen from high or low temps, so let me break that down for you.

Learn more details below…

Too Low (Cold) Temps

Colder temps will tend to slow down growth. Temps lower than 60°F (15°C) tend to upset plant growth, and freezing temperatures will shock or even kill a cannabis plant. Some plants continue growing in the cold without signs of stress, but they often don’t yield as well as they should given the amount of light they receive.

Plants are also more susceptible to certain types of mold when it’s cool, especially if it’s damp, too. Mold sometimes occurs after frost melts and gets water all over your plants.

Colder temps and significant temperature fluctuations contribute to the over-purpling of leaves and can also reduce photosynthesis.

A plant that is grown in relatively cold temps can survive, but it will never grow as fast or as well as a plant living in a good environment. Indoor plants tend to be much more susceptible to cold than outdoor grown plants.

This plant is drooping after experiencing a cold night

Read some tips about growing cannabis in the cold

Too High (Hot) Temps

While cannabis plants don’t usually die from the heat, too hot temps will cause plants to grow much more slowly.

Please note temps above 80°F (26°C) in the flowering stage will slow down bud growth and may cause them to become airy and loose. The heat can also reduce the potency and smell of your buds. Keeping the grow room temperature under control is especially important in the flowering/budding stage!

In the heat, cannabis is also more susceptible to many problems, including spider mites, white powdery mildew (especially if it gets humid, too), root rot, nutrient burn (from increased water transpiration), increased stretching, wilting due to root oxygen deprivation, and reduced “smelliness” of buds (as terpenes can burn away at higher temps).

More About the Upper Limits of Temperature

• With bright grow lights (such as LEDs or 600W HPS and brighter), cannabis plants of all stages can thrive at slightly higher temps up to a max of about 85°F (30°C) even with no CO2 enrichment, as long as there is low relative humidity and plenty of air movement.

• Cannabis plants can thrive at even higher temperatures, up to an ultimate max of about 95°F (35°C), in an environment with low humidity, extremely bright grow lights, and enriched CO2 (above 1500 PPM) – this is not your average grow! Learn more about CO2 here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/co2-marijuana-yields

• However, it’s essential to pay attention to bud development. Just because the plants are okay doesn’t mean buds are going to be the highest quality possible.

What else is affected by the temperature in the grow room?

• Bud Color – The temperature experienced by your plants influences the color of buds and leaves. The temperature either suppresses or brings out blues, purples, and pinks if your strain has the genetics for it. Learn how to grow pink or purple buds.

• Plant Growth Patterns – Temperature fluctuations can actually change how your plant grows! Warmer night temperatures tend to slow down upward growth. Cannabis generally prefers a cooler temperature at night. Maintaining slightly lower temps during the dark period will encourage your plant to grow as fast as possible.

• Relative Humidity – Temperature has a significant effect on the relative humidity of your grow area.

• Drying & Curing – Temperature is incredibly vital to the drying & curing process. A professional dry/cure is one of the most significant factors when it comes to producing top-shelf buds.

Cool night air can trigger purpling in some plants

Tip: Use Temperature to Help Control Growth!

Cannabis generally prefers slightly cooler temperature at night, and warmer night temperatures will tend to slow down upward growth. But… you can occasionally use this knowledge to your advantage to help control plant growth!

By artificially raising temperatures during the dark period, it will slow stretching plants that are growing too tall too quickly. That means warmer nights can be a helpful way to reduce the “stretch” if you’re growing in a situation where you don’t have a lot of vertical room. And never forget about supercropping, the ultimate way to break down the height of your plant at any time.

By keeping temps a bit cooler during the dark period, you will encourage your plants to grow as fast as possible.

Temperature & Humidity (VPD)

In this section, you will learn a little bit more about how the temperature in your grow room affects the humidity.

Before we talk about VPD, here are some humidity guidelines for growing cannabis

Although those are general guidelines, plants can thrive at different relative humidities depending on the temperature of the air.

Once the air becomes too saturated with water, it tends to form dew or films of water over leaves, which leads to mildew and bud rot. Plants also tend to grow more slowly in very high humidity.

Wet or humid conditions can lead to bud rot

Temperature and relative humidity (RH) are closely related to each other. Sometimes you can overcome a problem with one by fixing the other.

“Humidity” measures how much water is currently “being held” in the air. “Relative humidity” compares that amount to the maximum amount of water that air holds at that temperature.

For example, Warm air can “hold” more evaporated water than cool air

For those interested in learning more about the science behind this, there is a term used by greenhouse growers known as VPD or “Vapour Pressure Deficit,” which roughly measures the temperature and relative humidity.

According to Wikipedia: “the ideal range for VPD in a greenhouse is from 0.45 kPa to 1.25 kPa, ideally sitting at around 0.85 kPa. As a general rule, most plants grow well at VPDs of between 0.8 to 0.95 kPa.”

When growing cannabis plants, relative humidity (RH) is just as important as the temperature of the air and is something you should pay attention to, especially if you notice that your grow room is dry or humid.

If your grow area is particularly dry or humid, you should pay attention to RH (Relative Humidity) in the grow room…

You need to control both temperature and RH at the same time to get the best results when growing cannabis.

• If the air is too hot and dry (high VPD), plants will tend to have slow, stretched growth.

• If the air is too cool and humid (low VPD), plants grow slowly and are prone to problems with mold or fungus.

Note: Pay attention to buds. The best VPD for water moving through the plant does not necessarily match the best temperature/humidity for bud growth, smell, and development. Additionally, each plant is different. As growers, we care more about bud quality than VPD, so make sure to pay attention to your plants before VPD numbers.

Learn more about humidity and growing cannabis: https://www.growweedeasy.com/humidity-growing-cannabis

Clones prefer higher humidity than plants with developed roots

Optimal Temperature At Different Life Stages

Clones

Preference: Comfortable Room Temperature or Slightly Warmer 70-85°F (20-30°C) – High humidity preferred (60-80%)

Clones do not have a root system yet, and so they need to get all their water via transpiration of the leaves until their roots form. Therefore, clones prefer humid conditions with plenty of water evaporated in the air. That’s why many people use a humidity dome or “cloner” to artificially raise the humidity for clones. However, like anything in life, there can be too much of a good thing. You shouldn’t let the humidity get higher than 80% if possible because it can encourage the growth of mold or mildew, and may cause plants to root slower.

Clones seem to root and grow the fastest when the temperature is slightly warm, about 70-85°F (20-30°C), just like a cannabis plant in the vegetative stage.

Learn more about cloning cannabis plants here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/complete-guide-cloning-marijuana

Did you know you can clone cannabis in a cup of water?

Seedling & Vegetative Stage

Preference: Comfortable Room Temperature or Slightly Warmer 70-85°F (20-30°C) – Avoid very low humidity

Young seedlings tend to grow faster with mid-to-high humidity and warm temperatures.

However, a cannabis plant’s ability to withstand drier and colder/warmer conditions tends to increase as it gets older. Outdoor-grown plants tend to be much more robust about temperature fluctuations than indoor plants.

It’s good to aim for a temperature of 70-85°F (20-30°C), during the vegetative stage. It’s not always possible, but try to give plants slightly cooler temps during the dark period than during the light period as long as you stay within the recommended range.

Maintaining slightly cooler night temperatures (in the specified range) tends to promote the fastest and healthiest vegetative growing for cannabis plants.

Two happy vegetative plants getting a comfortable 75°F (24°C)

CO2 Enrichment Changes the Optimal Vegetative Temperature

Vegetative cannabis plants like higher temps when you supplement the grow room with CO2, but there are a few critical things you must know about CO2.

For CO2 enrichment to be successful, you must… 

• Seal the environment and maintain at least 1500 PPM of CO2 in the air
• Provide a lot of light (more light than your plants would typically be able to use)​
• Keep temperatures between 85°F (30°C) and 95°F (35°C).
• Avoid high temperatures after buds start forming, so they develop properly

​Learn more about CO2 here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/co2-marijuana-yields

Flowering Stage

Preference: Avoid hot temps! 65-80°F (18-26°C) – Mid-to-Low humidity – Slightly cooler at night than during the day

In general, you should strive to keep temps under 80°F (26°C) throughout the flowering stage, and especially towards the crucial second half when buds are in the midst of development.

The temperature in the flowering stage is too important to ignore. That’s because keeping temps low during the flowering stage will help your plants produce the most potent, dense, smelly, and trichome-covered buds as possible.

Unfortunately, higher temperatures during the flowering stage can cause plant problems and slowed bud growth. It can also cause terpenes and potency to evaporate into the air.

What that means is if your buds stay too hot during the flowering stage, the higher temperature may accidentally be burning away some of your terpenes and cannabinoids (reducing the final taste/smell/potency of your buds after harvest).

Read more about how to improve the taste and smell of your buds here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/better-taste-better-smell

It is especially important to make sure buds are not exposed to too-hot temps after week 6 or 7 of flowering, as this is when the terpene content in the buds starts to ramp up.

Give plants colder temperatures at night, especially towards the end of the flowering stage

Note: Slightly chilly is okay, but never expose your plants to freezing temps!

Too-cold air can cause buds to grow airy and loose

Bonus! In addition to improving taste and smell, terpenes can affect the color of plants and cannabis buds. For example, terpenoids are what gives tomatoes their red color. The same process may be at work with certain cannabis strains, too. By maintaining lower night temperatures in the last few weeks before your cannabis harvest, you will help bring out colors in your cannabis (purple, pink, blue, etc.). Of course, this only works if your strain has the genes to produce colored cannabis buds. Most strains will only grow green buds, but if your plant can produce other colors, cooler night temps can help bring them out!

Drying & Curing Buds

While starting with good genetics and properly caring for plants is key to growing top-shelf quality buds, your job isn’t over when you cut down your plants at harvest. I’d say that almost 50% of the final bud quality is determined after you cut down your plants, but how you choose to dry & cure your buds.

Buds that have been professionally dried and cured are more potent, denser, smoother to smoke, look better, and have that coveted “sticky-icky” feeling.

The main thing you must do as a grower to professionally dry and cure your buds is to maintain the proper temperature and humidity during the process. If you follow the right method, you never have to worry about mold or overdrying, and you will get beautifully cured buds every time.

Learn more about how to professionally dry & cure your buds here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/how-to-cure-buds

Choose Proper Grow Lights For Your Grow Area

Many cannabis growers worry about how their indoor grow lights will affect the temperature of their grow room. Heat production from grow lights is a valid concern, and this section will break everything down for you.

Get a complete breakdown of ALL cannabis grow lights

Fluorescent Lighting

I generally don’t recommend growing cannabis plants under fluorescent grow lights. In almost every case, you’ll get better results (bigger yields, less heat, higher density) by growing weed with LED grow lights instead.

But for some growers, or in some parts of the world, fluorescent lights are your best choice, in which case they can be used. However, the struggle is you need to keep them very close to your plants, within 4 inches (10 cm) from the tops of buds, to get good results in the flowering stage.

Fluorescent lights are underpowered and good poor yields and bud density unless you keep them extremely close to buds as they form.

Learn about other fluorescent grow lights here

Learn how to grow 3 oz of weed with a small LED for under $300

HID Grow Lights – Metal Halide (MH), High Pressure Sodium (HPS) & LECs/CMH

MH/HPS/LEC grow lights are known for using a lot of electricity and producing a lot of heat. And while that’s true for the bigger models of HID lights, I think a lot of growers overestimate how much heat will be produced by the smaller HID models.

For example, a lot of people recommend that new growers get CFLs instead of HIDs so that there’s less heat in the grow room. Yet it’s essential to keep in mind that 250W of HPS light will produce about the same amount of heat as 250W of CFLs, except that you’ll get more light and better yields with HIDs. Another advantage of HIDs over smaller lights like CFLs is good models of HIDs come pre-built to accommodate cooling via an exhaust system.

That’s why it’s easier to cool an equivalent amount of HIDs compared to CFLs.

However, HIDs do need more height than growing with CFLs, so if the height is limited, than HIDs may not be the right choice for you.

But, if you do have the height to accommodate an MH/HPS light, I highly recommend going for that over CFL grow lights. In my opinion, CFL grow lights a best in very short/tight spaces where ultimate stealth is the biggest goal.

Learn more about MH/HPS grow lights here

Learn About LEC/CMH grow lights (highly recommended as it seems to beat other HID lights for yields, smell, and trichome production)

LED Grow Lights

LEDs are known for needing just a little electricity and for producing less heat than HID grow lights like MH or HPS lights.

But is all the marketing hype true?

It’s actually a lot more complicated than just a “yes” or “no” answer. The truth is, some LED grow lights work incredible, and some are a ripoff. It’s helpful to educate yourself about LED grow lights to make sure you get exactly what you’re looking for.

Learn more about LED grow lights here

How to Control Temperature in the Grow Room Step-By-Step

1. Get a Thermometer
2. Refer to Optimal Temperature Chart
3. Correct High or Low Temps (explained)

Step 1: Get a Way To Monitor Temperature (Thermometer)

In addition to measuring the temperature, it’s also important to know the relative humidity (RH) of your grow room. So you might as well get a thermometer that measures both temperature and humidity at the same time.

But it’s not necessarily that easy. The quest to find the perfect thermometer/humidity monitor can be tough.

While you can find cheap ones at the local store, you may notice that a lot of the cheaper models are a few degrees “off”. A few degrees probably won’t have a massive effect on your results, though. Some growers will buy 2 or 3 different thermometers and use the average to determine what’s really going on in the grow room. I have several that I’ve picked up over the years, and they all sit in my grow room now.

Here’s a popular thermometer/hygrometer that has all standard features and costs $12

This thermometer was made for incubating chicken eggs, which is why the humidity number is displayed so prominently (humidity is critical to egg hatching rates). I’ve found that many thermometers slowly die from the heat of a grow light, but this particular one keeps on trucking despite the extreme environment. I bought one over 5 years ago, and it still works great.

This thermometer ($25) is resistant to heat from grow lights

It can be tough on the quest to find the perfect thermometer/humidity monitor, especially if you don’t want to spend a pretty penny. I like this one. It only costs $8, and it comes with a probe. I have the probe hanging in my grow tent near the plants, with the screen outside the tent. This setup makes it easy to see the temperature and humidity exactly where the plants are without having to open the tent.

I like that this thermometer/hygrometer ($8) has a probe you can hang in the grow space.

Step 2: Refer to Temperature Chart

Chart – optimal temperature for growing cannabis plants

Vegetative Stage: 70-85°F (20-30°C)

Flowering Stage: 65-80°F (18-26°C)

If your temperature is too high or low….

Step 3: Correct Too-High or Too-Low Temps (explained)

There are many tools available to help you control the temperature of your grow room.

Both hot and cold in your grow room? For those who struggle with both hot and cold temps where you live, you may want to consider getting an All-in-One Heater & Air Conditioner.

Too Hot: What to Do

1. Exhaust System: Make sure you have a sound exhaust system to pull out hot air and increase air circulation to your plants. If you don’t have an exhaust fan pulling hot air from your grow lights outside, fixing that is your first step. Remember! An exhaust system is important not only keeps temps down; it improves the air circulation your plants need to thrive. Learn how to set up a proper exhaust system here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/hps-grow-lights-setup

Tips for controlling the heat in the grow space using an exhaust system

2. Air Circulation: If there is a lack of proper air circulation in the grow room,  you will tend to get hot spots that can damage your plants. It’s always a great idea to install fans in the grow room to help circulate the air inside the tent. Remember, don’t point fans directly at plants. Leaves can be rustling slightly, but stems should not be waving around due to the direct breeze of the fan. I like to point fans somewhat over or under the canopy, so it doesn’t aim directly at plants. Sometimes I point the fan at a wall to move the air around without blowing on the plants.

3. Change the Light Schedule: If you’re in a situation where the temperature is climbing too high at specific parts of the day, then you can change your light schedule so that your grow lights are off during the hottest part of the day. For example, in the vegetative stage, your plants need 18+ hours of light each day. If it gets too hot in the middle of the day, you could set your timer to turn your lights off for 6 hours during that part of the day. This strategy will not fix a major heat problem but can help alleviate symptoms of heat stress during a short hot spell or heatwave.

4. Consider Getting Different or Smaller Grow Lights: Learn about different grow setups.

5. AC or Evaporative Cooler: If you have good air exchange and have tried all the steps above, but the temperature in the grow area is still too hot, you will need to use a piece of equipment that can lower the temperature of the air.

6. Get a Heat-Resistant Strain: Some strains can naturally handle heat without a problem.

Air Conditioner – (some are portable, some ACs fit in your window) – in addition to cooling the air, an AC will also tend to lower the relative humidity of the air. To be effective, and AC must be able to exhaust hot air outside the house, just like hot grow lights. If the air outside the grow tent is already too warm, you will need to get an AC to pre-cool the air before it enters the grow tent. No matter how strong your exhaust system, it won’t be able to bring the temperature lower than your ambient room temperature. If you need to lower the ambient room temperature, you’re going to need a way to cool the air, and air conditioners are hands-down the most effective way to cool your air.

Swamp cooler – (also known as an “evaporative cooler”) Ideal for those where it’s both hot & dry as the swamp cooler will bring down temps while also adding additional humidity to the air. Works best when humidity is too low, and the temperature is too high. Repeat: these do NOT work well if your humidity is above 30% RH! Read how one user used a swamp cooler to control his temps & humidity.

Too Cold: What To Do

If it’s too cold in your grow room, sometimes you have additional options besides just getting a heater, such as getting a stronger/hotter grow light or using extra insulation to contain the heat of the grow lights you do have.

If your plant is not insulated from the cold (for example, if it’s growing in the middle of your garage, basement, attic, etc.), then the first step is to make sure your plant is adequately insulated. It’s cheaper and easier to insulate a small space, so create a dedicated grow box or get a grow tent that will act as the outward bounds of your grow area.

Then you can buy rolls of insulating materials for cheap at your local home improvement store and use these to insulate your grow area further. Insulation will help keep the cold air out, and the hot air inside.

Reflectix material is both reflective and insulating. Line the inside of your grow space to help contain heat.

With a properly insulated grow box, your grow lights will likely provide enough heat to keep your cannabis plants warm unless you live in a freezing cold area, or perhaps if you’re in the middle of winter or a cold spell.

If you must get a heater to keep your plants warm, avoid letting it blow hot air directly on your plants, and especially avoid ever having it in the tent with your plants. You want a heater that radiates heat out evenly, instead of pushing out a blast of hot air like a space heater. Never allow hot air to blow directly on any part of the plant. Most heaters can turn on and off depending on the temperature, so they turn off when unneeded.

The following model of heater is an excellent example of the type of heater you want for your grow room – it puts out gentle heat and has a thermostat you can use to have it automatically turn on and off as needed. The heat radiates out instead of being pushed out (which you don’t want in your grow room). It’s almost entirely silent. Plus, it comes with a timer, so you can have it preset to turn on just before lights go off for the night (or whatever you need for your space).

This heater gently radiates heat instead of blow hot air

Keep roots warm and up off the cold floor

If you’re growing in a basement or garage, it’s common for the floor to be cold. If growing plants in containers, it can help to put them on a piece or some other barrier to prevent them from sitting directly on the floor.

Some people are growing in a garage or attic that is okay during the day but is getting too cold at night when their grow lights go off.

It can help to switch your timer’s on/off cycle, so your grow light is on at night and off in the day.

Switching the light schedules helps equalize day and night temperatures. Keeping grow lights on at night will keep plants warmer when it’s the coldest.

Change your timer so grow lights are on at night

However, to get most cannabis plants to start making buds, you need to give them at least 12 hours of complete darkness every night, which means grow lights need to be off for 12 hours/day. For some growers in a wintry climate, a 12-hour dark period (even during the day) will send the temperature plummeting too low.

But did you know there’s a type of cannabis that will make buds even if you leave your grow lights on for 24 hours a day?

​​​​Auto-flowering strains let you keep your grow lights on for 24 hours/day, which helps keep plants warm in cool growing areas!

They are described as “auto-flowering” because these strains will automatically start making buds and be ready to harvest in about 3 months, no matter what light schedule they get! This lets you leave your grow lights on all day, every day, so your plants stay warm!

Learn more about auto-flowering strains!

An example of autoflowering plants

Be Prepared For When the Electricity Goes Out!

One challenge for growers in wintry climates is the impending chance of a power outage during the winter months. Indoor growers rely on electricity to keep plants alive, especially in the winter, so try to prepare ahead of time!

Learn How to Prepare for a Power Outage!

And while you’re here…

Learn How to Prepare for Other Common Growing Emergencies!

Strain Makes a Difference!

Some strains are much hardier than others when it comes to the cold. If possible, it helps to pick a cold-resistant strain. Learn where you can get seeds.

One advantage of cold temperatures is it tends to bring out colors like purple and pink

Jump to…

Complete Guide to Cannabis Grow Lights

10-Step Quick Start Grow Guide

7 Steps to Growing Top-Shelf Buds

Advanced Growth Techniques

The post Cannabis Temperature Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

1. Bad Lighting – Grow light is wrong spectrum, too small, or too far from cannabis plants.
2. Over Watering – Giving too much water at a time, or watering too often.
3. Genetics Wreck You – When bad results aren’t your fault.
4. Nutrient Overload – Giving cannabis too much nutrients and/or supplements.
5. Excessive Nutrient Deficiencies – When cannabis deficiencies get out of control.
6. Privacy Concerns – Being overly carefree about cannabis stealth and privacy.
7. Harvest Too Early – Cannabis buds need enough time to fully develop!

Many new cannabis growers learn hard lessons on their own. Too many marijuana growers feel embarrassed to share problem pictures and lessons learned. That’s why I’m here to help by talking about common beginner growing problems openly. I regularly see pictures of struggling cannabis plants whose caretakers don’t know what’s wrong.

Growing amazing weed at home starts by avoiding common problems.

Often, a small but vital piece of plant care knowledge is all the grower needs to quickly solve their problem. This is a problem because growing the best weed (and getting the biggest yields) is partly dependent on preventing major plant problems from affecting your grow.

Happy plants reward you!

With this in mind, I compiled a short list of the most common mistakes I see new marijuana growers make. Read below to find out if you’re making one of these common blunders. Plus get the fixes!

1. Bad Lighting (not enough light, or not the right kind of light)

I’ve come across quite a few pictures sent in where a grower has a plant sitting under a typical household bulb, a tiny LED grow light that’s meant for lettuce, or even on a window sill while it’s clearly snowing outside.

Tall, thin plants? Give more light if your plant is growing tall and stretchy with a lot of space between nodes. Growing tall is a sign the cannabis seedling is “reaching” for the light.

Tall Seedling = Needs More Light

Younger cannabis plants can grow okay without much light. But without strong light levels, plants do not grow big buds in the flowering stage.

This window plant is tall and thin with small buds. The cause? Not enough light.

The following garden has a great LED grow light for growing weed, but it’s turned down to 50% power and kept too far away from the tops of plants. As a result, the plants grew tall and stretchy. In the flowering stage, all the buds stayed small.

Always keep LEDs the recommended distance away. Cannabis plants need a lot of light to grow properly with big, fat buds!

Grow light too far with power turned down. Low light levels made stretchy plants, small buds.

Without enough light, cannabis buds simply do not fatten up.

Example of a small, airy bud from too little light in the flowering stage. Low smell, little sparkle.

The specific grow light matters. For example, the following picture shows a plain bad LED grow light for growing weed. No matter how you use a grow light like this, cannabis buds won’t fatten up properly. Make sure to always use a grow light made for cannabis plants.

Example of poor spectrum LEDs for growing weed. With a poor spectrum, buds stay tiny no matter what you do!

You should see some green. Cannabis plants need some amount of green in the light spectrum for the best growth. When leaves appear completely purple without any hint of green, that means there is no green in the spectrum. Not good!

You may have noticed that even with “full spectrum” or “wide spectrum” LEDs, the light often appears pink or purple. This is because cannabis plants (especially flowering ones) like a lot of red. But with a good spectrum for growing cannabis, your plants should generally still appear in full color.

In this example, the light from the LED still appears purple (look at the sides of the tent), but the plants are full color. That’s a good sign.

Good LEDs make big buds!

Buds need the right light to thrive. Without enough of the right kind of light, cannabis plants grow tall and stretchy, buds stay small, and bud structure tends to be loose without much smell or sparkle.

But if you give cannabis plants an awesome grow light, they reward you!

Lots of good light grows the best bud quality!

How to Avoid Problems with Cannabis Grow Lights

The amount and spectrum of light given to your plant has an enormous impact on growth rates, bud density, and yields. Plants need light to grow, and plants need intense wide-spectrum light to make big buds. You can expect the amount of bud produced to be somewhat proportional to the light intensity and quality.

• 100+ Watt Grow Light – Small grow light = small harvest. Cannabis growers should usually have at least 100W of grow light ensures the best results (expect 2-4 oz with a 100W LED). Bigger lights are necessary for bigger yields. What’s the best size grow light for you?
• Cannabis-Specific LEDs – LEDs are the best grow light for most home growers (LEDs run cooler, use less electricity, and produce better bud quality that most bulb-style grow lights). You tend to get the best results with LED grow lights that have been designed for and tested on actual cannabis plants. Generic and unknown LED brands produce less consistent results. Some LEDs have an actually bad spectrum or design that keeps buds tiny even if you do everything right.
• Proper Distance Away – Adjust grow light to keep it the recommended distance from the tops of plants. Try to keep grow lights as close as possible to plants without causing signs of light stress on the top leaves (yellowing, deficiencies, etc.) The product details should say how far to keep your particular grow light for the best results.

But that doesn’t mean you need to go out and buy a huge or high-priced grow light for your garden. These days there are affordable small intense 100W LEDs and incredibly efficient mid-size LEDs that deliver high light levels without a ton of heat or electricity.

Learn the best size grow lights for your grow space and cannabis yield goals.

Recommended: 5 best LED grow lights for growing weed.

2. Overwatering (watering too often or too much at a time)

Many of us were brought up thinking that plants need sunshine and water every day. This gets combined with a new grower’s “thirst” to provide for their plants (see what I did there?). As a result, many beginner cannabis growers unintentionally water their plants more than needed.

Overwatering can cause a surprising array of symptoms.

Overwatering prevents plant roots from getting enough oxygen, which causes cannabis plants to adopt a droopy posture. Overwatering can even kill plants in severe cases. Luckily, overwatered plants can usually be restored to full former glory with proper watering practices.

How to Avoid Overwatering:

Overwatering comes from watering too frequently or giving too much water at a time. Here’s how to water properly:

• Soil – Water plants when the soil feels dry up to your first knuckle (or if the pot feels light). Learn how to water plants in soil. Learn how to water plants in soil.
• Coco Coir – Aim to water plants every 1-2 days. If coco is staying wet for 3+ days, try giving less water at a time until plants get bigger and start drinking more. Wait until the topsoil looks partially dry. Don’t water if the top inch feels “wet”. If the container feels light, it’s definitely time to water. Learn how to water plants in coco.
• Seedlings – Learn how to avoid overwatering seedlings (very common!).

For DWC/Water Based Hydro, make sure you have large airstones that make lots of bubbles. Since overwatering is usually triggered by oxygen deprivation in the water, you can actually overwater your hydroponic plant (in a sense) by not providing enough oxygen (not giving enough bubbles).

Learn more about proper cannabis watering practices

3. Genetics wreck you

Oh, how tempting it is to grow a bagseed (a seed you find in your buds). You like the buds it came from, and it’s free. What’s the problem?

Many growers are pulled in by the prospect of growing a free seed found in their marijuana, and many of these growers get disappointed. That’s because seeds you find may be duds, males, runts, or hermaphrodites. What’s worse, even when plants from bag seeds grow well, the buds may not be anything like the ones you found them in. That’s because the bud traits you want have not been stabilized into a strain.

Using random cannabis seeds (even from dank bud) can deliver unpredictable results. It’s true that some bagseed plants end up awesome. But with bagseed, it’s also possible plants grow wild or produce small airy buds with low potency. Yes, even if the original weed was dense and potent!

Don’t grow this by accident! Bad genetics produce bad buds even if you do everything perfectly.

Even if you buy strains from a trustworthy breeder, it’s still important to get the right strain as opposed to buying the cheapest cannabis seeds you can find.

The following picture shows a side-by-side example of how strain can affect bud quality. These 3 strains were grown in identical conditions under a Mars Hydro TSL 2000 LED grow light but the different genetics produced wildly different results.

Here’s a closeup of buds from the two cannabis plants on the left. The buds on the green Amnesia Lemon plant looked good but had a loose bud structure, weren’t potent to smoke, and tested at 14% THC in the lab. On the other hand, the purple Pacific Punch plant produced far smaller buds, but they were denser, smoother to smoke, and tested almost twice as potent at 26% THC from the lab. The Pacific Punch buds were just better than the Amnesia Lemon buds in every way despite getting the same nutrients, grow medium, grow light, and overall care. Strain makes a big difference. Here’s the full grow journal.

 Choose the right cannabis seeds to get what you’re looking for.

How to Avoid Bad Genetics:

Get good seeds from a reputable source. If you’re going to spend money on good lights and nutrients, you’re wasting that potential on a plant with inferior genes or the wrong sex.

Remember when it comes to genetics…

• Poor genetics always produce poor buds even if you do everything perfectly right.
• Great genetics can grow great buds even if you make a lot of mistakes!

There are many trustworthy sources of seeds. I’ve been using Seed Supreme for the last year or so because they have fast shipping from the US and an excellent selection from many different breeders. Recently, I’ve also been using Seedsman because they have better prices for USD customers due to the current conversion rates. In any case, it’s a good idea to go with a company that will reimburse you in case your seeds don’t arrive or end up being duds.

Growers who start with clones from another grower should exercise caution because clones are a common way to get bugs. My main suggestion is to know the person who is selling/giving you the clones and, if possible, inspect the clones thoroughly. Even better, quarantine the clones away from your other plants for a week or two while watching for signs of pests. Diseases/pests like spider mites or thrips can easily spread from clones to your entire garden and become unwelcome guests that won’t leave.

Get classic 2000s effects with great yields and easy-to-grow: Skunk #1

BlimBurn Seeds is a seed breeder that specializes in capturing legendary genetics and clone-only strains in seed form, like their Blue Dream.

Recommended “chill times” strain: Pineapple Chunk is an easy-to-grow plant with great yields and amazing bud quality even if you make a lot of mistakes.

Recommended “so potent you can’t think” strain: Platinum Cookies is famous for its potency. Don’t enjoy these buds if you’ve got something to do later that day! Read my full review of Platinum Cookies.

For unique appearance, great yields, and excellent bud effects: Zweet Inzanity Rbx. Every time I grow this strain it is a crowd favorite!

Recommended autoflowering strain: Alaskan Purple Auto gives you the convenience of automatic flowering (buds automatically form and are ready to harvest about 3 months from germination) yet produces the bud quality of a photoperiod strain. Learn about auto-flowering strains.

4. Nutrients & Supplements Overload

This is a mistake that’s easy to make, and the majority of growers will do this at some point. I know I have done this from time to time. This is another example of “over-loving” your plants with too much of a good thing.

Here’s another part of the problem: Nutrient companies include a feeding schedule with their nutrient systems, and most of the feeding schedules recommend nutrient dosages that are too high for cannabis plants. If you add supplements on top of high levels of nutrients, you can majorly stress out your plants.

Overfeeding leads to a well-known cannabis affliction called nutrient burn (commonly referred to as “nute burn”). Nutrient burn won’t kill your plants in most cases, but they will leave an eye-catching reminder of their presence for the remainder of the grow.

Brown leaf tips all over the plant are a sign of nutrient burn, which is usually caused by too high levels of nutrients.

Note: If you’re seeing yellow tips on only the top leaves, it may be light stress or a nutrient deficiency caused by incorrect pH. If you’re seeing yellow or brown around the outside of the leaves (not just the tips) you may actually be seeing a copper deficiency or potassium deficiency. I’ve also occasionally seen a plant get discolored tips from overwatering, so that may be something to consider if plants seem droopy and you feel like you’ve been watering a lot.

How to Avoid Giving Too Much Nutrients:

Use the same feeding schedule that comes with your nutrient system, but only use one-half (1/2) of the recommended dosage to start. You can typically only give full-strength nutrients to cannabis plants that are thriving, growing fast, and under strong grow lights.

Example: If the feeding schedule calls for 2 tsp of nutrient solution per gallon of water, use only 1 tsp at first.

You should raise the nutrient levels if your plant starts getting pale or lime green all over, because that’s the main sign it needs more nutrients overall. For example, slowly move up to 3/4 strength or full strength as needed.

Here’s a cannabis plant with the right color vs one that is too pale and needs higher levels of nutrients

If plants are growing slower or under weaker grow lights, they need less nutrients and are more likely to experience nutrient burn because plants have reduced nutrition needs when they’re not doing as much photosynthesis. Cannabis plants that are grown under intense grow lights may need full-strength nutrients or even more in some cases.

Learn more about getting the best results with marijuana nutrients.

5. Out-of-Control Nutrient Deficiencies

When you start cultivating cannabis for the first time, there are a lot of acronyms, formulas, and regimens it seems you need to remember. After hearing PPM, NPK, pH, Lucas Formula, 18/6, 24/0, etc., most people want to ignore the jargon and try just water their plant and see what happens.

(Check out our glossary of common growing terms)

The jargon can definitely be overwhelming, and I would agree that a lot of it can actually be ignored… except pH.

Even though this plant has access to nutrients in the soil, the leaves are showing nutrient deficiencies due to receiving low-pH water. Bad root pH can cause all sorts of leaf discoloration, problems, and deficiencies! The problem cleared up as soon as the plant started getting water with a neutral pH.

This nutrient deficiency (yellow/brown patches on leaves) is caused because the pH was too low in the soil

Managing pH is one of the more technical details that pretty much ALL growers have to deal with unless you’re lucky enough to have perfect water.

Even in an organic super soil setup where pH matters less and many growers say pH doesn’t matter at all, you’ll still get nutrient deficiencies if the pH is totally out of whack. In fact, the picture above shows a super soil plant. Bad pH makes for sickly leaves, plants that struggle to make big buds, and overall poor cannabis growth. Soil growers aim for 6-7 pH for the best nutrient absorption. Growers in hydro, coco, and other soilless media aim for 5.5-6.5 pH.

How to Deal with Nutrient Problems Quickly:

To your plant, root pH determines which nutrients can be absorbed. When the pH is in the wrong range, a cannabis plant can’t uptake nutrients properly.

Why? PH affects the bioavailability of nutrients to the roots because each nutrient molecule takes on a different chemical form depending on the local pH. Some forms are easily absorbed by the roots, while other forms are difficult for your roots to uptake. When your plant can’t absorb nutrients due to pH, you’ll see nutrient deficiencies even if the nutrients are physically there.

Get yourself a pH Testing kit and make sure you’re feeding your plants with water in the correct range:

Hydroponics:            5.5 – 6.5 pH (including coco and other soilless media)
Soil:                          6.0 – 7.0 pH

In my experience, most nutrient deficiencies are actually pH problems. Remember this and you’ll keep your plants looking beautiful.

Learn more about checking and adjusting pH to prevent nutrient deficiencies.

6. Privacy Concerns

Even in places where weed is legal to grow, it’s a good idea to keep your garden relatively private. There’s usually no benefit to advertising you are growing cannabis plants and it can sometimes cause problems. Nosy neighbors may give you a hard time, or thieves may learn of your garden and try to steal your plants because they know you’re unlikely to call the police.

Here’s a short list of things I’ve seen in pictures or read in emails.

Don’t do these things!

• Weed in windows sills with a clear view to neighbors and passing traffic
• Uploading pictures of cannabis plants with identifying information (such as mail with name and address visible)
• Growing weed in a low-fenced backyard adjacent to other houses
• Not bothering to filter cannabis odors even though you know the smell bothers people who live near/with you

Don’t do this in open view. It’s common for thieves to steal plants right as they approach harvest!

Or this. The smell from these plants overwhelmed the entire neighborhood. Try to be a considerate neighbor and respectful representative of the growing community

How to Ensure Stealth

I realize I may sound like a stickler… but this is an important topic. Legality, nosy neighbors, and thievery aren’t the only issues here. We need to stick together and ensure we’re good representatives of the home growing movement. It’s so disappointing when someone blatantly angers their neighborhood with the smell and overt display of weed plants “because it’s legal” and they don’t care. This hurts us all.

Unfortunately, many huge marijuana companies are fighting to ban home cultivation so they have a monopoly on growing. For example, powerful business entities helped convince the state of Washington to ban home cultivation despite cannabis being legalized for all adults (growing even a single cannabis plant in Washington nets you a felony with up to 5 years of prison time, though you can walk down the street and buy weed from a store). It’s also legal to buy weed but not grow it in Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.  There are similar laws for medical marijuana patients in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, West Virginia, and Utah. You can purchase, but not grow at home.

Learn more about where weed is legal to grow in the United States

How can it be legal to buy weed, but not plant a seed?! Don’t be ammo for the anti-growing profiteers.

People are trying to take home growing away from us. Because of this, I encourage every grower to be a good neighbor and thoughtful delegate for weed growers everywhere.

Check out our tutorial on how to grow weed in secret. Even if you don’t read that article, here’s the most important stealth advice: don’t smell, don’t tell, don’t sell.

7. Harvest Too Early

Growing marijuana definitely requires a bit of patience to see it until the end. And no part of the grow will test your patience more than waiting for the right time to harvest your cannabis.

(If you’re in a hurry, most autoflowering strains are ready to harvest less than 90 days from germination)

Harvesting too early will reduce the effects/potency of your medicine in addition to reducing the overall weight. Luckily, it’s straightforward to pick the perfect harvest time.

How to Harvest at the Perfect Time:

Check out the pictures below for an overview on when to harvest for the highest potency and best effects. If you want the full scoop on when to harvest your plants, see our “When do I harvest my marijuana plants?” page.

Not Ready

Baby buds (budlets) look like a ball of white hairs. These buds have many weeks to go!

Still Not Ready

As the marijuana plant buds get closer to harvest, they thicken, and those white pistils start to darken and curl up. You’ll notice your buds are slowly getting thicker and denser. However, if you still have a lot of straight white pistils, like this bud, you know you still have a few weeks to go.

Ready to Harvest!

You’re in the weed harvest window when most of the pistils have darkened and curled in. However, sometimes it’s a little challenging to identify when buds are ready since buds can look different at harvest time depending on the strain and how they were grown. Here are pictures of some different cannabis buds that are ready to harvest!

A bud is ready to harvest when most of the hairs darken and curl in

Some marijuana strains have a looser bud structure, but if nearly all the white hairs have curled in you’re in the harvest window.

I hope that this common weed grower mistakes tutorial helps you as much as it would have helped me. Happy growing!

The post 7 Beginner Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

If you’ve ever gone to a forum for advice on growing cannabis, you’ll know that there is no shortage of opinions on what you can do to become a better grower.

Learning new tips and training techniques give you an edge in growing and help you increase your yields. However, there is one thing that I consider to be the most important part of advancing your growing knowledge…

NOT GETTING CAUGHT!

No matter how good you are at growing cannabis, if you get caught and end up in jail, you’ll be in a place where your skills are useless and wasted. Even if growing cannabis is legal where you live, there are still thieves and nosy neighbors you don’t want to learn about your garden.

But fret not! We’ve compiled this easy-to-read list of tips to help keep you out of the sight and minds of people who could ruin your life just for growing a plant.

Remember, the only thing better than increasing the potency and yields of your harvest is making sure you get to keep said harvest.

Let’s get into some tips for Stealth Growing – keeping your grow “under the radar” of other people.

First, the mantra: “No smell, no sell, no tell”

There are a lot of ways to keep you and your grow safe, but this is the heart of it all.

• No smell – No one should be able to smell your grow or smell cannabis on you. This makes you an easy target for police and marijuana haters
• No sell – Statistically, people who are growing cannabis strictly for personal use deal with far less legal trouble than people who sell their cannabis. This even applies in places like Colorado where it’s legal within the state
• No tell – Having fewer people know about your grow reduces the chances of you getting busted by law enforcement or burglarized by thieves. I know it’s hard not to show off your awesome growing skills, but this one secret that needs to stay a secret. In fact, telling someone about your grow is the easiest way to get yourself in trouble. Remember, if you can’t keep your own secret, how can you expect them not to tell someone else?

Growing Indoors vs. Outdoors

There are benefits to both of these growing methods, but when it comes purely to stealth, indoor growing is the way to go. Indoors, you can completely control smell and sound, plus your plants are out of view. Outdoor growing has one potentially major problem that indoor growers are pretty much safe against… people wandering by. This is especially problematic when the plants are being grown on your property. Many outdoor growers have been busted by nosy neighbors, city/utility workers, or just bad weather (floods have revealed hidden outdoor grows, for example). If you can grow indoors, you’ll make yourself that much harder to find.

It’s more stealthy to grow indoors – no one can stumble upon your plants

Smell

In the vegetative stage, some plants have a cannabis smell from the beginning, but most strains tend to make a clean, fresh smell akin to the gardening section in a home improvement store. But once plants get bigger and especially after flowering kicks in, the smell can range from tame to “WHAT IS THAT SMELL?!”

Luckily, this can be easily corrected with several products like carbon filters for in the grow room, or odor neutralizers for living spaces. Some growers use diffusers or candles to help cover up smells on an emergency basis. Additionally, you can try growing cannabis strains that are known for having a more neutral smell (like the ones listed below). The goal is to make sure that the smell stays within your grow space, and doesn’t find its way into your living areas.

Important Note: Odor neutralizers with perfumes should not share the same air as your plants, meaning they shouldn’t be placed in your tent with your cannabis or the perfume smell might get onto your buds. Check out this PSA for more info.

Low Odor Marijuana Strains – Strains known for producing low/non-marijuana-like odor:

Low odor strains definitely aren’t fool-proof, but they can help make things easier. These are just a few examples of strains that are known to have a relatively low or neutral smell, but there are many others. Learn more about researching strains.

Learn more about controlling smells in the grow room.

“What’s that smell?”

Sound

When buying any kind of electrical device, look up reviews on the product to make sure it runs quietly. A low-quality exhaust fan or air pump will cause people to be suspicious since they make lots of noise and typically run all day and night.

Exhaust fans and air pumps of especially low quality can raise even more suspicion by vibrating. This can make your grow noticeable through multiple walls!

Tips for quiet operation

• Use stealthy devices known to be quiet – it often helps to get quality equipment
• Don’t get a fan that’s way too powerful for your space, as bigger fans are noisier
• Install your exhaust fan inside your tent instead of outside, and try to hang it as opposed to letting it sit on something. Hanging your fan from the inside of my tent (which you can easily do with rope ratchets, large zip ties or even bungee cord) will reduce the amount of fan noise greatly.
• Keep the path for ducting as straight and short as possible. Extra bends and length will increase noise because of the air moving through the ducting, as well as because it makes your fan work harder.
• Use insulated ducting to help keep sounds inside
• Make sure your cool air intake hole is big enough. Your intake hole(s) where you get air should be near the bottom of the grow space and in total about 4x as big as the exhaust hole. If the fan is having trouble getting enough air it will run louder (and it’s hard on the fan)
• Use something that reduces sound around the outside of the fan, like egg crate material or foam. If there is foam between the fan and the place where it’s mounted it will help reduce vibration. Some people will also use an insulated box around the exhaust fan.
• Be aware of where the noise is going. Keep fans away from shared walls, the entrance of the room, near windows where sound projects, etc

Sight

To the outside world, it should appear as if you’re doing everything as normal. As paranoid as it sounds, you should assume that anyone who sees you doing growing related activity will know what it is and report you.

• Move any growing equipment at night so you’re less likely to be seen. It’s also a really good idea to cover any growing equipment you’re transporting, for example in black trash bags. This way, no one can see exactly what it is you’re moving
• Be careful about what you throw in your trash. On the rare occasion that I do throw cannabis trash (like stems) in a trash can, I usually cover it in food trash or kitty litter so no one will want to go through it. Also, throwing away your cannabis-related trash on the day trash is picked up means there is minimal time for a snooping person to find your secret garbage.
• Make sure nothing stands out. Pick a couple of days to walk around your house at a few different times of the day to see if anything stands out as suspicious. Example of something suspicious: Super bright yellow light (HPS) coming from a window at 11:00pm. Learn how to make a stealthy exhaust system.
• Be a good neighbor! A lot of people think of cannabis growers as criminals. When you continue to act like the intelligent, well-mannered, amicable person you are, your neighbors naturally become less suspicious.
• Don’t look like a stereotypical stoner. There’s nothing wrong with wearing Rastafarian colors or pro-cannabis clothing, and it’s your right to dress and act as you wish. Just remember that police, nosy neighbors, and marijuana haters are more likely to ‘judge a book by its cover’ and harass a person based on their clothing… regardless of how unfair that is.

Electrical Safety

A Google search for “house fire marijuana” will yield stories for events in at least 7 cities (in the first 2 pages alone) where people have accidentally burned down their cannabis, their home, and everything they own in electrical fires. Most electrical safety mishaps can be prevented with a few healthy habits:

• Only purchase quality equipment. Quality parts mean fewer failures, which means fewer fires started. Fire is bad.
• Keep water and other liquids below waist level and electrical equipment above waist level. Even if this isn’t always possible, it will help to accomplish the real goal: keeping water and electrical devices separated.
• Clean up all spilled water. Having a few towels or a roll of paper towels handy makes this a breeze.
• Get a GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) These are made to interrupt power when they sense a problem with the flow of electricity. These devices can also save you from being electrocuted, so they’re definitely worth the investment.
• Don’t overload your circuits. If you live in an older house, you probably don’t want two 1000w HPS lights and high powered exhaust fans running from one room unless you know how much your circuits can take. Sticking only to what you actually need will help you in this department. For example: for indoor growing that’s strictly for personal use, a single 600w HPS can keep most people in constant over-abundance all year, every year.
• More Electrical Safety Tips (including how to figure out how much electricity your circuits can handle)

Technology

Technology and the way we communicate changes so rapidly these days, that many of us aren’t aware that we now do things that give away a lot of information about what we do. You don’t need to be a computer wizard, but these terms will definitely help you maintain your privacy in the digital age:

• Proxy: Many websites track your computer information and where you are. Proxies trick those websites into thinking you’re in a different place. Here’s a free site to try: http://www.vpnbook.com/webproxy
• Anonymous Search: I love Google and use it often, however, they do track information about searches. Google is still safe to use for normal use, but for things pertaining to cannabis, try a search engine that doesn’t track information, like https://duckduckgo.com/.
• Exif data: Exif data is a little chunk of information that comes attached to pretty much any picture you take nowadays. This can be dangerous if the picture is taken on a device with GPS (such as a smart phone), because the data will also include the location where the picture was taken. Follow this link for text instructions on how to remove this data from your photos.

Know the Law

In the U.S., many states have their own laws on how marijuana is treated. Some states will send marijuana users to jail for years, some will give them counseling, others will just give a fine, and some do nothing at all.

However, it’s important to remember that marijuana is still illegal according to U.S. federal law, as well as the law of most countries. In fact, cannabis is still classified as ‘Schedule 1’ with the US federal government; Schedule 1 is the highest (worst) classification a drug can have, and cannabis shares the classification with hard drugs like Methamphetamine and Heroin. Although this classification is obviously motivated by reasons other than public safety, it’s important to remember that you can still be prosecuted and jailed just the same.

It’s imperative that every grower spend at least a little time making sure they know the laws that apply to them to help minimize the risk of being prosecuted. Here are some resources to get you started:

• Learn where in the world it’s legal to grow cannabis
• U.S. residents, see NORML’s page for detailed up-to-date marijuana laws state-by-state: http://norml.org/laws
• Outside of the U.S., get the basics at Wikipedia’s page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis

Closing…?

This is a lot of information, and it still only barely scratches the surface of what it takes to grow stealthily. Over time there will be more pitfalls to watch out for, but growing your own cannabis has actually gotten easier and safer over time.

If you have quick, easily digestible tips to share, feel free to contact us.

What tools do you need for Stealth Growing?

Quiet Electronic Devices – Get devices that work without making noise:

• Silent Air Pump (for hydro)
• Low-noise Water Transfer Pump (for changing your reservoir when growing with Hydro/Bubbleponics/DWC)
• Cloudline – Very Quiet Exhaust Fans (though expensive and HUGE)
  4 inch
  6 inch
  8 Inch
• Soler & Palau – Pretty Quiet Exhaust Fans (also expensive and big, a little less quiet but more powerful)
  6 inch
  8 inch
• Duct Silencer (these can help muffle the noise by about 50%, but it won’t make it silent; works best if you can put one before and after the fan, though you can use just one on the exit side for pretty good results)
  4 inch
  6 inch
  8 inch

Electrical Safety:

• GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter)
• More Electrical Safety Tips

Odor Management:

• Carbon Filter (learn more about how to use carbon filters correctly)
• Odor Neutralizers like ONA, diffusers or candles (for use in living areas, not the grow room)
• Read the full tutorial on how to control smells

Internet Privacy:

• DuckDuckGo.com – A free search engine that doesn’t track you or what you search for
• Tor Browser – Browse anonymously!

Purchasing Seeds

• Safety Precautions For Buying Marijuana Seeds Online

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I thought I already knew it all, but after I went through this grow bible, I discovered that there were still lots of little pieces of information I could use to increase my yields and grow even more potent buds! I have gone back to it for new ideas.

-Nebula

Jump to…

CFL Dresser Microgrow in Pictures – Clone to Harvest – 2.69oz

Plant Training for Bigger Yields

What should I know about electrical safety?

Choosing the Right Grow Light

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