Growing Medical Marijuana

Did you know that you can grow marijuana for medical use? Indoor medicinal marijuana growing gives you complete control of the results.

Cultivating medicinal marijuana is important as it allows you to relieve specific symptoms with something you know is of high quality. The best part is: You can grow medicinal marijuana at home and enjoy its benefits. 

Before you start growing marijuana at home for medicinal purposes, you need to know the effects that you are seeking. This guide has explained all steps you need to know about growing medicinal marijuana. 

Which Strains Can I use When Growing Marijuana for Medicinal Purposes?

You can use several cannabis strains for medicinal purposes. They include Sativa, Indica, and hybrid plants. You can use them to relieve some symptoms of various conditions. Most people believe that weed used for recreational use is not the same strain used for recreational purposes. However, this is not true. Some cannabis strains have strong effects, while others affect your appetite or mood.

Do I need a Licence to Grow Medicinal Marijuana?

If you are interested in growing marijuana for medicinal purposes, you will have to check the laws of where you live. Some states permit the growing of cannabis for medicinal purposes only, while others allow you to grow marijuana for recreational purposes.

Benefits of Growing Marijuana at Home for Medicinal Purposes

While marijuana is a plant that naturally thrives outdoors, you can grow marijuana indoors for medicinal purposes. When you choose to grow marijuana indoors, you’ll have total control of the results.

The benefits that come with it are worthwhile. Marijuana relieves chronic pain and other symptoms, thanks to its chemical makeup. Growing marijuana outdoors is challenging since there is lots of uncertainty, including storms, drought, and wildfires. With that in mind, let’s take a close look at some of the reasons you should consider growing marijuana at home for medicinal purposes. 

You’ll Harvest Weed of High Quality

Growing weed indoors requires intense resources as compared to growing marijuana outdoors. The money you spend on the power equipment will help provide your plants with the necessary lighting to ensure it produces high-quality weed.

Control Over the Growth Conditions

Contrary to outdoor growing, indoor medicinal marijuana growing allows you to provide the plants with the necessary growth conditions. For instance, you can regulate the amount of water, temperature, humidity, and nutrients your plants take. 

Marijuana plants need the right climate and temperature for them to thrive. When planting weed indoors, you can maintain the grow temperatures by using lamps. We recommend that you use a water-cooled reflector or an air-cooled reflector.

You Can Get More Than One Harvests

Marijuana plants can grow as big as you want as long as you provide them with the relevant growth conditions. Also, you can control their flowering and harvest period.

Your Plants Will be Safe

Protecting your property saves you from thieves and nosy neighbors. As such, indoor medicinal marijuana growing will ensure that your plants are safe till harvest.

Weed Grown Indoors Has a High THC Content. Marijuana grown at home for medicinal use has a different type of high compared to weed grown outdoors.

Indeed, indoor growing of marijuana results in weed that has a high potency. To get nugs with high potency, you need to control the growth conditions. These include the supplementation of CO2 levels.

You Can Create New Cannabis Strains

It is possible to create a cannabis strain with specific medical effects. With standardization, you can control the growth conditions. Essentially, this is a key when it comes to medicinal marijuana growing. That said, it is easier to control cross-pollination and breeding in an indoor garden.

Advice for Growing Medicinal Marijuana Indoors

When you are ready to start growing marijuana for medicinal purposes, the following tips will help you harvest the highest-quality plants:

Maximize the Growth by Increasing the CO2 Levels

Supplementing your marijuana plants with extra CO2 can increase the growth rate as well as the yields. CO2 is essential for the photosynthesis process to occur. Ensure your plants have the right amount of growing space before you opt for supplementation of CO2.

Use Grow Lights

LED grow lights, fluorescent, and HID have their benefits compared to natural sunlight. They are designed to provide marijuana plants with artificial light. Grow lights provide the same nutrients as natural sunlight. What’s more? They ensure your plants get light for an extended period.

Lighting is necessary for marijuana plants as it needs it during the photosynthesis process. The end product sugar is essential for bud and tissue growth. Below are the different types of grow lights that you can use when cultivating medicinal marijuana indoors:

• High-Intensity Discharge (HID): HID grow lights are one of the most common grow lights that growers use for indoor medicinal marijuana growing. They are efficient when it comes to producing an intense light spectrum. The light they give off contains ultraviolet rays that help promote the flowering and growth process. 

• Light Emitting Diode (LED): Many marijuana growers use LED grow lights to supplement light from natural sunlight. They help foster plants to achieve high vegetation and flowering. 
• Fluorescent: These grow lights are known to be effective for propagation and early flowering. Different fluorescent lamps have different uses. For instance, growers use bloom lamps as side-lighting for large marijuana plants.

Price of Growing Cannabis Indoors vs. Outdoors

Growing weed indoors requires significant costs to ensure you get high-quality yields. While the power costs will be high, you will benefit from high-quality harvest results and consistent yields.

Setting Up a Grow House at Home

Below is a detailed explanation of how to set up a grow house at home.

Choose an Appropriate Location

The location of your grow room matters. Ensure you choose a discrete grow space that is secure and free from judgemental neighbors. Besides, you have to consider how you will take care of the odor. One of the best locations is a cellar.

Provision of Efficient Lighting

Growing marijuana in an indoor setup requires a huge supply of power. You can use lighting systems such as LEDs, Induction lights, or HIDs.

Water Supply

You should have an adequate water supply if you intend to grow marijuana at home for medicinal purposes. Water helps keep the plants healthy. Ensure you water the plants after the soil gets dried out.

Access to Grow Room Tools

Indoor marijuana farmers need to have the right indoor gardening tools. For instance, a hygrometer and a thermometer are essential in checking air humidity and temperature. Providing marijuana plants with the right growing environment means that you will get high yields.

Air Circulation

Depending on your budget, you can purchase an air exchange system to stimulate better growth. Air circulation involves fresh air replacing exhausted air. A carbon filter serves a huge role in maintaining the stink factor to a minimum. The plant should be grown in a controlled and appropriate environment for better quality yields.

Ability to Control the Growing Climate

Indoor growing of marijuana requires proper control of climatic factors, such as temperatures and ventilation. Climatic conditions have a direct impact on the yield and quality of marijuana products. Marijuana plants thrive more when the climate is controlled and the parameters are suitable for growth and flowering.

How to Optimize the Growth rate of Your Plant

To optimize the growth rate of your plants, you need to do the following: 

• Choose fast-flowering weed strain: Marijuana with a short flowering period means that you will have more harvest in a year.

• Select soil with optimal balance between nutrients and pH: Marijuana plants require a balance in pH and nutrients to grow into healthy plants. With rich fertile soil, you can cultivate your marijuana plant using the organic method. Besides, organic cultivation helps minimize the impact on the surrounding environment.

• Choose to grow lights that provide full spectrum: Grow lights such as LEDs, HIDs and fluorescents can provide the full spectrum that matches the one provided by natural sunlight. The light watts that you will use will depend on the marijuana strain you’ve planted. Indica strains, for example, need less light spectrum compared to Sativa strains.

• Purchase feminized seeds.: Failure to spot a male plant in your garden could end up ruining your harvest. Feminized marijuana seeds are cross-bred to grow into high-yielding female marijuana plants.

• Apply the training techniques: Low-Stress training techniques and the Sea of Green can be vital to boost your cannabis yields and save you some money in the end. 

• Provide your marijuana plants with the essential nutrients:  Soil nutrients often get depleted. When this happens, you can use fertilizers to boost the soil’s nutrients. Fertilizers contain ingredients that are important for the growth of cannabis plants. 

These include Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, Nitrogen, copper, and Iron. However, you should apply the fertilizers in minimal amounts to avoid burning the cannabis roots.

Providing your plants with the right nutrients will ensure that you get high-quality yields of high potency. If you use soil as your growth medium, supplement it with these macronutrients. On the other hand, you do not need to supplement organic soils since they already have nutrients in the right amount. 

• Develop a habit of monitoring your marijuana plants: Having a self-monitoring habit is essential. You can adjust the growing conditions and save yourself some extra coins. Also, you can spot male marijuana plants and remove them before they reach maturity. Cannabis plants need a different light spectrum during the growth, vegetative and flowering stages. 

During the vegetative stage, expose the plant to sunlight for about 16-20 hours daily. When they reach the flowering stage, expose the plants to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. Also, you can use a pH meter to check the soil and water quality from time to time. 

• Control the temperature of your grow garden: To maintain the temperature, you can use different heat signatures. Fluorescent lamps are known to produce much more heat compared to Light Emitting diodes. You may also decide to use heaters or Acs to maintain the overall temperature in the grow room.
  
  Lastly, exposing your plants to healthy air circulation can help get rid of the warm and exhausted air. Doing this will bring about a cooling effect in the process.

• Familiarize yourself with the harvest time: Knowing when to harvest your products can help you maximize your harvest.

The Different Methods of Growing Medicinal Marijuana

There are several ways of growing marijuana, depending on your level of commitment and resources. We have compiled the various methods of growing cannabis together with their pros and cons. If you use any of these methods, you will achieve great results.

As long as you supply the plants with enough nutrients and water and protect them from pests, you will harvest high-grade medicinal marijuana with the health effects that you will enjoy.

Aeroponics

Aeroponics involves the growing of marijuana plants in plain air. Cannabis plants are held in a mesh basket that is suspended in the air. Water and fertilizer components are sprayed over the roots frequently. Using this method is effective since it produces stronger roots than when you choose to use hydroponics.

Pros:

• It is fast
• It produces high yields
• Marijuana products have a high THC and CBD content
• It is easy to clean and maintain the system periodically.
• It requires minimal space
• It is easy to move the plants from one location to another
• You have complete control over the climatic conditions
• It helps save water

Cons:

• It is costly since it requires sophisticated pieces of equipment.
• It is labor-intensive; you need to develop the habit of monitoring the growth rate daily.
• Failure to maintain the pH limits can result in low-quality yields.
• Requires skilled expertise
• Requires regular cleaning of the root chamber to prevent the plants from getting contaminated.

Use of Rockwool

You can decide to use rock wool as a growth medium instead of using soil. Rock wool is advantageous since it lacks some of the problems that you’ll find in natural soil.

Pros:

• It is easy and simple
• This process makes it easy to monitor the growth process
• Has better and high-quality yields compared to those planted in soil
• It is affordable
• Rockwool helps protect the root zones since they lack organic matter
• Plants have a faster growth rate
• It is durable
• There is a high water retention capacity

Cons:

• Fertilizers used are expensive
• You have no option but to purchase rock wool that is not easy to find.
• Rock wool is dangerous for your health
• Rock wool is not biodegradable
• You cannot use the same Rockwool more than once for germination

Use of Hydroponics as a Method of Growing Medical Marijuana

Hydroponic farming involves indoor cultivation. Essentially, this helps eradicate all the obstacles associated with outdoor growing. In other words, it consists of a non-soil medium that has the necessary nutrients and is exposed to the right water supply. You can decide to plant your cannabis plants in gravel as the grow medium. 

There is a difference between the roots of marijuana plants grown in hydroponics and those grown in soil. Roots grown in hydroponics lack tap roots, whereas roots grown in soil have a big taproot. 

Pros:

• Produces much larger and quality yields compared to the other methods of growing marijuana 
• Clean way of planting cannabis since you don’t use soil 
• Maximized efficiency
• There is enough air circulation for the roots
• Plants have a faster growth rate
• Few cases of pest infestation

Cons:

• It is costly since you will require pumps, reservoirs, and troughs to hold the growth medium and the water/fertilizer mixture
• Involves a lot of labor and concentration. You will be required to monitor the pH and nutrient levels. 
• It requires sophisticated equipment. 
• It may take up more space compared to other growth methods.
• It is time-consuming
• In case of a waterborne disease outbreak, they spread quickly.

Using soil as a Growing Medium

Soil is the most traditional method of growing marijuana plants. Make sure you use soil rich in nutrients and supply the plant with enough water. To get high harvest yields, ensure the soil has all the necessary nutrients.

Pros:

• It is affordable compared to other methods of growing marijuana.
• You can use fertilizers to boost soil fertility.
• It is ideal for farmers with busy schedules.

Cons

• Failure to boost the soil fertility will lead to poor crop yields
• Yields are not as high compared to other organic methods of planting marijuana
• Long growing cycle
• Exposure to pest attacks
• It consumes a lot of space

Use of Aquaponics

The popularity of aquaponics has grown significantly over the years; it is a combination of two traditional food production techniques. They include Hydroponics and Aquaculture. 

The aquaponic concept is derived from the idea of raising fish and planting marijuana in one soilless system. The plants and fish develop a symbiotic relationship to ensure they survive. The plants act as a filter to cleanse the water, whereas the fish provide plants with a source of food. Aquaponics systems are effective and can produce high-quality marijuana plants when operated in a controlled environment such as a greenhouse.

Pros:

• It has organic and nutritional benefits. Plants grown in the aquaponic garden are healthy.
• It reduces water usage. 
• Plants have a boosted growth rate. Plants tend to grow faster when they can access all the growth requirements.
• Reduced use of chemicals. You should not use pesticides as they are dangerous to fish.
• Requires minimal weeding practices; this is because there is no soil involved in this growing practice.
• It does not require loads of space.

Cons:

• Requires high start-up costs; the equipment you need to achieve this practice is expensive.
• High reliability of electricity; electricity is essential to power the water pump and filter.
• It is a complex system. There are several aspects that you need to learn before you opt for this method. For instance, you need to know the right fish that can complement the marijuana plants.
• It is cumbersome since you are required to do checks regularly.
• There is a risk of failure. Plants are exposed to chances of developing pathogens. 

Conditions for Growing Medical Marijuana

Medical marijuana plants thrive best at a temperature range of 21-27 degrees Celsius. The humidity levels should range at around 80%. However, different marijuana strains have different temperature requirements. You can use LED lights or fluorescent lights to foster quick germination.

Flowering Conditions for Medical Marijuana

It is essential to provide marijuana plants with the right light spectrum. Exposing the plants to the appropriate light spectrum changes their growth pattern. They slowly move from the vegetative growth to the flowering stage. 

You are advised to use pressure lights with high sodium. Additionally, you can decide to use metal halide and high sodium pressure lights altogether. Most cannabis strains prefer a temperature range of 20-26 degrees Celsius during the flowering stage.

Conditions for Marijuana Vegetative Growth

Medical marijuana requires a temperature range of 20-27 degrees Celsius during the vegetative growth stage. The humidity level, on the other hand, should not be lower than 40%. Depending on the marijuana strain you grow, some strains require a minimum of 18/6 light exposure, while others require 24 hours of straight light exposure. 

The recommended light wavelength for cannabis plants during the vegetative growth stage ranges from 400-600 watt per square meter. Lastly, ensure you keep an eye on the MH and HPS lights if you desire boosted growth and larger yields.

Conclusion

We believe that you are now aware of what it takes to grow medicinal marijuana. Indoor cultivation has several advantages over outdoor growing. If you are interested in growing your medical marijuana, head to ILGM.com. We have the best cannabis seeds on the market. Our high-quality seeds will ensure you harvest the best marijuana for medical purposes.