I first started growing cannabis in 2011 in Indiana. Needless to say it was not legal. At the time there was not a great deal of reliable information on how to grow. Sure there were extensive books like The Cannabis Grow Bible, (to date one of the best publications on the subject) but largely online what I found was a lot of conflicting information.
Even though growing cannabis at the time was illegal, grow stores were not, so whenever I had a question on how to grow I would ask my local grow store guys what to do. Well this was kind of like going to a barber and asking them if they think I need a haircut. Largely what they did was continually push product on me, which I gladly bought. This is a problem I’m assuming most growers have when they first start, the issue is they don’t know it’s a problem until they are broke and still not producing great yields. This is what I experienced and it was very frustrating. So here are some of the top items I believe growers overspend on and how you can spend pennies on the dollar and actually get better yields as a result.
Grow Tents
Grow tents are generally very expensive or if they are not they are probably very flimsy and will not last you a long time. They are also not customizable the way building your own tent is. By building your own grow tent or just sectioning off your grow room correctly you can get the same effect and spend a fraction of the cost. Here is how you do it.
Simply buy some Mylar or Panda film (reflective plastic material), some 1″ x 4″ lumber, staples with a stable gun (or duct tape to go really inexpensive), then you will need a hand saw, screws, a screw driver, and some adhesive Velcro to create a door to enter and exit from, that’s it. A lot of these items could be laying around your house. Then simply measure the area that you want to grow and build a custom tent for generally less than 1/3 of what you would pay for a ready made tent, this includes all tools as well.
Soil
Soil gets very expensive, but you need it. I don’t believe in growing in soil-less mediums (hydro) I just think it creates an inferior product. Specifically when it comes to the taste of your flower. I also hate the issues that come with drip irrigation and water pump systems of which there are many. The best thing you can do with soil it to use it once, then after harvest take out the root systems, till up the soil, amend the soil and reuse it. I personally like Pro Mix HP with Mycorrhizae.
Nutrients
I’ve use Success Nutrient for years, and they are an incredible product line, the problem is the people that run the company have their heads up their asses. I know this from personal experience, as I know the founder Joshua Haupt, who is a beast, but once he sold off the company (Three a light) the people that took the reins pretty much fucked up everything.
I went so far as to interview with the company to be a rep and they just fell off the face of the earth in the middle of the interview process, just to re-post the job they left me hanging about. But I digress.
The point is they fucked up their relationships with resellers and grow stores and now you pretty much have to buy their nutrients online and pay ridiculous fees for shipping. Not to mention their products are way overpriced. It’s only a matter of time until this company goes the way of the dinosaur. So in order to get the same results but with much less expensive nutrients I go to my local grow store Home Grown Supplies and look at the back of nutrients to see the specific formula content in order to get almost identical nutrients for a fraction of the cost.
I would say those are the top three, in the next blog post I’m going to go over things that new growers typically go cheap on and some pitfalls to avoid when it comes to buying all in one grow kits.
