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Can you grow weed without tent and just LED lights in a basement

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Growing marijuana indoors is not an inexpensive hobby. However, lots of requirements are necessary to have even the most basic grow room setup, and all of those requirements cost some money.

Deciding Where To Grow Cannabis Indoors

Most importantly, you need to have enough space to grow your cannabis. Since we are working on your first indoor cannabis grow, we’ll recommend a small grow operation.

To start out, a small grow operation has a variety of benefits including:

  • Minimal startup costs
  • Ease of maintenance
  • A lesser degree of risk compared to a large grow

Whether you have limited space, like a closet, or an entire unfinished basement open to you, you can start small with a grow tent or by building your own grow space.

Decide whether you want to have an area where you have elbow room to work around your plants, or if you want to grow them in a small space where you can easily remove them for daily maintenance.

Whatever space you choose, you’ll need to make sure you’ve covered a few key aspects for growing cannabis:

  • Checking for light leaks
  • Temperature and humidity insulation
  • Cleanliness and security

A completely blacked out space that can be controlled for environmental factors and other outside forces is key to selecting the correct grow space, big or small.

Equipment Needed To Grow Cannabis Indoors

Tents and grow spaces will vary in exactly what equipment you’ll need.

However, there are similarities that every first-time grower should be aware of. For example, you’ll need:

  • Grow lights and hoods
  • Grow Tents (recommended)
  • Proper ventilation
  • Grow containers
  • Irrigation
  • Timers
  • Monitoring systems
  • Drying Racks
  • Nutrients and Soil
  • Trimming Scissors

Grow tents

Grow tents are a very popular option among indoor growers. They feature reflective walls which are specially designed to deal with cannabis grow lamps. This means they won’t melt due to the heat of your grow lights and offer the best levels of reflectivity out of all the options listed here. Grow tents are also very easy to set up and usually come complete with everything you need to create a great harvest. Just look out for any bubbles or pockets forming in the tent walls, as these will bring down the reflectivity in your space. An indoor grow tent is essential.

Lights

Your lights should be more than adequate to accommodate all of your plants. You don’t want them competing for light, or your harvest will suffer. Keep your hoods and lights clean to ensure maximum efficacy.

HID lights are recommended, but fluorescent lights are less expensive to set up. LED lights create less heat and use less electricity, but may not hold up to the same quality as HID lights.

LED lights have been taking over all areas of normal life, replacing horrible blue-tinted compact fluorescents, incandescents, and even specialty bulbs (stage lighting, street lights and the like) such as metal halide high-intensity discharge lamps or high-pressure sodium lamps, but they're still something of a controversial topic in the pot-growing world. Until recently, they simply did not put out enough photons to keep plants happy. LED technology has improved markedly over the last five years, and today's 10-watt diodes can give out something like 800-900 lumens, on par with standard metal-halide grow lamps, and slightly lower than high-pressure sodium. Also, ECO Farm quantum board deserves for your try.

In order to grow healthy marijuana plants, then coax them to flower and produce a lot of cannabinoids, the grower must provide the plants with lots of light of the proper wavelengths, control the length of "day" that the plant experiences during its life cycle, and control the temperature so as to not stress the plants.

The grow-lamp setup of choice in the recent past was a combination of metal-halide discharge lamps and high-pressure sodium lamps. The two kinds of lamps present complementary spectral characteristics that marijuana plants needs for the vegetative and flowering stages, and the two kinds of lamps generate a lot of lumens -- that is, a lot of photons that the plants can use for photosynthesis. What those lights also produced was a lot of heat--and big electricity bills. And the bulbs themselves, while lasting longer than an incandescent bulb, still burned out fairly quickly. LEDs have much longer lifetimes than either of those lamps, on the order of 30,000 hours of use; metal-halide lamps live between 6,000 and 15,000 hours.

Close-up of the panel where the grower chooses between veg and flowering spectral modes on the LED grow lights.GrowingGreenLED

Another benefit of LED arrays is their capacity for spectral tuning. A single lamp could have both a collection of blue-light and red-light LEDs; selectively turning off some LEDs of a particular color will tune the overall color of the light. You must own a full spectrum led grow light.

To understand why, it's important to grok that plants, including marijuana, have two phases of growth. The vegetative (veg) phase is when the plants do their growing. The flowering phase is when the plants switch over resources to produce flowers or buds, which in the case of marijuana contain a very high concentration of desirable cannabinoids.

Ventilation

A proper ventilation system generates the movement of air (fans) and the cycling in of fresh air. A closed-loop ventilation system would be best to prevent the intake of possible pests and pathogens.

Many insects and pests prefer stagnant air. Maintaining a breeze in your cannabis grow room will make it less hospitable to invasion while simultaneously stressing the roots and stems just enough to strengthen and encourage growth.

Moreover, if your lights are producing a lot of heat, you’ll need an exhaust fan to help control your temperature. A charcoal scrub in your exhaust will prevent the smell of your grow from leaking into the nearby vicinity.

Growing Medium

What you grow in is up to you.

Your growing containers could be red solo cups with increasingly larger pots filled with perlite and coco or a small hydroponic system specified to your budget and needs.

For your first soil grow, consider obtaining super-soil, a type of medium that requires no nutritional input over the course of the life of the plant and is easy to grow in.

Irrigation

Many people prefer to install an irrigation system that does the work for them, but there is just as much validity in the daily maintenance and watering of your cannabis plants.

However, be sure to either test the water you’re giving your plants or filter it first. Minerals from your tap may stunt the growth of your cannabis.

Gadgets

Timers and monitoring systems will help you;

  • Control the temperature and humidity
  • Institute a regulated photoperiod
  • Ensure your plants are getting the proper nutrition

If you’re familiar with thermostats, these gadgets aren’t as intimidating as they might sound.

pH meters, hygrometers, and other monitoring tools are often very easy to use, even for first-time growers like yourself.

ECO Farm marijuana grow kit can be your great choice.

Getting Started With Your First Cannabis Grow

Once you have your space selected and your equipment ready, you can get started with your first indoor cannabis grow.

Aside from the technical aspects of growing, you’ll improve your chances of success with thoughtful planning and daily maintenance.

That means, before you plant your first seed or clone, be sure you have a plan set forth for:

  • Watering and nutrition schedules
  • Budgeting for electricity bills and upkeep
  • The date of transplanting and harvest

With those, you’ll be able to plan your grow from start to finish, know exactly when and what nutrients to provide for your plants, and how much your grow is going to cost you.

Final thoughts

Somewhere after 6 to 12 weeks, your plants will usually be ready for harvesting.

First you’ll notice that your buds will stop developing white hairs. Your plants should also be very fragrant, and their buds should look very plump.

Next, you’ll notice the white pistils slowly darkening, usually turning slightly red or orange. These hairs will also begin curling inwards as the buds mature.

You’ll want to wait until at least 40% of the pistils on your buds have started darkening. This marks the beginning of the harvest window. Buds harvested at this time will usually produce a more uplifting effect and will be slightly less potent.

Some growers may wait out the harvest period a little longer until 50%-70% of the pistils have darkened. This is said to be time when THC levels in the buds are at their highest. Buds harvested after this time will produce more relaxing effects.

Once you’ve harvested your buds, it's time to trim and dry them. This can take up to 2 weeks. You’ll want to dry your buds slowly by hanging them upside down and store them in quality, sealed glass jars once they’re done.

Then, once you’ve harvested and cured your buds, it's time to kick back, light up, and enjoy the fruit of your labour!

Remember, the info here is generalized and is designed to serve as a basic introduction to the different necessary steps of growing weed. Make sure to regularly check out our blog for more detailed articles about the various aspects of growing weed indoors.

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