Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in weedgrinders' InsaneJournal:

Saturday, December 18th, 2010
7:33 pm	Lighting Lighting is the single most important factor in an indoor garden and often requires the biggest financial investment. It's important to set up an adequate and cost effective lighting system and to understand the different types of bulbs available, as well as their functions, strengths, and limitations. Of all of the chapters covering equipment, this one is the most important and should not be skipped. When plants use light energy for growth, they are photosynthesizing. The details of this chemical reaction are complex, but largely irrelevant to the casual or hobby marijuana cultivator. Research into grow lights has been extensive and products are readily available that put this research into use. Entire books have been written specifically about how plants make use of sunlight, employing a lot of jargon, flow charts and cellular photography. You will find none of that here. What you will find is practical information that distills much of the technical information into just few key decision points and best practice tips. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
7:33 pm	Planning Your Grow Room Make sure you think of the grow room as the living space for your plants. Your harvest depends, to some extent, on the size of area you have to work with. Regardless of how much or how little space you have to devote to the grow room, you must provide vertical (up and down) space for each of the following components: Reservoir tank (1) The reservoir tank holds the water and solution that supplies nutrients to your plants. There's no set rule on how large of a reservoir you need for a given number of plants. Generally you want a tank that will supply your plants with one to two weeks worth of nutrients and still remain about half full. The average height of most store-bought reservoirs is one foot. Roots and growing medium (2) The plant roots rest in a growing medium that helps them absorb water and nutrients and gives them access to air. Again, there are no set rules on the amount of growing medium or container size. There's no average size, as they can be as shallow as few inches, like a Rockwool slab, or over a foot tall, like a large bucket or pot. Plants (3) The plants may begin as small as a few inches and can eventually grow as large as ten feet tall. Realistically, you don't want your plants to grow this tall indoors unless you can provide adequate lighting to the tops as well as the entire length of the plant. Plants can mature as small as half a foot, but the ideal size for most indoor situations is two to three feet. A cautious distance between the plant and grow lamp (4) Lighting for indoor marijuana cultivation is very bright and can get extremely hot. While exhaust fans can remove hot air from the room and air-cooled lamps allow you to send much of the bulb's heat directly out of the room, the HID lamps need to stay 1-2 feet above the tops of the plants to prevent burning. Lamp (5) All things considered, the light you use to mimic the sun's rays may be the single biggest factor in the size of your overall harvest. Read the lighting chapter for more details on how to choose the right lights for your size of room. The average HID (High Intensity Discharge) lamp is 112-1 foot tall. Room to grow (6) When you change your plants' lighting cycle from vegetative (18/6) to flowering (12/12), your plants will continue to grow 50% to 200% larger as they flower. When choosing a grow room, you should factor in how tall you will grow your plants in both the vegetative and flowering phases. It's imperative that you choose a grow room that has enough space for both phases or your plants will grow too close to the lamp, causing scorching to the tops of the plants. Don't estimate the size, measure it and write it down. Measure the floor space and then the height of the room, multiply those two together and you have the total square footage of your grow room. 2. Plot each component of the grow room in both floor space and the vertical space. Each component has been described in this chapter, including their average sizes. Draw a square to represent the floor space and draw out the reservoir, the extra working space, and everything else that takes up floor space. Draw the height of the grow room and block out how much space each component will occupy. If you find that you've got extra space, you can use this to grow your plants taller and bushier if you desire. (Comment on this)
7:33 pm	Choosing the Right Spot Before you decide where you will set up your grow room, ask yourself the following questions to make sure you're picking the best grow space available to you: Have I got access to several electrical sockets? Can I get water to the grow room easily? Can I provide fresh air to the room and remove stale air? Will anyone be able to see light spillage? Will anyone be able to hear the ventilation fans? Will anyone be able to smell the plants? Remember, putting all of this information into perspective is not easy. It helps to visualize how the growing equipment will fit into the space and how you will interact with it on a daily basis. The following section briefly describes the equipment you need to grow indoors. As you read through the list, try to visually "place" each component into the space you're considering. (Comment on this)
7:33 pm	More Security Tips Is the room below you another apartment that might get wet from a leaky hydroponic system? If you find yourself in this situation, you simply must be more careful and provide more protection in the way of drop cloths, traps, or even placing the main reservoir in a larger, empty reservoir like a plastic kiddie pool. One unnoticed crack or leak could end your growing operation, get your evicted, and get the cops called. Can you safely exhaust and intake air from outdoors without raising suspicion? Apartments, condos, and closely spaced houses can present a problem when your grow room is near exterior walls and windows. You don't always have to draw or expel your air directly outdoors, but it is recommended. If you need to vent into one or more rooms to avoid detection, do it. It Can you lock the room to keep people from snooping? If possible, add a lock to your room, closet, or shed. A nosy friend who thinks he smells something can easily confirm it if all he needs to do is open a closet door to find out. A ten-dollar lock or a visit from the police, it should be an easy choice to make. Will heat from the grow lights be noticeable outside the room? If the grow room is near a common living area, plan to exhaust odor and hot air away from it. This could be as easy as venting to the attic or as complicated as adding ducting to a previously unconnected room. You don't want friends or family asking you why it's always so hot in your house. (Comment on this)
7:33 pm	Security Issues Security Issues Security should always be a top priority when selecting your grow room. Your freedom could come to depend on selecting a stealth grow room with a minimal chance of being "discovered" by nosy neighbors, law enforcement, or kids trying to cure their sobriety. The Grow Room Security is devoted to many aspects of indoor cannabis growing that could compromise your security. This section deals with choosing a grow space that will offer the highest amount of possible security . There is no such thing as a 100% secure grow room, but you can stack the ~~ odds in your favor by considering all the possible ways a grow room can be discovered and exposed. Consider each of the following security aspects and make sure that the room you want to use isn't unnecessarily risky. Can the grow room be seen from another room or window? This one is a no-brainer; you don't want anyone to see your garden or you tending to your garden. Large or walk-in closets are fairly secure, but you should always close blinds and doors if you plan to be working on your garden. It Is there a place to store your growing tools, nutrient solution, and other items out of sight, yet near the room? You don't want to be seen hauling obvious growing supplies to and from your grow space. Keep all of your supplies nearby in a rubber tote box or on nearby shelves. The supplies you use should be as secure as the room you use them in. It Will light leaks from your grow room be a problem when guests visit? While the room's contents may be out of sight, powerful HID light can still creep through the edges of the door, under the door, or out of the exhaust/intake vents. While this may be unavoidable, you should try to find a room that's away from unfriendly foot traffic. Will neighbors notice noise or odor coming from your grow room? Only you can gauge the risk your living quarters present to your grow room. The proximity of neighbors and their relative nosiness are two of the larger issues involved in growing marijuana in urban or apartment living. Make sure your walls, ceiling, and floor are thick enough to safely run the necessary equipment without waking the night-shift security guard living upstairs or the 90 year-old great grandmother living below you. Make sure odor is dealt with responsibly by using one of the odor removal techniques found in the Grow Room Security. (Comment on this)
7:32 pm	Advanced Screen of Green Techniques Using Advanced Techniques You may want consider using either of these techniques depending on your goals and growing situation. However, if you're just starting out, you may want to slowly work your way up to using them. SOG requires good understanding and good practice of developing mother plants and creating a lot of clones. ScrOG requires a fundamental understanding of how a plant grows vegetatively, so that you can effectively train them to grow sideways as they reach the screen. This book doesn't attempt to fully cover either technique, as they are advanced in nature. If you've already grown a crop or two indoors, you can easily adapt one of these techniques. They are fairly easy to implement if you've already been growing and there is a wealth of information available on the internet that covers the finer details. (Comment on this)