If you live in a state where it’s legal to grow marijuana, you might be overwhelmed by how many spots you can try growing marijuana. You can grow cannabis indoors, outdoors, inside a basement, in a backyard, or even inside a closet. However, there are essential steps you must take so that your plants can provide you with the best possible harvest.
In many U.S. states, if you have a medical marijuana card, you can legally grow marijuana in the privacy of your own home/yard. Or, if you’re one of the lucky few who live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, you can grow at home too. However, if growing marijuana is illegal for you where you live, remember that you’re taking a big risk, since marijuana is a Schedule I illegal substance in the U.S. Despite the federal classification of marijuana, if you’d like to grow it in your closet, continue reading to find out what essentials you need to successfully complete your grow.
Essential Steps When Growing Marijuana Indoors
Regardless of the marijuana strain(s) you plan on using and the amount of plants you plan on growing, you must follow a series of steps in order to achieve an abundant harvest. You must choose your place to grow, your light, and your growing medium before beginning. Next, you’ll need to get marijuana-friendly nutrients in addition to finding the right place to procure your cannabis plants and/or seeds.
Then, you’ll need to germinate your seeds and/or start your clone marijuana plants, and then the plants will undergo the vegetative stage and flowering stage. After the flowering stage ends, the buds will be ready for harvest, and you must dry and cure them before use. In general, growing marijuana is fairly straightforward, and it’s definitely possible to grow marijuana in your closet as long as it gets all of its essential nutrients and resources.
Overall, indoor grows are beneficial because they tend to be shorter than outdoor grows since the grower has more control over when the plant(s) start flowering, and indoor grows can be relatively affordable if only a few plants are grown at once.
When growing marijuana in a closet, it’s important to provide the plants with enough water, light, and oxygen while also maintaining the right temperature throughout the growing process. When growing marijuana in your closet, keep in mind that the grow lights you use will give off heat, and the more powerful the lights are, the more heat they’ll generally give off. It’s essential to maintain a consistent temperature when growing marijuana; therefore, consider installing a fan or air conditioner to pull hot air away from the hot grow lights.
During the indoor growing process, the light given to the plants must be controlled, and if the plants don’t receive the right amount of light needed, various issues could arise. According to a growing marijuana article by High Times, when growing marijuana in a closet, it’s important to have enough indoor grow lights to ensure that the plants receive enough daily light.
Light & Dark Cycles When Growing Marijuana
When growing marijuana, it’s extremely important to know how much light you need to give your plants every day. For example, during the flowering stage, the plants need at least twelve hours of light. One way to help you during this process is to buy a standard outlet timer and set it to a 12-hour-cycle. Later on, the plants go through a dark cycle, and during this time, it’s essential that no light enters the plants’ space.
Therefore, when growing marijuana in your closet, make sure you don’t open the door when the plants are going through their dark cycle. If for some reason you accidentally expose the plants to light, it can disrupt the flowering process, which may cause stress and/or confusion to the plants. This can result in the female plants developing into hermaphrodites, which would ruin your harvest.
Tips for Growing Marijuana in Your Closet
When growing marijuana in a closet, the first step is to keep it to yourself; there’s no guarantee that the friends and/or family you tell won’t tell someone else who will tell someone else and so on. Since marijuana is federally illegal in the U.S., you must be extra careful when growing marijuana by taking all possible precautions. From a safety level, you don’t need your neighborhood knowing you have healthy marijuana plants growing inside your house; you never know who might want to steal it. Additionally, if you plan on growing marijuana from seeds, it’s in your best interest to purchase your seeds outside of the U.S. If you decide to purchase your seeds online, it’s recommended to not ship them to the address you’ll be growing your marijuana at. At the end of the day, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
On a similar note, it’s important to take steps that’ll eliminate the smell of your marijuana plants, such as purchasing a low-odor strain and/or purchasing an odor neutralizer. Also, make sure you have enough space in your closet to grow the amount of plants you’d like. Fortunately, most closets are tall, which is an advantage. Regardless of the size of your closet, proper ventilation is key, especially in small spaces. Maintaining proper airflow in closets can be difficult, therefore, installing a fan or air conditioning unit would be helpful.
Lastly, a simple light set-up is possible if you’re doing a small-scale closet grow. If you’d like to keep your grow as simple as possible, you can prop open your closet door a little while the grow lights are on. Then, you can place one fan at the base of the closet door and hang one fan at the top of the door in the interior of the grow room that’ll blow hot air out, according to Herb.co.
While it might not be the most convenient route for all growers, growing marijuana in a closet is easy enough to pull off, and if done correctly, growers can reap abundant harvests in the comfort of their own home.
