Here’s How to Plan Your Next Indoor Marijuana Growing Season

Probably you are smarter than me so you’re not doing indoor marijuana growing in the climate change extreme heat of summer like I am.

Due to summer’s vicious heat causing ridiculously high air conditioning bills, and the air conditioner drying out grow room air so my vapor pressure deficit goes bad and I have to use a humidifier, I rarely grow from May through September.

Most growers avoid summer marijuana growing. The popular indoor marijuana growing season is from October through May—the cooler months of the year.

But just after I harvested my winter crop this year, someone who loves the strains I grow came over with a large amount of cash.

They bought everything but my personal stash, at a price higher than I had ever charged before.

So I started a summer season and am thanking the gods I have a reliable humidifier.

Summer will be over before you know it, and you want to maximize your next grow season. Here are planning questions and considerations to carefully examine ahead of time:

• How much dry weight marijuana do you need for the next year?
• What strains of marijuana do you want to grow and why?
• Will any of the strains you grow require special care?
• Will you be growing from seed, cuttings, or both?
• If you’re growing from seeds, do you already have the seeds and if not, how will you procure them?
• How long will these strains take from start to finish?
• How many plants can your grow space comfortably handle?
• Will you want to take any breaks for holidays, family visits, or other interruptions?
• Does your grow room need retrofitting, repair, upgrades, cleaning or other work before your next season?
• How much time and money do you have for your marijuana growing season?
• What supplies do you need to check, replenish, purchase?
• Was there anything that went wrong last season and if so what will you do to ensure it doesn’t happen again?
• How is your security situation?

As you can easily see, these are not simple questions. Most of them require careful thought and analysis. Here’s how I answered the questions for myself:

• I need at least 15 pounds dry weight buds for the next year to meet my own needs and those of my customers.
• I want to grow some pure Sativas from ACE Seeds, a couple of Humboldt Seed Company hybrids, and some test strains from Serious Seeds. I grow a balanced menu of pure Sativas and hybrids, including a couple of Indica or Kush strains, to satisfy my customers.
• The pure Sativa strains require extra care. They need staking, have 11-14 week bloom phases, and need a lot of vertical space.
• I usually have at least two runs per season; the first run is from seed. I select motherplants during that run and grow the second run from cuttings.
• I have an extensive cannabis seeds library and don’t need to procure more marijuana seeds. If I did, I’d order direct from the breeder.
• My grow op can handle 11-14 full-size photoperiod plants per run.
• I am a marijuana grower hermit. I am home every day during growing seasons and don’t allow anyone to visit my grow house. It’s a lonely life, but the buds (and not getting busted) are worth it.
• Every grower should thoroughly clean, examine and repair their indoor marijuana growing space at the end of every season.
• My upcoming upgrades include replacing the walls’ reflective material, replacing an exhaust fan, rerouting duct tubing and electrical wires, fumigating the room with a “natural” insecticide and fungicide, thoroughly vacuuming, installing a new grow tent, replacing filters in my air conditioner and dehumidifier.
• I spend at least an hour per day on marijuana growing. At transplant and harvest time, I spend a lot more than that.
• Including electricity and other grow op necessities, I spend about $170 per month on my marijuana growing.
• I examine all my open bottles of nutrients to see if they’re still usable. I test my pH and PPM meters, as well as pH adjusting and calibration fluids.
• Because I use professional SANlight LED grow lights, I no longer have to buy new HID grow bulbs every season.
• Last season I had a few inexplicable problems with nutrients. I also failed to top plants often and early enough. I didn’t properly anticipate the height gain of bloom phase stretch; some plants got too tall. I made the mistake of growing tall Sativa strains at the same time as short hybrids, so I had an uneven canopy.
• I intend to rely more on foliar feeding. Last season I tried foliar-spraying new products from TPS Nutrients (Canopy Boost, Silica Gold, Signal, Bloom) and found that is strengthened my plants, got rid of magnesium deficiency, and accelerated/enhanced bud development.
• I have the new Apogee daily light integral (DLI) meter and need to master PPFD (photosynthetic photon flux density) and DLI concepts so I feed only as much light as my plants can use and am not overdosing light.
• My security situation is as good as I can make it. There’s no way anyone outside my house would know I grow marijuana. I have video surveillance, and am home all the time.

Careful analysis and planning immediately boost the efficiency, profits, and enjoyment of your indoor marijuana grow room.

It helps a lot if you keep a written and photographic record of each marijuana growing season so you can go back to examine your plants and figure out what went right and what went wrong.

As soon as cooler weather comes, you want to be ready to start your new season growing marijuana indoors–and make it better than any season you’ve had before.