Jay Carter Brown
GROWING MARIJUANA INDOORS
A Foolproof Guide
I dedicate this book to my wife
who has stayed with me through
thick and thin, for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health
Introduction
I wrote this book for my wife. We both smoke cannabis and have done so for most of our lives. When I started buying cannabis, it was almost affordable if you smoked less than an ounce a month. But once you went beyond that amount, it was prudent to find some other way of obtaining “the weed.” Some people dealt a little weed and subsidized their habit that way. Others smuggled large amounts of herb into the country and pulled a bale out for their own use. Today both solutions can lead to hard time and financial ruin under North America’s seizure and forfeiture statutes.
In Canada, people can legally obtain a license to use medical marijuana if they follow the correct steps. On the surface, this appears to be an intelligent way of obtaining marijuana. But there is no guarantee that a person will be approved for medical marijuana since most doctors refuse to sign off on the appropriate government forms, perhaps from fear of reprisals.
Even if people are approved to possess marijuana, they might still have to pay someone to grow it for them. (Pot in Vancouver compassion clubs is currently about $10 per gram, which is around the same price or higher than it costs on the street.) A cannabis growing license is even harder to get than a cannabis possession license. Growing pot can be done legally in Canada with a government permit that allows a patient or a designated third party to grow cannabis. Those who wish to apply for a permit in Canada can visit the Health Canada website for medical marijuana access or write to Marihuana Medical Access Division, Drug Strategy and Controlled Substance Programme, Health Canada, Address Locator 3503B, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 1B9.
In a dozen or more states in America, there are similar programs at the state level. Federal law in the United States opposes a state’s right to dispense marijuana or issue marijuana growing permits, but more states are defying the Feds on this front. In fact in 2012 both Washington and Colorado voted to decriminalize the use of non-medical (recreational) marijuana. My own feelings are mixed about the growing permit solution because I have never trusted governments. They often change or reverse their thinking, and if that happens where does it leave pot growers who have applied for a medical pot license? It’s too late to grow your pot surreptitiously once you have already outed yourself to the government. For that reason, in the past I have used most of the generally known methods to access pot, including smuggling, dealing, and growing (outdoor and indoor, in soil, as well as with hydroponics).
Growing Marijuana Indoors outlines my preferred method of growing marijuana, one I have synthesized from my decades of experience growing pot. If you follow my rules exactly, my system is fail proof — so fail proof that it could be called “Pot Growing for Dummies.” But since this book is primarily for my wife, I won’t call it that! The idea behind this handbook was that, if for whatever reason I am not around, my wife can decide for herself if she wants her “medicine” without having to rely on anyone else to get it for her. Follow the steps laid out in this book to the letter, and you’ll have success at growing the finest marijuana that even money can’t buy.
Peace and love to everyone.
1
PREPARING for
YOUR GARDEN
Marijuana 101
Conventional wisdom says that it is easy to grow marijuana. It is said to be a weed and, as such, grows anywhere and everywhere without any help from humans. This might have been true at one time but only to a point. Marijuana has been cultivated throughout history and was carried by humans wherever they went, so it didn’t grow wild on its own accord for long. Weed was always too valuable to be left wild and free without someone harvesting it and taking advantage of its bounty. Therefore, most cannabis in the world today is the result of careful breeding and gardening techniques. Wild marijuana is said to taste better than cultivated marijuana, but when grown indoors the wild variety is skinny and weak compared with designer-bred indoor strains. Although any type of pot can be grown indoors, every effort must be made to find the best genetic strain that will compensate for the disadvantages of indoor cultivation and be adaptable to lighting that is far weaker than the sun.
Indoor weed is bred to provide the best results for cannabis grown under lights, and it usually begins with an Indica strain. Cannabis Indica is the variety of marijuana used to make hashish. Indica plants grow shorter and thicker and provide stronger highs than the alternate variety of marijuana known as Cannabis Sativa. In effect, indoor Sativa is not a true Sativa plant at all. It is an Indica plant crossbred with a Sativa plant for an airier high. Pure Sativa plants do very poorly indoors. They take longer to grow and are skinnier and less potent than Indica plants. But Sativa plants can provide a soaring mental high without the drag-down effects of the sleep-inducing Indica plants. Therefore, crossbreeding can provide the best features of both plants, and it can be very rewarding to breed your own special brand of marijuana based on your preference for taste, potency, quality of high, long-lasting effects, burning qualities, and so on.
Male cannabis plants produce flowers that pollinate the female cannabis buds but offer very little THC, which is the active ingredient in cannabis that makes you high. Only the female plant is used to produce the dried flowers known as cannabis, but it is not the branches or leaves or buds that make you high, it is the tiny capitate-stalked trichomes or THC crystals that grow on the branches, leaves, and buds. So you are not really harvesting buds, you are harvesting the trichomes/crystals that cover the buds. It is possible to harvest some THC crystals from the leaves and branches of both the female and male cannabis plants, but not in sufficient quantities to make for good smoking.
Cultivating those coveted THC crystals takes about four months. I’ll guide you through the two main phases of cannabis cultivation: the vegetative stage (for growing leaves and stems) and the flowering stage (for growing buds). Every two months vegetative plants will move to the budding stage, budded plants will be harvested, and a new generation of plants will start the vegetative stage from vegetative plant clippings also called cuttings. This cycle ensures a regular supply of smokeable cannabis as long as you’re willing to keep growing it.
Security
Before we get to growing your marijuana, let’s consider how to keep your garden — and you — safe and secure. Pot gardens are often camouflaged in secret rooms. Some growers use trap doors or entrances hidden behind false walls. I heard of a commercial grower who buried railway cars to grow pot. Other grow operations are located on remote farms or properties far from civilization. All of these secret growing places have been busted. Why? The growers either sold their weed to someone and it was traced back to the source, or told someone about their operation. Forget about infrared detection and odor-sniffing surveillance dogs because most (probably 95 percent) of police busts are a result of good old-fashioned stool pigeons. Once people start bragging about their grow-ops, the elaborate subterfuge and alarm systems become useless. Some people even give guided tours of their pot farms to friends and acquaintances for no other reason than misguided pride in their gardening achievements. If you are not given to bragging, then all you need to grow pot is a private closet or room, preferably in the basement of your house.