August 03, 2020
As a potential first-time grower, getting started is the biggest roadblock you’ll likely face. First, you have to find the right place to cultivate and obtain the proper growing equipment. Then, you need to buy medicinal plants or seeds and spend a lot of time checking and maintaining your crop.
You must also operate within the boundaries of the law before getting started. Growing medicinal plants remains illegal in many U.S. states. Therefore, make sure that home cultivation is allowed where you live before proceeding. Assuming you are legally able to continue, keep reading our detailed guide to growing medicinal plants indoors.
1.Grow Tent Kits- Probably the most common among indoors growers, grow tents are increasingly convenient way of growing and housing your plants. Whether you need a place in your garage, somewhere in your room, or you need a tent the size of a whole room, you can likely find the tent you need to grow most any plant you can think of.
Tents come in a wide range of styles and sizes for any grower and nearly any plant.
With a tent there's no need to drill/mount hanging hooks or vents for lights and fans.
In indoor grow tents you have superior control over grow environment than in most other setups.
2.Grow Room- No matter if it's a closet, your bedroom, a garage, or a room in your house or apartment, there's no doubt that utilizing your own space can be more convenient than buying a tent. You can get fresh air in quicker and circulate it naturally throughout your garden.
In a grow room there's no need to purchase a whole new tent, just equipment like reflective material and some fans to convert your room (which can be cheaper than a tent depending on the canopy you plan to grow).
Grow rooms utilize the space you already have, including windows (ventilation) and power outlets so again, there's not too much to purchase to convert a room in to the grow of your dreams.
The quality of light in your grow room will be the number one environmental factor in the quality and quantity of your yield, so it’s a good idea to choose the best lighting setup you can afford. Here’s a brief rundown of the most popular types of medicinal plants grow lights used for indoor growing.
HID (high-intensity discharge) lights are the industry standard, widely used for their combination of output, efficiency, and value. They cost a bit more than incandescent or fluorescent fixtures, but produce far more light per unit of electricity used. Conversely, they are not as efficient as LED lighting, but they cost as little as one-tenth as much for comparable units.
The two main types of HID lamp used for growing are:
Metal halide (MH grow light), which produce light that is blue-ish white and are generally used during vegetative growth.
High pressure sodium (HPS grow light), which produce light that is more on the red-orange end of the spectrum and are used during the flowering stage.
In addition to bulbs, HID lighting setups require a ballast and hood/reflector for each light. Some ballasts are designed for use with either MH or HPS lamps, while many newer designs will run both.
If you can’t afford both MH and HPS bulbs, start with HPS as they deliver more light per watt. Magnetic ballasts are cheaper than digital ballasts, but run hotter, are less efficient, and harder on your bulbs. Digital ballasts are generally a better option, but are more expensive. Beware of cheap digital ballasts, as they are often not well shielded and can create electromagnetic interference that will affect radio and WiFi signals.
Unless you’re growing in a large, open space with a lot of ventilation, you’ll need air-cooled reflector hoods to mount your lamps in, as HID bulbs produce a lot of heat. This requires ducting and exhaust fans, which will increase your initial cost but make controlling the temperature in your grow room much easier.
Light emitting diode (LED) technology has been around for a while, but only recently has it been adapted to create super efficient light fixtures for indoor growing. The main drawback to LED grow lights is their cost: well designed fixtures can cost 10 times what a comparable HID setup would. The benefits are that LEDs last much longer, use far less electricity, create less heat, and the best designs generate a fuller spectrum of light, which can lead to bigger yields and better quality.
Unfortunately, there are many shoddy LED lights being produced and marketed towards growers, so do some research and read product reviews before laying down your hard-earned cash.
The exhaust fan will help to dissipate the heat while the activated carbon filter will help to remove odors. However, for both items make sure to get ones that are large enough for a tent or room. Remember the fan is meant to circulate air which is essential because stagnant air is bad for growing medicinal plants or any other similar plant. Additionally, you’d also want to get a hygrometer or thermometer which helps to track humidity and temperature.
Growing indoors means you have many different media to choose from, and whether it’s good old fashioned pots full of soil or a rockwool slab in a hydroponic tray, every medium has its benefits and drawbacks.
Here we’ll examine the two most popular methods and the media they employ.
Soil
Soil is the most traditional medium for growing medicinal plants indoors, as well as the most forgiving, making it a good choice for first-time growers. Any high quality potting soil will work, as long as it doesn’t contain artificial extended release fertilizer (like Miracle Gro), which is unsuitable for growing good medicinal plants.
A very good choice for beginners is organic pre-fertilized soil (often referred to as “super-soil”) that can grow medicinal plants from start to finish without any added nutrients, if used correctly. This can be made yourself by combining worm castings, bat guano, and other components with a good soil and letting it sit for a few weeks, or it can be purchased pre-made from a few different suppliers.
As with all organic growing, this method relies on a healthy population of mycorrhizae and soil bacteria to facilitate the conversion of organic matter into nutrients that are useable to the plant. Alternately, you can use a regular soil mix and then supplement your plants with liquid nutrients as the soil is depleted.
Soilless (aka hydroponics)
Indoor growers are increasingly turning to soilless, hydroponic media for cultivating medicinal plants. This method requires feeding with concentrated solutions of mineral salt nutrients that are absorbed directly by the roots through the process of osmosis.
The technique for quicker nutrient uptake leading to faster growth and bigger yields, but it also requires a higher order of precision as plants are quicker to react to over or underfeeding and are more susceptible to nutrient lockout and burn.
Different materials used include rockwool, vermiculite, expanded clay pebbles, perlite, and coco coir, just to name a few. Commercial soilless mixes are widely available that combine two or more of these media to create an optimized growing mix. Soilless media can be used in automated hydroponic setups or in hand-watered individual containers.
Growing high-quality medicinal plants flowers requires more fertilizer, or nutrients, than most common crops. Your plant needs the following primary nutrients (collectively known as macronutrients):
Nitrogen (N)
Phosphorus (P)
Potassium (K)
These micronutrients are needed as well, albeit in much smaller quantities:
Calcium
Magnesium
Iron
Copper
If you aren’t using a pre-fertilized organic soil mix, you will need to feed your plants at least once a week using an appropriate nutrient solution. These nutrients are sold in concentrated liquid or powder form meant to be mixed with water, and generally formulated for either vegetative or flower (“bloom”) growth. This is because medicinal plants has changing macronutrient requirements during its lifecycle, needing more nitrogen during vegetative growth, and more phosphorus and potassium during bud production.
Most people won’t think twice about the water they use on their plants; if you can drink it, it must be fine, right? Well, it may not be an issue, depending on your location, but some water contains a high amount of dissolved minerals that can build up in the root zone and affect nutrient uptake, or it may contain fungus or other pathogens that aren’t harmful to people but can lead to root disease.
Additionally, some places may have high levels of chlorine in the water supply, which can be harmful to beneficial soil microbes. For these reasons, many people choose to filter the water they use in their gardens.
The most important thing to remember during this phase is to not overwater. medicinal plants are very susceptible to fungal root diseases when conditions are too wet, and overwatering is one of the most common mistakes made by the beginning grower. How often you water your plants will depend on the medium used, size of the plants, and ambient temperature. Some people will wait until the lower leaves of the plant start to droop slightly before watering.
As you gain experience and knowledge, you will alter your grow room and equipment to better fit your particular environment, growing techniques, and for the specific strains you choose, but hopefully this article will provide you with a solid foundation of knowledge to get started on the right foot. And remember, growing medicinal plants is a labour of love, so spend a lot of time with your plants and have fun!