Introduction

Have you ever thought about growing your own cannabis?

Perhaps you live in Washington D.C. or a state where it’s legal to grow your own cannabis. If so, have you already started growing?

Growing some cannabis for personal use should be affordable for most budgets. But costs add up. That’s why we’re sharing five ways to help you keep expenses down when growing at home.

Use Efficient Lights

HID lighting options (i.e. metal halide and high pressure sodium) have long been the standard for cannabis growers. But LED lighting options have advanced to the point where they can match—and even exceed—the performance of HID lighting. And LEDs are not just a newer technology, they can also save you money on cooling costs because they produce far less heat than HIDs.

Choose Self-Sufficient Grow Mediums

Nutrients are one of the major costs for growers. And bottled nutrients contain large amounts of H2O at premium prices. If you want to increase efficiency and cut costs, we suggest building your own grow medium and outfitting it with all the nutrients your plant needs. This approach does require finesse, knowledge, and testing to learn what is best for your cultivars, but you can find a good starting point for your soil recipe here. Organic methods like this one are not only tried and true, but they also allow the grow medium to help balance pH, limiting nute burn and other challenges.

Calculate The Proper Cubic Feet Per Minute (CFM)

It’s essential that you know the right airflow for your grow space. Understanding this will allow you to control your space’s temperature and humidity with a high degree of accuracy. Also, your plants may struggle if you err by having too much or too little airflow. Another important consideration is that having a system that’s not matched to your space will result in wasted energy (i.e. higher costs). Calculating your CFM can be intimidating if you’re not a math whiz, but an easy formula to help you simplify matters is included with our Grower Reference Cards.

Keep Pests At Bay

You’ll save money long-term if you choose to be proactive against pest-related issues from the jump. Although thrifty growers may want to cut costs by skimping on pest prevention if they don’t immediately notice bugs in their grow space, they’ll end up shellacked if a full-blown outbreak occurs at a later point in time. If pests do get out of control (which can happen quickly), there may be no recovery options other than pulling plants and sterilizing the grow room. That’s why we strongly recommend that you make a small investment up front into sticky traps (to act as a beacon if pests show up) and a sprayable IPM when your plants are in veg. Overgrow by Optic Foliar is a trusted choice; it has a gentle solution to prevent bugs and has nutrients for foliar feeding.

Remember That Knowledge Is Power

Being efficient in every aspect of your process is an excellent way to keep costs down. That means that you should know your cultivar’s preferences when it comes to nutrients, temperature, humidity, and timing. Keeping a grow journal can be an amazing tool to learn these unique cadences. You should be documenting all of your activities: noting when, what, and how much you are feeding or watering; as well as keeping tabs on the overall environment. You can then look back and “audit” your grow once it’s completed in order to see how you can improve. For example, did you note that your plants struggled to put on weight? Auditing your grows not only raises awareness of such problems, but also helps you devise and test potential solutions so that you can improve future grows.

Conclusion

Now that you’re equipped with some helpful ways to keep costs down, it’s time to step your grow game up.

Click here to check out our post on the most essential tools for home growers. Happy growing!