How to Grow Pot: Hydroponics Systems for Marijuana Growers

In our ongoing series about how to grow pot, we briefly mentioned the many different ways to do it, including the variety of hydroponics systems. 

Now we’re taking a deeper look at hydroponics systems for marijuana growers.

Hydroponics systems indoors give you TOTAL CONTROL over your marijuana plants, what they “eat,” and the conditions they grow in.

Hydroponics marijuana growing is the ultimate management and productivity machine for cannabis cultivation, even though outdoor marijuana plants can give you way larger weight per plant due to the size of the plants and their root zone.

Start by knowing that hydroponics root zone materials and hydroponics systems come in different styles.

These styles affect how well your plants do for you, and how much work and cost it takes you to grow your marijuana.

One important difference is some hydroponics systems use a solid root zone media such as rockwool, coco coir, or hydroton to hold your plants’ roots and deliver water and nutrients… but other systems use mostly or only water in the root zone.

When you use solid root zone media such as rockwool or coir, your hydroponics plants are in a sterile, inert soil substitute that holds and transfers water, oxygen and nutrition.

In contrast, when you use true hydroponics “water culture” systems such as aeroponics, your plants’ roots hang in a chamber into which a nutrient-enriched water is periodically sprayed or misted.

Other water culture systems are called deep-water culture (DWC) and nutrients film technique (NFT).

Using those systems, your marijuana stalk and upper roots are in a small basket that has hydroton or another solid material as an anchor, or by a collar.

The lower root mass hangs in a large bucket or other chamber and are constantly fed hydroponics nutrients, dissolved oxygen, and water.

Read here to see how important it is to ensure adequate dissolved oxygen when you’re using hydroponics systems.

Crucial factors in hydroponics systems such as deep water culture are you must use the highest quality nutrients and reverse osmosis water.

The only hydroponics nutrients made for hydroponics systems for marijuana growers are from the company Advanced Nutrients.

The owner and founder of the company is a marijuana growing expert.

Because hydroponics marijuana water culture depends on pumps and timers to distribute water and nutrients, you must have reliable electricity and equipment.

Why? Because in regular marijuana growing, your plants have material like soil, rockwool, or coco coir around their roots.

These materials provide water, oxygen, and nutrients that can support your roots for many hours or days.

In water culture systems like aeroponics and DWC, there’s no material to support your marijuana roots.

If the electricity goes off, or if your equipment fails, your plants die within a few hours.

Come back to BigBudsMag.com as our series on how to grow pot continues.