In our how to grow pot series for beginner marijuana growers, we talk about basics so you can grow your own weed right now.
The minimum things you need to grow pot are:
- Excellent cannabis genetics (marijuana seeds or clones).
- Sunlight or an indoor grow light.
- Reverse osmosis water.
- A container or system that provides a home for your marijuana roots.
- A safe space outdoors or indoors.
- For indoor growing, you need air flow, air movement, and air exchange to ensure adequate carbon dioxide and climate control. Reliable electricity supply.
- Magnifying glass.
- Time to spend on your garden.
- An understanding of basic cannabis plant life cycle and phases.
In our previous article, we talked about how you get great cannabis seeds and clones.
We also discussed indoor grow room lighting.
Now let’s look at the fact that you need clean water to grow pot with.
When you grow pot using tap water or well water in most locations, you’re pouring a lot of harmful things into your plants’ root zones.
You’re also consuming those harmful things yourself!
These bad things include:
- Chlorine and chloramines
- Pesticides and herbicides
- High concentrations of arsenic, industrial waste, iron, calcium, lead, sodium, and other materials
- Harmful bacteria
These materials can kill your roots, poison your plants, interfere with your plants’ ability to take in nutrients, slow plant growth, reduce harvest weight and potency, etc.
They make it hard to get accurate pH readings, and for nutrients water to stay at a useful pH.
They make it very hard to properly dose your hydroponics nutrients, because your baseline water starts with a high concentration of random elements and compounds.
The reliable way to protect yourself and your marijuana plants is to install a reverse osmosis system.
An effective reverse osmosis system starts at about $270.
The best ones can cost more than a thousand dollars.
Take a look at this link to see a wide range of reverse osmosis brands.
A reverse osmosis system wastes water.
In the most inefficient reverse osmosis systems, 2-4 gallons of water are wasted for every gallon of reverse osmosis water produced.
There’s also the ongoing cost of changing your filters every six months to a year, depending on how much water you’re using and how bad your source water is.
Filters usually cost $60-100 per set.
Growers with moderate plumbing skills can install a reverse osmosis unit.
Others will need to hire a plumber.
Most water experts suggest that whole house filtration be installed along with reverse osmosis.
Whole house filtration using salt or potassium can cost about $1000, but it removes most of the contaminants that the reverse osmosis system would have had to remove, so it cuts down on overall filtration cost.
Using whole house filtration also extends the life and performance of appliances and house infrastructure such as water heater, faucets, washing machines, etc.
Using reverse osmosis water for your marijuana grow op and for drinking, showering, and cooking pays for itself rapidly if you’ve been buying bottled water, and reverse osmosis water you make yourself is cleaner the bottled water.
The added bonus of using whole house filtration and reverse osmosis water is that it helps keep you healthy.
You’re no longer bathing in, cooking with, or drinking water that contains harmful, bad-tasting substances.
Filtration also protects plumbing fixtures, along with appliances like water heaters and refrigerator ice makers.
Unless you’re one of the few people who has very clean tap water or well water, or can collect rainwater from the sky (not from a roof and roof gutter), you need reverse osmosis water to grow pot.