Managing Your Off-Season Marijuana Grow Room

It’s getting towards summer, and summer heat and humidity is coming back, which means I’m shutting my marijuana grow room down for a few months.

Some years, if I’ve had clients who offered me more per pound than I’d ever gotten before, I kept growing in summer even though it costs me about 40% more in electricity bills than growing from October through March.

But if you’re shutting down your marijuana grow room for summer, or for any other reasons, here’s what you do at the start of the shutdown and during your off-season:

• Take batteries out of your pH meter, green flashlights, monitors, smoke detectors, and any other devices you don’t need to use for a few months.
• Clean the probes and sensors on your pH and parts per million (ppm) meters.
• Make sure your pH probe is capped and that the cap is properly filled with pH probe storage solution.
• NEVER store a pH probe in reverse osmosis water, distilled water, or regular tap water.
• Disconnect electrical feed from exhaust fans, pumps, chillers, power strips, and any other marijuana grow room appliances you won’t be using during off-season.
• Empty your reverse osmosis tank (unless you use your RO system for drinking water).
• Change all filters, especially reverse osmosis filters and filters on air conditioning return vents.
• Professionally clean and check your air conditioning system.
• Change-out/clean marijuana grow room carbon scrubber.
• Clean blades on exhaust fans, aeration fans, ceiling fans.
• Test and evaluate HID bulbs, LED grow lights and other lighting to determine if it’s still at or near maximum intensity.
• Clean and store HID bulbs, LED grow lights, reflectors, hoods.
• Test, grease, oil, and adjust light mover.
• If you use tank C02 and/or a C02 burner connected to a natural gas feed, disconnect and safely shut off all gas canisters and feeds related to your marijuana grow room.
• Drain, clean, and dry all hydroponics reservoirs, buckets, irrigation systems, dehumidifiers, etc. with a mild bleach solution.
• Vacuum, mop, and sterilize ceilings, doors, walls, floors with mild bleach solution.
• If you have Mylar, white poly plastic, or other reflective materials, check their condition, replace if necessary. Look behind them to see if mold is growing (it happens).
• Seal marijuana grow room and pyrethrum bomb it—twice.

When you do these things at the end of a season before you start growing again, you increase your marijuana grow room safety and efficiency while assuring you’ll be able to grow well when you start your next indoor season.