Growing Marijuana in Small Spaces, Part 1

Marijuana legalization is gaining ground in America. In places where legalization happens, it changes very crucial factors for marijuana gardeners.

Those factors include the size, location, and configuration of your marijuana growing space.

In places where it’s still illegal to grow cannabis, growers tend to use smaller, more clandestine spaces to grow in.

These include grow tents, grow chambers, and closets.

And they’re more likely to spend more time and money disguising their indoor marijuana gardens.

Some growers, even in legal marijuana states, haven’t got enough space in their lodging for anything other than a grow chamber, tent, or closet grow.

One important factor that influences where you put your indoor marijuana garden is the ability to remove heat from the grow space.

The best indoor lighting for cannabis is high-intensity discharge (HID) bulbs run from a digital ballast.

But even a 250-watt high-pressure sodium or metal halide HID bulb generates enough heat to be a problem in enclosed grow areas.

Not only does a 25-watt bulb generate heat, it only has enough light intensity for about 2-3 plants, no more than 4-5 feet tall, max.

The grower is faced with figuring out if the enclosed marijuana growing area can be temperature-controlled in a cost-effective manner.

If it cannot, temps are likely swing out of range and harm the marijuana plants.

The good news is marijuana plants are very adaptable.

I’ve seen people producing buds in tiny cannabis gardens under sinks, in closets, tents, chambers, and other small spaces.

When people ask me about growing marijuana in small spaces, I ask them why they only have a small space to grow in, and whether they live in a legal marijuana state.

If you’re in a legal state, and as long as you don’t have security risks or spatial limitations built into your living conditions, I recommend you grow marijuana in a room with at least an eight foot ceiling and a couple hundred or more square feet.

Or grow outdoors.

My marijuana gardens have always been full-sized gardens in rooms, garages, basements, or outdoor areas.

But I’ve visited plenty of cannabis gardens that were in closets, grow chambers, or grow tents.

If you don’t have the space or opportunity to grow in a full-sized situation, you have some serious analysis to do before you choose whether and how to grow marijuana.

The first thing I’d consider if you’re not a legal marijuana grower is that if you get busted for growing cannabis in most places, you’ll get charged with a felony regardless of whether you’re growing in a full-size grow room or in a tiny chamber.

If you want to grow in a chamber, tent, or closet, you have far less square feet than outdoors, or in a full-sized room, garage, or basement space.

This directly impacts the type of marijuana you grow, as well as how you grow it.

In most grow chambers, closets, and grow tents, you don’t have the vertical space to easily grow cannabis strains that have a sizable percentage of Sativa genetics.

I’m talking about many of the most popular Sativa-Indica hybrids.

Of course, you can use topping, training, and other techniques to create shorter cannabis plants that fit into a small grow space, but these techniques take time and require expertise.

So my point is… why grow small plants when you risk the same felony as somebody growing larger plants?

If you’re going to risk a felony anyway, it might as well be for a full-size garden that has a huge yield potential. That’s how I look at it.

One of my buddies faced with this situation waited to start a marijuana garden until he had a chill, secure situation with a stand-alone room that can be vented, with 8-foot high ceilings, and enough electrical grid to support at least 17 amps of continuous draw.

Yes, I realize many of you live in small apartments or otherwise can’t use a stand-alone room as your grow op… so you want to grow marijuana in closets, grow tents, or grow chambers.

In future articles, we’ll share ways for you to get bigger marijuana yields from small grow spaces! Stay tuned.