Cannabis Grow Guide Philosophy

Firstly, in Hawaii I'm going to recommend growing your cannabis outdoors as you would need an extensive solar system to make it viable to do indoors.

Without the solar system the cost to produce a viable end product would exceed its value.

Not to worry, the laws in Hawaii do allow for such actions (outdoor marijuana cultivation).

One of these factors will be it; identifying it is the key:

• Light

• Atmospheric conditions
  - Humidity
  - Air Temperatures
  - CO2 levels
  - Air circulation
  - Weather conditions

• Nutrients

• Root Medium
  - Available Air
  - Root ball temperature

For example, a very high end indoor garden using all the bells and whistles endeavors to come very close to the plant's limits and very well could cause damage should any one of the life supporting mechanisms fail or malfunction.

Consider the relationship between air temperature and CO2 uptake and absorption; in order to get the plant to fully benefit from an environment with an artificially maintained CO2 level of 1500 PPM one needs to raise the air temperatures in order to increase the transpiration rates of the plant. That, in turn, causes the plant to absorb more CO2 (since the level is 3x elevated) and results in an increased growth level.

In order for the plant to now deal with the increased air temperatures (which is normally harmful to plants) one needs to chill the reservoir temperatures to give the plant a mechanism to allow it to "thermo-regulate". Should any one of these control mechanisms fail, like the chiller cooling the reservoir it would not take long for the plants to suffer the damage.

This leads to the additional need for monitoring devices. As you can imagine, to accomplish all of this in an artificial environment requires a very pricey list of equipment and the detailed knowledge of how to run it all together.

My solutions seek to avoid building a perfect 10 rated garden. Simply put, we don't need to attain such high levels in order to produce very near to the same quality that a high-end garden would provide. Furthermore, by growing outdoors the need for expensive equipment is greatly reduced.

In most outdoor solutions we want the limiting factor to be the weather (wind and temperatures). This is the element over which we have no control.

Let's assign an arbitrary value of 7/10 for weather in Hawaii. You can naturally improve this rating by using a greenhouse (provided you can cool and ventilate it appropriately) or by growing indoors under lights; assuming that you have a means to pay for, or provide, the electrical resources to do the job.

Now, assuming that weather is our limiting factor; i.e. the element we cannot change; we do not need to have any other aspects exceed that rating of 7/10 by much. We do, however, need to ensure that we don't drop any below 7.

That implies that we need not waste money on expensive nutrient "plans" that involve a multitude of bottles.

All the plant requires is the proper ratio of N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) in adequate amounts and the availability of micronutrients; i.e. a simple balanced nutrient blend. To enhance and improve the flavors of our end product I would suggest the option of using some minor microbe inoculations and the use of a "sweetener" during the mid to late vegetative process. The sweetener (often molasses) feeds the microbes and prolong their existence and also increase their efficiency.

I would also recommend the use of soil (as opposed to hydroponics) outdoors to minimize the work and to provide for a mobile platform (planters) to improve the management capability of your garden.

That said, getting your soil mix to a level 7 does require using quality ingredients like those used in my soil mix.

When it comes to the cultivation of cannabis the variations and techniques are countless. The philosophy for this cannabis guide is to provide you with the best possible solution for the lowest cost and expending the least amount of effort.

The solution:

- Understanding the basics of growing cannabis
- A good organic soil mix
- A solid yet simple organic nutrient blend
- Taking advantage of Hawaii's light cycles
- Finding and perpetuating solid genetics
- Pragmatic insect control

Using this method correctly with decent genetics one can produce an ounce of consumable organic cannabis buds for an average cost of $5-$8. My garden averages about 7-8 hours of sunlight per day and one batch of five plants (approximately 2.5 foot final height, pruned out) can collectively produce about 20 ounces of trimmed bud and 8 ounces of "sugar leaf" for a cost of $38 for growing components and an energy expense of $50, that's less than $5 per once, not even including what you get from processable materials!