If you read our preivous blog, you will know that even people who don’t have time can grow cannabis. Choosing a less time-consuming setup and getting the right gear will help you to save a plenty of time. What can we do to save more time?
3.) Optimize the Grow Space
Some of these ideas are little things and may only take a few minutes to set up, but can end up saving you so much time and frustration during your grow!
Make Sure You Have an Easy Way to Get Water
When it’s hard to get water, not only are you just less likely to make up your water on time, it ends up taking more of your time.
- Learn how to get water from a too-small sink. If your grow space is near a sink, but you can’t fit your water container under the faucet, you can install an easy-release adapter that lets you easily “snap” a hose onto your sink.
- Get a good size water container to mix up nutrient water. If you’re making up several 1-gallon containers of water at a time, consider getting a bigger container so you can make more at once.
- Don’t try to carry too much water at once. This doesn’t necessarily save time, but will save a lot of effort. If you can’t use a hose to get water directly to your grow space, try to think about how much water you’re expecting yourself to carry on a regular basis. One customer of ours used to use a single 5-gallon jug to make up water for his plants because he wanted to make a lot of water at a time. The problem was he had a hard time carrying a jug with 5 gallons of water in it. He switched to using two 3-gallon jugs because they’re easier to carry/handle than a single 5 gallon jug and that works a lot better for him!
Make It Easy to Dispose of Water
When watering cannabis plants grown in containers, you want to give your plants enough water every time to get 20% extra runoff water out the bottom. Making sure to water your plants thoroughly each time means you have to water less often, and cannabis plants grow faster when they get wet/dry cycles.
But in order to prevent soggy roots and plant drooping, you also want to make sure to remove that runoff water right away so your plants aren’t sitting in it. Sometimes that’s easier said than done!
If you’re growing with containers and each one has their own saucer, you have to physically pick up the plants every time you want to empty the saucers of runoff water. If you only have one plant it’s not really a big deal but the more plants you’re growing at a time the bigger of a pain this is.
You don’t want to have to empty each saucer one at a time after you water your plants.
One solution is to put all your plants on a tray that will catch water, and put something small like a block of wood under the tray opposite you to make an incline. This makes it so all the runoff water drains to the front of the tray.
These trays are on a slight incline so runoff water immediately pools to the front.
At this point, you can take something like a wet vac to quickly suck up all the runoff water without having to move the plants at all.
Easy Access to Plants
This may seem simple but when it comes to making sure you pay enough attention to your plants without having to spend a lot of time on them, it’s super important to make sure you can easily access your plants. Every extra obstacle between you and them is going to take a little extra time. So whenever possible try to make sure you have a clear path to the grow space, and that you have an easy-to-open grow tent, closet or grow box.
The main idea is to make it so when you check on the plants it only takes a second. That being said, don’t make your grow area easy to access for other people!
Make Sure the Tools in Your Grow Space Are Easy to Reach
You might not realize you’ve been wasting time going across the room every time you need to get your nutrients or a pH pen. When possible, you want every tool you use (measuring spoons, nutrients, pH testers, eye protection, grow journal, camera, etc) to be within arm’s reach so you don’t have to get up or move while tending your plants.
Taking a little time on a lazy afternoon to really think this one through and set things up right will save you a surprising amount of time and effort in the long run!
To be continued…