Growing Cannabis can get expensive to say the least. However it doesn’t have to be. If you are growing cannabis on a budget we will teach you how to get the most out of your plants even with limited funds. Just because a grower may be limited in funds doesn’t mean their quality of cannabis plants have to suffer, or even the size of your cannabis buds.
Great Ways to Save Money While Growing Cannabis
Here are some great ways to save a few bucks and still get amazing plants. Growing your own cannabis will always be cheaper than having to continually buy cannabis from your local marijuana dispensary. The best part is you don’t even have to cut corners doing so. It can get really expensive to keep buying cannabis from the store. Users can grow pounds of cannabis at home with very little effort and Costs.
Buy High Quality Budget Cannabis Seeds
All cannabis plants start with a seed. You can’t clone your plants until you have a marijuana seed to first grow your own plants for cloning. Green Avenger Seeds believes that you don’t have to break the bank buying cannabis seeds. There are lots of places where you can get amazing genetics to get started in the garden.
Finding a reputable cannabis seed dealer is the first start and we have a couple of articles you can read here first to find a great seed dealer to grow cannabis on a budget.
You can always save money up front by not buying the “latest and greatest” new strain that is sure to be over-hyped, and even more so overpriced. To start your growing budget off right look for some great genetics that are not the latest thing. By doing so you can find that perfect strain for your cannabis garden and save money.
For example our breeder has been growing cannabis for 30 years and created amazing strains that will only cost you a few dollars each for feminized cannabis seeds. You can get the Canadian Sunshine strain that is awesome for new growers and it will only cost a few dollars each for seeds, that will provide months worth of quality cannabis buds for months after the first harvest.
Money Saving Grow Room Tips
Setting up a cannabis grow room correctly is the biggest way to grow on a budget since most of the things you will be running in the grow room will ultimately cost money.
Make Sure you are Not Over Lighting
Price out your lighting before you buy. Many times the garden or hydro store will be looking to sell you that massive light you don’t need. Hey, they are just trying to make money too! Be ready when you get there to know which light you will need, the size, type and lumens you need for the grow space. Your plants only need a certain amount of light depending on the space of your growing area. You can read more about how to pick the correct lighting here.
Never just buy your lighting based on the upfront cost of the lighting system. Some lighting will cost much less upfront until you receive your first energy bill.
Choosing the right lighting is one of the best things for growing on a budget.
Picking the Right Growing Equipment For Your Budget
Are you going to grow in a 2X2 grow tent? If so then you are not going to need a 12 inch ventilation fan! These are all things to keep in mind when you are buying your first growing equipment. You have two choices here, you can buy cheap growing gear upfront, or you can buy expensive cannabis growing gear upfront.
While buying cheap gear will save costs, remember that “you get what you pay for” so that cheap five dollar fan at the dollar store may be cheap, it most likely will need to be replaced. Buy only cheap gear if you can not afford more expensive gear upfront. While it will save you money, like the lighting it could end up costing more in the long run.
If you do go the cheap route, as things break down, you could replace each piece of equipment overtime. By doing so, the costs are broken down and it will make it more affordable as you replace cheap equipment with better equipment for your growing space.
Finding Used Growing Equipment Online
Many growers out there all want the great new light on the market, newest and best hydroponics system. Many times you can find deals on lights that would be great, however they were last year’s model light and the grower has updated to the latest and greatest technologies.
This is great news for the budget grower because now you can get this light that works just fine and only used for one year of growing at a major discount. Keep an eye out on buy and sell sites like Facebook, Craigslist and others. You may get lucky and find a light that is only a quarter of the price it was brand new.
Buy A Timer To Save on Lighting Costs
Once you have your lighting, you can save on cost with a timer, sure you can run your grow room lighting 24 hours a day. However it is not necessary, cannabis can grow fine in vegetative stage with 16 hours of lighting. The eight hours that the lights are off everyday will add up to some nice savings over the months.
The best part is you will need it anyway once you are ready to flower the cannabis, and set the timer to 12 hours of lighting per day.
Growing Outdoors The Cheapest Way to Grow Cannabis on a Budget
Well what if you didn’t have to buy lighting, grow room supplies, grow tents, well you can do that if you grow outside. Pretty much anyone has an outdoor growing season, some are longer than others however, unless you live in a very northern climate growing cannabis outside is a good option to grow cannabis on a budget.
You can use just about anything for containers, and you can read here about selecting a great cannabis growing container. Just about any empty container can work as a growing container, from old buckets, to old larger ice cream containers. The best part is they are all free of charge.
Other than the cost of your cannabis seeds upfront, growing cannabis outdoors can be completely free. Which leads us into our next section of making your own organic growing nutrients.
Autoflowering Cannabis For a Shorter Outdoor Growing Season
If you live in the true north and have a very short growing season autoflowering cannabis could be the type of cannabis you can grow. It will grow and flower outdoors regardless of dark, light cycles. This means you could start your cannabis indoors for the first month under a small grow light then, when the weather gets warm enough move the plant outdoors to flower in the full summer. Growers will only need two months of warmer weather for these plants.
Creating Your Own Organic nutrients
Once you get started growing cannabis you will find out rather quickly that nutrients for cannabis are not cheap and can start to add up quickly over time. A vegetative nutrient, a flowering nutrient, a bloom booster, growth hormones. With a little extra energy and time growers can create their own nutrients with free organics right in your own backyard.
Green Water Nutrients for Nitrogen
There are a couple we like to use for this purpose. The first is creating a lawn grass, (or other greens like yard weeds) or even the green cannabis leaves can be used for this nutrient. All it takes is some green grass, a bucket and some water.
Fill the bucket with grass, or other greens and then fill it with water and let it soak for a couple of weeks or longer if you wish. The longer the mix sits the more nutrient rich it will be, it will also get pretty smelly so keep it outside if you can. Once the water is drained, it will be very rich in nitrogen and can be water back into your cannabis plants.
Make your Own Cal/Mag From Egg Shells
Don’t want to spend the $45 on a bottle of store bought Calcium, Magnesium. This is very easy to make if you want to grow cannabis on a budget.
First take, save all your breakfast egg shells. You can microwave them for a minute or two first. Save enough you can fill one quarter of a jar full of them crushed. Next add some vinegar filling the jar half full over the egg shells. Let this sit for about 3 to 4 days. You can then strain off the mixture into another glass and repeat the process. You can do this as many times as you like until the egg shells are completely dissolved.
The acid in the vinegar will break down the calcium in the egg shells so the plants can absorb it through their roots. You can also use this mixture by mixing a tablespoon per gallon of water. It can also be used as a foliar feed. You can read more about foliar feeding here.
If you would like the full Cal/Mag solution you can choose to add a tablespoon of Epsom Salts to the solution and this will have a nice dose of Magnesium just as good as the store bought stuff for a fraction of the price.
Reuse Your Organic Soil To Save
Many Cannabis growers out there think they need to buy a new bag of potting soil each and every time they start a new grow. Some don’t understand that growing with amendments in organic soil, that the soil only gets better over time as the amendments start to break down.
Growers can reuse this soil over and over, we have used the same organically amended soils for years without any loss in production. Buying soils like Foxfarm for every grow can cost hundreds of dollars a year in extra costs for the budget grower.
Cannabis Growing Techniques to Grow Cannabis on a Budget
To Grow Cannabis on a Budget doesn’t just have to be about saving money. Growers can also do other things that will save time and money when growing.
Grow in a Cooler Basement in the Summer
If you are growing cannabis on a budget, most likely you don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on buying a cooling system or energy cooling the grow space. This is where picking a spot that is cooler during the summer months can go a long way to keeping your plant cooler without needing supplemental cooling.
Using Your Grow Light for Extra Heat in the Cooler Months
All Growers know that growing lights produce a lot of heat. We like to run our lights at night when it’s the coldest outside, the lights running will give off heat and can be a major help for keeping your grow space and plant nice and warm in colder months of the year.
If they are giving off all the extra heat energy why not put it to use, this can help with heating energy costs in the winter season.
Using Plant Training to Increase Yields
The larger harvest you get each flowering cycle the less cannabis you have to grow for the next few months. Getting the biggest harvest that you can will save money with more buds per grow.
Using training techniques like Low Stress Training, SCROG and Sea of Green can accomplish this. When using these growing methods you can get a better yield then if you didn’t do any of these things. Doubling your harvest will mean you can go twice as long before your next cannabis garden. You can also get stoned for twice as long as well, bonus all round!
Don’t Forget to Use the Entire Plant
When you’re all finished your garden and now it is time to harvest and keep everything. Many growers trim the buds and toss out the sugar leaves with tons of valuable trichomes on them. Put these sugar leaves to use, and make some water, ice hash out of them, very easy to do and cheap to make. This will allow even more value out of each of your harvest, and some nice water hash as well.
Conclusion
When you grow cannabis on a budget there are always little things that don’t seem like much. Over time they can add up costing you more money. When you’re on a budget, always watch for little things that you can do differently to help you save money. Sometimes they don’t seem like much but can help you save for all kinds of other stuff in the end.
