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FROM THE MAGAZINE

Growth Industry
Why raising your own medical cannabis is easier than ever

BY THEO DOUGLAS

Perhaps it’s just woolgathering — as an otherwise historic year in marijuana history unfolds — but longtime advocate and author Ed Rosenthal wonders darkly what will become of medical cannabis, if California voters really legalize it this November.

“It might not be such a good year for medical cannabis, because marijuana is a really great drug. It might be so good that people might find after Nov. 3 that [the election] might cure their illnesses,” says Rosenthal, whose latest edition of the “Marijuana Growers Handbook” is available at edrosenthal.blogspot.com. “Wouldn’t that be great? People who have been using it medically will find that they don’t have a medical use for it any more. So they will have been cured. It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle of democracy.”

In other words, if marijuana is legalized in November, the distinction between medical cannabis (legal) and all other cannabis (currently not legal) will instantly be all but erased — because it will all be legal. If this sounds like semantics, well, maybe it is — but a more legal status would not necessarily be bad news to medical cannabis users. Their medication is already legal, but decriminalizing all cannabis could make life even easier for patients. Growing your own — once thought by many to be the province of gentle, dreadlocked Northern Californians — is a prime example, for more Southern Californians are growing medical marijuana with each day that passes.

“I think the model of the dirty, rasta-haired hippie up in Northern California is not really an accurate stereotype anymore,” says Chris Van Hook, an attorney and founder of Clean Green, a medical marijuana certification program that mirrors United States Department of Agriculture standards.

“I think what is an accurate stereotype is professional people who simply like to take a couple of hits after work. These are professional, productive people,” says Van Hook, who notes that even patients who only grow for their own use increasingly are seeking his certification.

“I’m getting calls from a new category of caller — professional people who are running their own businesses, they’re not from the medical cannabis industry. They all have their own cards and they want to grow medical cannabis in a safe and compliant manner,” Van Hook says. “And a lot of them, I don’t think, feel comfortable going into dispensaries. Unless you’re going into some place like Harborside.”

Growing your own may have seemed daunting in high school — when germinating seeds in a glass of water was high tech — but today, thanks to improvements in equipment and availability, it can be done by almost anyone. That’s due in large part to something called the grow tent — a prefabricated bit of ingenuity that’s been around more than a decade, but which has now been refined to come with virtually everything you need. Except… you know — clones. Or seeds.

Modern grow tents start at around $100, which is cheap when you consider they’ll neatly screen off your legal-with-a-card six-plant farm, so that your back bedroom doesn’t start looking like “Little Shop of Horrors.” Grow tents today, sold under names like GrowLAB and Sun Hut, come with all the lights you need to grow indoors, plus filters to remove the smell; pockets, to help segment everything off — even viewing windows, so you don’t have to unzip it all just to sneak a peek.

“If you have a marijuana card and you can have six plants, you can do it all in a grow tent,” says Truman, a Santa Barbara County grower who declines to provide his own last name or his city of origin for fear of his own safety and that of his crop. “That’s the simplest way. You can do it in your bedroom — you can do it in the corner of your bedroom. For somebody by themselves, who has a little time and knows what they’re doing, it’s a great way.”

The fanciest grow tent won’t make you a good gardener, but the basics on how and when to plant; how and when to add inputs — or soil enhancers, like fertilizers; even information on seeds and clones — which are just cuttings from female plants — can be found on the Internet, at a hydroponics store, or in a book.

“There’s a big huge need for this stuff. A gargantuan need,” says Shawn Sexton, manager of No Stress Hydroponics in West Hollywood, which offers everything from grow tents to inputs to input charts. He estimates his business has more than doubled in the past year.

“I call it ‘Club Hydro,’ because it seems like everybody knows each other,” Sexton says, describing his customers. “People are waiting in line up to a half-hour to pay, sometimes.” If growing in seclusion indoors isn’t your thing, then take it outside. The area of Southern California from Los Angeles south is uniquely blessed with a mild climate and abundant, free natural light.

“Utilities are 30 to 40 to 45 percent of your overhead. The inputs are going to be the rest — what you feed ’em while they’re growing, what you feed ’em when you want ’em to kick the flowers,” Truman says. Growing outside in the summer cuts down on your electric bill — and can even generate an additional, late-summer harvest.

“If you wanted to get two harvests, that’s what you do: you start indoors in January. As soon as the spring solstice comes, let them veg outside,” Truman says — referring to the stage when plants bulk up their vegetation. “In June, start your second grow.”

Charts showing what lights and inputs work best, and when to use them, can be obtained from their manufacturers — or at your local hydroponics store. And natural light — well, this is the season for it. “Even in the winter, you have significant amounts of ultraviolet light. That helps determine the potency,” says Rosenthal, who is based in the Bay Area but admires our weather. “You can basically grow 10 months of the year down there.” For the record, he recommends growing indoors between Nov. 15 and Jan. 15.

And, at least until this November — and, possibly even afterward — you’ll want to keep it legal and
get your card.