Indoor Cultivation Sucks: Marijuana Speech #27

27th speech in this series to the Josephine County Commissioners, 4-27-2011 

  

An article appeared in the April 15^th Oregonian, “Pot growing gobbles power.”  Eric Mortenson tells us about research by Californian Evan Mills that indicates that indoor marijuana growing uses a full one percent of electricity consumed in the United States. 

I have long held that growing pot indoors is stupid.  It’s a huge full-to-part-sun plant that cannot grow with normal indoor lighting, and it takes a lot of water as well.  1000-watt lights were the standard twenty years ago when I was interested in indoor growing.  The heat from these lamps and the humidity from rapidly transpiring plants has to be vented, which uses still more power.

If it isn’t properly vented, it is hard on a house, as is water that spills on the floor.  It can cause mold and dry rot.  This is a major problem for landlords screening potential tenants; tenants generally don’t tell their landlord that they plan to grow pot in a house, even with a license.

          Cannabis is a big plant for which a pot is never big enough.  Once its roots fill the pot, it cannot get enough water and gets stressed, which encourages indoor pests like whitefly and spider mites.  This encourages the use of insecticides that lower the quality of the product, and can harm consumers.

Indoors is a very expensive, difficult way to grow marijuana.  It makes electricity more expensive for everyone and ruins rentals.  The only reason that anyone grows pot indoors is fear of police and/or thieves.  Medical marijuana has reduced fear of cops, but it has brought the work of thieves into the open; legal growers report thefts. 

A greenhouse is the best option for growing marijuana safely in Southern Oregon: it keeps the crop hidden; gives it lots of the heat and humidity it loves; it can have no floor, allowing roots to spread freely in the soil beneath; and it protects the heavy buds from fall fogs and rain that can cause mold.

When Oregon passes the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, it will end the black market within our state, and the fear of cops and pot thieves with it.  People will grow a few plants in their yards for themselves; licensed growers will grow it in fields, where it belongs, for sale to the state.  Farmers will grow hemp in fields for the world market.   One place you may be sure it will not be grown very much will be indoors, under lights.  Landlords will have one less worry, and we won’t be wasting electricity growing a plant that loves the sun.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener         541-955-9040         rycke@gardener.com