One of the things I want to learn properly is how to make medicinal marijuana, you may as well take it if you can sort out your own – even if it gives you a 5% chance of avoiding cancer then it is worth it in my book. Most people I have spoken to crush the plant and then put it through some kind of process to extract the important oils – the ones with the health benefits.
Before worrying about preparing oils you need to be able to grow the plant and depending where you live it may make sense to set up your own indoor growing area – lots of people do this as you get more control over growing conditions as well as keeping your stash of plants away from any prying eyes! For this to work you will need to choose between a Hydroponic system or a normal indoor plant setup with grow light – you can check out more information over here to see what grow lights and home growing kits are all about.
This setup is recommended and can be fairly cheap if you look around. You will need power to the area as well as a water feed of some sort – the light will come from the grow light – remember that most of the sunlight will be absorbed by the glass in your windows as well as a reduction in light during bad weather and winter. This is why modern grow lights are the best way to go as they are fairly cheap to run (LED are popular now) and they also have the correct lighting spectrum spread out through the LED’s to ensure your plants get an emulated natural light.
If you decide to avoid a Hydroponic system and just go with conventional trays and racking remember it is best to buy special planting soils from your local garden center or hardware store. Lots of people grab soil from the garden. This will work OK but often the outdoor soil contains chemicals that hinder your plants and you will get much better results with a product like potting soil.
Essentially, this setup will give you full control over lighting, temperature, water and everything else a plant needs to successfully grow. Many people use these setups to grow vegetables in their homes as well as fresh herbs they can pick before meals etc. Even if you don’t want to use it just for the purposes discussed here there is no limit to what you can grow with this type of setup.
Once you have everything setup and ready to go you will need to find a source for your seeds. I am not going to talk too much about that one but I am sure you know where to go in your local area.
I am busy building my growing area right now so I will report back at a later stage and some photos of how things are progressing. The actual making of the oils will be discussed in a future post, I am still learning all about this myself!