UVSS HEMPOLOGY 101 CLUB
LECTURE SERIES 2007/08

LESSON #15 : GROWING CANNABIS - Part 2

A grower can often use animal and insect life to his advantage. Bees, tics, green flies and the like can discourage people from wandering through fields so areas having an abundant insect population are prime locations. The most important criteria for an excellent growing site are good soil, available water, sunlight, and suitable cover. Good soil is sometimes hard to find but without it you won't get much of a harvest. So, if you find a site that is perfect for all other factors but has poor soil, you may want to consider bringing soil to the site. Soil is often the richest in areas where grassland vegetation has existed for a series of years.

Grasslands recycle nutrients in the soil and form a thick layer of organic matter. Grassland biospheres require very little preparation to start growing, while other soil conditions require more work. Sandy soils often need potting soil or top soil along with a small amount of lime to make them more fertile. Soils with high amounts of clay need material, like peat moss, added to break up the clay and make the soil more porous. I'm a naturalist and disagree with some herb growing professionals who believe that planting along road sides can be productive. The lead and other toxic chemicals found in some of these soils is enough to discourage many vegetable growers from producing consumable or smokable plant material. If you live in a city, and lack your own means of transportation then use roadsides as your last resort.

A close water source is also very important. A site close to the water table would be ideal since bringing water into the site can get tiresome and also dangerous. It can get very tiresome if you have many sites or even a few big sites. If you choose a site much higher than the water table or grow in buckets, you will quickly find that the amount of water needed during a dry summer will be enormous and will give you great incentive to find a site closer to the water table. The dangers in having to bring water to the sites are numerous. The greatest of these would be the chance of someone spotting you, possibly a cop.

The second greatest would be the destruction of the foliage you have to walk through to get from the water source to the site. If you have to make more than one trip you run a big risk that a trail will become noticeable. Finding a stable water source in the summer can be another obstacle since small streams often dry up at this time. How often you will need to water is determined by the weather and that could require you to make unexpected trips to the sites. greenmanspage.com.

Thermal Infrared Imaging solutions can detect very subtle differences in temperature as low as .1 degree. This technology can reveal unusual heat patterns in a residential or commercial structure that may be indicative of an illicit Marijuana manufacturing facility. This equipment is available to the general public but is priced beyond the reach of your average "Pot Head" making it difficult for them to verify weather or not they are exhibiting excessive heat. This makes the system very effective for police because most of the bad guys are constructing their clandestine operations based on myth, rumor, and plain ignorance. The general public gets very confused about the technology. They are busy constructing all kinds of copper framed, pyramid structure, lead lined kryptonite enclosures thinking that they can defeat the IR technology. In truth much of what they do makes the IR system work better! This technology is completely passive. There are no rays or energy of any kind being emitted from the system. The units only read the IR energy that is emitted from all objects naturally.

You cannot see through walls into people’s homes or vehicles but you can gather a lot of information about what is going on behind a wall based on the pattern that radiates out through the wall or roof. The high power lights that the dopers use to grow the drugs generate a large amount of heat. The criminal farmer must vent this heat or the plants will get to hot. We can find the unusually hot exhaust pipe in the roof or the hot room in a house that seems to be hot and cold on a regular cycle (hot when the lights are on cold when they are off). http://www.predictive-maintenance.com/marijuana.html.

Plants use light as energy to fuel photosynthesis, a process in which water and carbon dioxide (CO2) are the raw materials used to make sugar. Sugar is the basic building block of all plants. By twisting the sugar molecule, plants form carbohydrates, which are more complex molecules. Plants use carbohydrates to build tissue. When nitrogen atoms are integrated into the molecules, amino acids are formed. These are eventually grouped together to form proteins.

Light is also used to regulate many varieties of cannabis' reproductive cycle. Scientists speculate that the plant produces a hormone during the dark period (night in nature) which induces the start of the reproductive (flowering) cycle. When the hormone builds up to a critical level, flower growth commences. The number of hours of darkness required to induce flowering differs for each variety. Gardeners have a choice of lamps to illuminate their garden. Incandescents, tungsten-halogen lamps and screw in "grow bulbs" are inefficient sources of light. weedfarmer.com.