Something big happened for Canadians back in October 2018, and it wasn’t just the fact that the federal government finally legalized recreational cannabis. The real excitement was that most provinces passed laws allowing residents to grow weed from home without needing to apply for a medical ACMPR License.

According to the Cannabis Act, it is now legal for recreational cannabis users to grow 4 plants per household (not to be confused with per person). Although some provinces have restrictions on this, most places have the 4-plants rule, which means that a lot of Canadians are growing from home for the first time.

What to Do When 4 Plants Just Isn’t Enough

These new regulations are great and all, but for some people, 4 plants just doesn’t cut it. These tend to be the medical growers who use cannabis for treating pain, anxiety, depression, cancer symptoms, or another condition that requires regular use of medical marijuana for treatment.

That’s why medical patients have the option to apply to a medical marijuana program called the ACMPR. With this, patients are given the opportunity to grow way more than 4 plants - sometimes even more than 400 - all from the comforts of home.

5 Major Challenges of Growing 5+ Plants

There are a lot of perks that come along with moving from a small closet or 2x2 tent grow and starting a bigger operation, like never having to wait in line at a dispensary and never having to worry about a retailer running out of your favorite strain. But there are also hurdles that come along with midsized and large grow ops.

1.   Maintaining Temperature and Humidity

Every cannabis grower knows that temperature and humidity control are crucial. Think about it… in the wild, marijuana plants are only able to grow in specific conditions. It’s up to you to create those conditions in your indoor grow op, and the first step to doing that is by focusing on temperature and humidity.

One of the biggest mistakes made by new growers is to focus only on light and sun requirements and forget about other environmental factors. Obviously, lighting is important, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to ignore everything else.

When temperatures are off or humidity isn’t on-point, you’re opening the door for problems like mold, mildew, scorching, frosting, and many more problems that could be easily prevented. To prevent them, invest in climate control tools like fans, ACs, heaters, dehumidifiers, humidifiers, thermostats, and hygrometers.

2.   Figuring Out the Right Nutrient Balance

When it comes to nutrients, you might be thinking “the more the merrier”. This is actually not the case for an indoor cannabis crop of 5 plants or more. It’s never a good idea to overdo it with nutrients, and just like improper temperature and humidity control, too many nutrients can cause bigger problems in the long run.

Let’s take a look at nitrogen for plants, one of the main nutrients that your indoor crop needs to survive. Even though plants need nitrogen, feeding them a fertilizer with too much nitrogen (or feeding them too often) can lead to nitrogen toxicity. This is more common later on in plant development because surprisingly enough, plants require less nitrogen as they grow.

Nitrogen isn’t the only nutrient to focus on. There’s a long list of them, like potassium, phosphorous, calcium, magnesium, and zinc. The main thing to remember is that less is more, especially in the beginning when you’re trying to strike that perfect balance.

A Helpful Hint for Nutes: Pay Attention to pH

There’s a very strong correlation between nutrients and the pH levels of the roots and soil. If the pH is too high or too low, the roots aren’t able to drink up the nutrients from water delivered to the soil. No matter the size of the grow op and the number of plants, it’s crucial that you regularly check the pH of plant runoff.

For soil growing, runoff (water that has made its way through the soil and out through the bottom of the pot) should range between 6 and 7. For hydroponic plants, it should be slightly lower between 5.5 and 6.5. You can use a pH pen or meter to check pH runoff in seconds or resort to the old school method of using paper pH testing strips.

3.   Installing an Effective Ventilation System

We already mentioned that indoor plants thrive most when the conditions of the grow room or tent are similar to their natural outdoor habitat. In every cannabis plant’s natural habitat, no matter where it is in the world, there’s always fresh air and a gentle breeze.

To mimic these conditions, you’ll need to install a ventilation system and keep the air constantly circulating. If the air is stagnant and stale, the plants will suffer, so make sure to introduce fresh air into the room and pull old air out. On top of that, use oscillating fans to move the air around the room to simulate that gentle breeze that cannabis plants are used to.

A Helpful Hint on Ventilation: Pay Attention to Your Lighting System

Some grow ops need more ventilation than others, and this usually has something to do with the type of lighting system you’re using. Some lights give off more heat than others, specifically high-intensity lights that use HPS and CMH bulbs. For these, ventilation is even more important to keep the room (and the plants) from overheating.

4.   Controlling Odors

For growing just 4 plants, odor control isn’t as important. While a few plants are likely to give off a mild odor, things will start to get very skunky with 5+ plants. Some strains are more pungent than others, but no matter what you’re growing, controlling odors can be challenging.

The good news is that there are a number of options to downplay the skunkiness that’s coming from your grow room. The most effective method is to use an activated carbon filter in your ventilation system, which basically works to filter out odors as air is ventilated from the room.

5.   Preventing Disease and Pests

One of the most common assumptions for an indoor grow op is that there’s no need to worry about pests since the grow op is, well, indoors. Unfortunately, there’s still plenty of room to worry since pests like spider mites, ants, caterpillars, and leaf miners can easily make their way through windows, doors, and ventilation ducting.

Disease in a grow room is another big challenge that many growers have had to face. Powdery mildew is a very common one, especially when the humidity is too high. The best way to deal with disease and pest control is through prevention, so try to be proactive and not reactive.

The first step in proactive disease and pest prevention is to keep the space clean. Bugs and common plant diseases are much more likely to be present when old leaves litter the floor and water system, so you should clean the space on a daily basis. Even go around the room and plush the dried yellowing leaves from the plants themselves.

It goes without saying that the more plants you grow, the more challenges you’re likely to come across. But don’t let that you stop you from taking on the challenge… even with the hurdles you’ll have to face in terms of nutrients, odor control, disease prevention, and more, growing 5+ plants has a lot of benefits.