How To Grow Weed Without Soil

One of the interesting—and often times beneficial—aspects of growing weed indoors is that you don’t have to use soil. You can always grow plants in pots filled with potting soil if you want to, but learning to grow without soil is a great skill to have. Here’s how to grow weed without soil.

How To Grow Weed Without Soil: An Introduction

The two main methods for growing weed without soil that we will focus on are hydroponics and aeroponics. There are a few reasons why you might want to learn how to grow weed without soil using these methods.

For starters, they both make the growing process a bit more streamlined. Since you’re not using soil, that’s one less thing you need to research, buy, monitor, and worry about.

Beyond that, when you grow weed without soil, you will be using other mediums and techniques. And many times these techniques give you unmatched control over each and every aspect of your growing environment. This can set you up for especially successful harvests.

It may seem counterintuitive, but hydroponics and aeroponics both use less water than growing in soil. And finally, growing weed without soil by using either a hydroponics grow or an aeroponics grow makes it easier to monitor and automate the entire growing process. You know exactly what’s going into your plants, which means there’s less room for error, disease, or other common cultivation problems.

The main downside to these growing methods is that they require specialized equipment. That means it’ll take some time, effort, and money to learn about these techniques and to piece together the gear you’ll need.

And of course, growing weed hydroponically or aeroponically requires new sets of skills, knowledge, and work. But the main point is that learning how to grow weed without soil can expand your cultivation toolbox and give you some valuable new approaches to growing cannabis.

Growing Weed With Hydroponics

Hydroponics is a method for growing plants that does not use soil. Instead, you suspend roots in a nutrient-rich water solution. Oxygen and fertilizer bubble through the water to give the plants what they need to grow.

Typically, people set up hydroponic grows indoors. You could technically set up a hydro system outside to let your plants get natural sunlight. But since getting full control over the full growing environment is one of the benefits of growing weed this way, putting it outside would kind of defeat the purpose.

Since most hydro grows are going to be indoors, you will need some gear to do it right. At its most basic, you need some sort of tray to hold your growing plants and a reservoir for the water. The roots need to extend down below the tray, and they need to be submerged in the water.

From there, the reservoir needs to be equipped with an air pump. When fertilizer is added to the water, and as the pump moves water throughout the reservoir, the roots pick up nutrients and oxygen.

Now for the top half of the setup. You need to suspend lights above your plants so they can grow and move through the vegetative phase into the flowering phase. That’s where you get the buds you’re looking for.

You can use fluorescent lights, high-intensity discharge (HID) lights, or LED lights. And because the lights will add some degree of heat to the mix, you need to monitor the temperature of your entire setup. If it gets too hot, use fans to bring it to the proper temperature. And if your grow is too smelly, you may need a ventilation system to scrub and circulate the air.

Growing Weed With Aeroponics

Growing weed with an aeroponics setup is fairly similar to growing hydroponically. The key difference is that instead of suspending the roots in water, you’re suspending them in air.

As with a hydro setup, you will need some sort of apparatus to hold your plants. But instead of dangling down into a reservoir of water, the roots will be dangling down into the air. In an aeroponics setup, you feed the plants by spraying or misting the roots with a nutrient-rich water solution.

From there, pretty much everything else will be the same. You’ll need a good lighting system. You’ll need to monitor the temperature and humidity levels of your grow room. And you’ll need fans, air filters, and any other equipment required to maintain ideal growing conditions.

The real benefit to an aeroponics grow is that it almost guarantees that nothing will go wrong with the roots. Since the roots don’t come into contact with anything, there’s very little chance they will drown, rot, or get infested with anything. Additionally, they will get plenty of oxygen, and there’s no chance that they will be negatively affected by compacted soil.

Final Hit: How To Grow Weed Without Soil

Although growing with hydroponics and aeroponics requires more equipment than growing in soil, you give yourself complete and total control over everything your plants come into contact with. This level of control gives you the best possible chances to maximize the quality and size of your harvest.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with growing weed in soil. But one way or another, learning how to grow weed without soil will expand your knowledge and skill. In the end, it will make you a better, more versatile grower.