Backyard growers may find it convenient to grow plants in portable containers so they can move the plants between the basement or garage and the outdoors. Then they can manipulate the light cycle to their needs, using an artificial source such as metal halides or fluorescents to supplement the natural light. Should there be an overcast or rainy day, the plants will still get plenty of bright light indoors. At night the plants can be locked up safe and sound, away from the greedy hands of thieves. Also, spotting helicopters will be unable to locate the plants while they are sheltered.
To increase outdoor plant growth during the early stages, spray the plants with carbonated water several times a day. Make sure not to use club soda, which contains salt. Instead, make your own with a home soda maker, which uses CO2 cartridges, or buy seltzer, which has no salt added.
You can also make carbonated water using a CO2 tank and attached hose emptying into a container of water. If the container can be safely pressurized, the amount of CO2 dissolved in the water will increase. Dry ice, which is frozen CO2, can also be used.
If the young plants are sprayed several times a day; their growth can be speeded up considerably. As the plants grow, it becomes less cost-effective to spray them, but it is still worthwhile.
Smaller plants may be started months later than their larger sisters, and will flower at about the same time. Their potency will be about the same, since it is based not on their chronological age, but on their maturity. Although yields on small plants are low, these plants can be placed much closer together. (In Morocco, in many cases, plants are grown by broadcast seeding, which may produce as many as 25 plants per square foot.) A 10’ x 10’ area, a total of 100 square feet, covered with plants one to two feet high in four inch pots, placed nine per square foot, would yield a good stash. Each plant would consist primarily of a main stem with a joint’s worth of buds on it — roughly 900 joints.