5. English

Americans are not the only marijuana refugees in the world. The Englishman’s gardens we visited immigrated to BC 15 years ago to escape the confining cannabis laws in the UK. British gardeners are world renown. This Englishman fit’s the stereotype, he is an excellent grower and has been growing cannabis in Canada since he arrived!

Pity we arrived in the middle of summer because we could see only a few plants that he salvaged from another grower’s garden. But he did have nice outdoor and greenhouse crops.

Bare concrete basement walls were covered with white Visqueen plastic and taped together with red Tuck Tape, indispensable among grow room fabricators in Western Canada. The ballasts and connecting electrical junction boxes, controllers and wires were hung from hooks on the ceiling or affixed to the wall.

Visqueen plastic was stapled to the ceiling, floor joists from the story above. The space between the floor joists formed a perfect compartment to stow ducting that directed fresh new air in and carried hot CO2-depleted air outdoors.

After the tour, we shared a spliff and listened to the Englishman’s helicopter search and destroy stories. Last year narc commandeered helicopters buzzed over his crop. As luck would have it, he grew a large greenhouse full of outstanding weed that year. The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) picked up its profile on one of their “seed and squash” missions. They spotted the remote greenhouse from above. Macho RCMP know the court system is clogged with important legal cases and harmless growers will never see a day in jail if arrested. So, they take the law into their own hands. Under the auspicious of getting a closer look, they swooped down to get a closer look and hover a few feet over the greenhouse. The extreme downward air pressure from the rotor blades on the helicopter actually blows the greenhouse apart. The plants are decimated and scattered. There is little recourse for growers. All they can do is replant.

These flowering clones will be set outside on July 15 and should be ready for harvest in mid August. Once these girls start flowering, nothing stops them!

This grow room was set up in a minimalist style. Walls and ceiling are plastic, the minimum amount of money was spent to construct this room. The plants were salvaged from another grower that went on vacation.

The ballasts are suspended by wire from hooks. Not my favorite way to wire a room, but it does save the price of a protective housing for the transformer, capacitor and starter.

This fan mounted with elastic-like straps took less than five minutes to mount.

He was experimenting with using no reflective hood so that all the light from the bulb could be direct. After years of touring grow rooms, I found very few growers that use no reflectors on HID lights.

Mounting thermostats, humidistat, electric outlets, and other controllers on a piece of plywood is easy and keeps them all together.

A new breaker box controls a new circuit in the grow room. It is attached to 10 duplex 120v outlets and conveniently attached to a piece of half-inch plywood.

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