Growing marijuana takes time and effort, but it also takes money. If you don’t know how much you need before you begin, you can end up falling short and having to abandon your weed-growing endeavors.
Because that’s not what you or we want to happen, we’ve written this guide explaining how much does it cost to grow weed. We’ve included a wide range of sections covering costs that you may not have thought of, and some you might think are pretty obvious.
- The Costs of Growing Weed
- How Much Does It Cost to Grow Weed
- How Much Does It Cost to Grow Weed Indoors
- How Much Does It Cost to Grow Weed Outdoors
- The Costs of Growing An Ounce, Pound, or Single Plant of Weed
- Additional Costs to Consider
- Labor
- Your Grow Room
- Airflow
- Nutrients
- Pots and Soil
- Humidity and Temperature
- Tools
- Reflective Materials
- Conclusion
But it’s essential to be as comprehensive as possible, and that’s precisely what we’ve done. The main sections discuss:
- How much does it cost to grow one weed plant
- The labor costs
- How much does it cost to grow weed indoors
- Growing weed outdoors
- How much does it cost to grow a pound of weed
- The prices of tools, nutrients, and ventilation
- How much does it cost to grow an ounce of weed
Even if you think you know about all the costs you need to factor in, it’s worth reading this guide if there are any costs you’re unaware of. We’ll give as much information about each one as we can.
The Costs of Growing Weed
If you’re wondering how much does it cost to grow one weed plant, then there are a few points to keep in mind before we go further. You’ll need to factor in the situation that you’re in. If you want to grow lots of weed, it’s probably better to grow your weed outdoors. If you’re going to grow some for personal use only, then an indoor grow space should be good enough.
Depending on the amount of weed you want to grow, you can offset some of the costs of growing it by selling it afterward. If you look at the price of an ounce or pound of weed, you can use that to figure out how much you need to sell it for to make a profit. If you choose to do this, you’ll need to keep the costs to the bare minimum.
You can grow plenty of weed on a budget, but the amount of money you have won’t be the only factor influencing the process. There are other elements to consider, like:
However, if you do sufficient research on these elements, you can find the most cost-effective way to grow weed in your area. The key is simply knowing enough information before you begin without overthinking things. This is something that takes practice but can be done over time.
You’ll also need to save up money to grow weed, even if you’re planning to grow it on a budget. That’s because there are so many costs spread out over the growing season, and it’s easy to run out of money, as we mentioned earlier in the guide. In the rest of this guide, we’ll take you through these costs in more detail so that you can budget accordingly.
How Much Does It Cost to Grow Weed
Marijuana Strains
Different strains of marijuana can cost varying amounts to purchase and grow. That’s because they have different flowering times and yield amounts. Longer flowering times mean you have to spend more money on electricity, water, and nutrients. Differing yield amounts determine how much money you can make from selling the weed after it’s grown.
Lighting
When you’re growing marijuana indoors, you’ll need to consider how much electricity you’re going to use. This will depend on the strains of marijuana you’re growing and the light levels they require to be grown successfully.
If you’re growing a lot of marijuana and have a large grow room, then you’ll need to pay out extra money for the lighting. If you work out the cost of all your grow room lights being switched on for the recommended number of hours in a given day, you’ll get a reasonable estimate for the monthly electricity cost.
Water
Marijuana plants need enough water to grow correctly, but at the same time, they need a lot of heat. That means if you’re growing them outdoors, you’ll need to add lots of water because the heat can make your plant soil too dry. If you’re growing them indoors, then you’ll also need to water your plants regularly. Over time, this can add a noticeable amount to your water bill.
Seeds
Once you’ve chosen the strains you’d like to buy, then you’ll need to buy enough seeds of that strain to grow the number of marijuana plants you want. Different seed banks offer different deals on seeds, and it’s important to look around for the best offers. We found several from I Love Growing Marijuana, and you can see some of them using the links below:
How Much Does It Cost to Grow Weed Indoors
Growing weed indoors is often the best way to grow weed because you have the most control over it. You can pick the equipment and nutrients that you’re going to use, as well as figure out the most cost-effective way to use water, electricity, and soil.
If you’re a beginner, or you’re on a budget, then it’s worth starting with a small number of plants. That way, you won’t need to spend as much on your grow room. If you’re looking for the bare minimum, then starting with seeds, some pots, a few grow lights, a pack of soil, and a fan will be good enough.
The total cost for all of these extras will make a dent in your finances but shouldn’t come to more than $1000. If you want to pay more and grow more significant amounts of marijuana with more specialized set-ups, then you’ll have to increase what you’re willing to spend.
If you’re interested in gaining experience and practice with growing marijuana, a very effective way to do that while keeping costs down is to create your own grow room from scratch. You can buy all the essential components online and put them together in a way that gets excellent results. Examples of what you need include a ballast, time switch, reflector, fan controller, and HPS bulb.
When it comes to the grow room, you’ll also need to think about the air quality of the air in the room, how much space is being left between each plant, and how many nutrients you’re giving the plants. Luckily, you can use a specific figure as an estimate for growing weed indoors, and it’s $1,948.
If you want to grow weed indoors but haven’t got much space, you can use grow tents instead. These have room for several plants and are a great way to practice growing weed before paying out lots of money.
How Much Does It Cost to Grow Weed Outdoors
Now you know how much does it cost to grow weed indoors, we can look at how much does it cost to grow one weed plant indoors. There are some differences that you need to be aware of, and we’ll discuss those here.
You’ll be paying fewer bills because you’re not powering a grow room. You won’t have any lights to switch on, any heaters to power, or any fans to plug in. That means your electricity bills will be more manageable.
Instead of using electricity, nature will provide most of what your weed needs, but only if you’re living in an area with a good climate and growing your weed during the summer. Even when you’ve selected a good location, you’ll need to pay for marijuana seeds that will germinate. Some strains were suggested in the previous section.
There are many options for marijuana strains, and the ones you choose to grow will depend on the results you want. But growing them indoors or outdoors will still differ, so it’s important to stay familiar with what’s in this section.
Buying seeds from an online seed bank will be more affordable than buying them from a store on the street because you won’t need to travel to a store. That way, you’ll save money compared to driving long distances for weed seeds. But the choice is yours, and as long as you’ve got great seeds, you’ll be ready to grow weed outdoors.
You can then control the entire process, giving you certainty and peace of mind about the weed that you’re growing. That control comes with a requirement for knowledge and some costs that you’ll still have to pay. Knowing the best way to grow marijuana will help you when it comes to budgeting, as will knowing the statistics about the marijuana strains you’ve bought.
Examples of information to find out include the length of time it will take to harvest the cannabis, what to do to cure it, and the best nutrients for cannabis plants. You’ll also benefit from familiarizing yourself with the diseases and pests that are common to cannabis. That way, you’ll be prepared in advance.
Pests and diseases can come along and decimate your weed plants quickly, so you mustn’t skip this step and instead focus on learning how to combat them. Your plants can be saved most of the time, and there won’t be anything to worry about.
However, if you can get through the challenges of growing weed outdoors, you’ll be rewarded. You’ll get decent yields of weed because it’s been grown naturally, and you’ll be able to sell that weed for money. If you’re growing a lot, that will increase your profits even more.
To give you a specific figure, the average cost of growing weed outdoors will come to $2,385. This may vary depending on your particular circumstances, but it will serve as a good guideline. You may be able to cut the costs down further, but it depends on your preferred method of growing weed.
The Costs of Growing An Ounce, Pound, or Single Plant of Weed
When you’re growing weed, there are some general points to keep in mind regarding the cost. Once we’ve covered those, we’ll move onto a specific discussion of how much does it cost to grow a pound of weed, how much does it cost to grow an ounce of weed, and the cost of growing a single weed plant.
The general cost for growing weed depends on whether you plan to do it alone or hire employees to help you. If you do, you’ll need to pay their costs as well. These can run into thousands of dollars, so you’ll need to choose carefully.
Growing One Weed Plant
The cost of growing a single weed plant depends on many variables, all of which you’ll need to plan ahead for and keep track of once you’ve planted your seeds. These are the unique characteristics of the strain you’re growing, the location you’re planting your seeds in, the climate you live in, the nutrients you’re giving your plant, and the level of maintenance you give them.
According to an estimate that we discovered during our research, the cost for growing a single marijuana plant is $66-265. The costs vary so wildly because different seedbanks price their seeds at different prices, and the costs of the other essentials you need for growing weed can vary as well. You’ll need to pay for soil, lighting, containers, water, and anything else you think you might need.
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If you want to grow the best weed possible, you should be prepared to spend more than this range. That way, you can buy the best components and ingredients for your weed growing efforts. However, if you don’t spend more than this range, you’ll still get good weed. It’s just an option if you want to improve the quality of the weed you grow.
You can also sell your weed for profit and make it professionally, but if you do this, it’s worth getting people to help you so that you can get started. If you’re only using weed yourself, you won’t need to worry about being on a budget or growing your weed without help.
Growing An Ounce
If you’d like to break down the amount of weed you’d like to grow into the cost per ounce for use in calculations when you’re selling it, then you’ll find this section helpful. We’ve discovered that the average cost of growing an ounce of weed is $32. Sixteen ounces of weed make up a pound of weed, for reference.
There will be some variation in that price because it depends on your initial costs. If you’ve spent a lot of money growing the weed, you might not get all of that $32 back in profits when you sell the weed.
Growing A Pound
You’ll know from the previous section that the price of growing a single ounce of weed is $32 and that a pound of weed is 16 ounces. So the price of a pound of weed is $516. However, this cost will be lower if you’re only making the weed for personal use. If you’re doing it as part of a business, you can expect to pay out more because of the costs of employees.
If you’re on a budget and working to keep costs down, you may spend less than this by saving costs. But that will depend on what you buy and whether you’re growing your weed indoors or outdoors.
Additional Costs to Consider
Labor
If you do choose to hire people to help you grow marijuana, then you’ll need to factor in labor costs as a part of this. That means paying the people you hire and supporting them while they work with you.
We assumed a starting rate of $20 an hour. You might choose to pay different amounts than this, but we think it’s a decent baseline. If you’re growing weed indoors in a small room, you can halve that rate to $10 as less work is involved. The time it takes to grow the weed will dictate how long you need to pay staff.
If you’re growing outdoors, then you’ll need to take 20 weeks as a guideline for how long it will take. If you’re growing indoors, you can cut that down to 14 weeks. Therefore, if your budget is a priority and you have a lot of weed to grow, then growing it indoors is best if you have the room for it.
For convenience, we’ve summed up the total figures. For growing weed indoors in a normal-sized grow room, you can expect to pay out $1,960 in labor costs. For a small grow room, that reduces to $980. If you’re growing the weed outdoors, the cost will climb to $2,800.
Adding these costs to the growing costs that we mentioned earlier, we get a figure of $3,908 for growing the weed indoors and a cost of $5,185 for growing it outdoors. These estimates are averages, so the specific costs that you have to pay will vary. However, it should help you budget if you were unsure of the total costs.
If you think the costs of labor are unnecessary, then you’ll need to be prepared to take time off your job so that you can devote the hours required to grow your weed correctly. Once your weed is grown, you’ll be able to make some profits from selling it, but there’s no guarantee that this will cover the money you’ve spent.
The more plants you’re growing, the more time it will take, and the more likely you’ll need to hire labor. If you choose to manage it yourself, then you’ll need to carefully calculate how many hours you need to spend to keep your weed healthy.
Your Grow Room
When you’re growing weed indoors, it’s not just about what you buy and put inside your grow room. It’s about your grow room itself. You’ll need to ensure that it’s ready to grow weed in. That means setting aside money to refurbish it if necessary. You may even want to hire someone to assess the room and see whether it’s ready for use as a grow room.
Airflow
To grow weed indoors, you’ll need to make sure your room has sufficient airflow. If it doesn’t, then your plants won’t get enough air. If there are no windows in your grow room, then it’s even more vital that you set aside enough money to pay for fans. That way, you’ll be able to simulate a breeze. If you have a large grow room, you might need to hire someone to install a ventilation system for you.
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Nutrients
Marijuana plants require a steady supply of nutrients to thrive, even if they’re outdoors. Not having enough nutrients can cause your plants to grow poorly and not give you a decent yield. Worse, it can make them stunted and vulnerable to deficiencies. That’s why it’s important to buy nutrients for your cannabis, especially if you notice the signs of any nutrient deficiencies.
There is a long list of diseases that can afflict marijuana plants because of too little nutrition, and you’ll be surprised if you research this and look at the complete list. That’s why you should ensure you have enough money to buy nutrients.
Pots and Soil
When you’re growing marijuana, you’ll need to put it in suitable containers that you’ve purchased in advance. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to control the space they’re taking up. If you need to move the plants to a larger container or into the soil, you’ll be able to manage the process as the weed won’t be challenging to move.
Humidity and Temperature
One of the most critical factors influencing cannabis growth is the location’s temperature where it’s being grown. This relates closely to the humidity. You can measure both using a thermometer and hygrometer, which are relatively affordable. To regulate the temperature and humidity, you’ll need good ventilation and heating systems. Paying for these should be one of the first things you do when preparing your grow room.
Tools
Growing marijuana might seem like something you can manage primarily with your hands and the equipment that you’ve bought, but there are some times you’ll need to use tools with your marijuana plants. Most of the time, this will be whenever you need to prune your marijuana plants. If you don’t, they’ll become unruly, and it might be more challenging for your plants to get light. But you’ll need to budget for the tools when you need them.
Reflective Materials
The final aspect to consider is the walls of your grow room. Because marijuana plants need a lot of light, you’ll have to cover the walls with reflective materials to maximize the amount that reaches your plants. This is the case even if you’ve bought very good grow lights. You can use a material like mylar or a preferred alternative, and the best thing to do is research online for the material with the highest reflectivity.
Conclusion
Growing marijuana comes with a range of costs, and you’re now aware of what these are. We’ve looked at how much does it cost to grow one weed plant, how much does it cost to grow a pound of weed, and how much does it cost to grow an ounce of weed. We’ve also factored in some additional costs that you might not have thought of.
By giving you some precise calculations for these costs, we hope to have given you some averages that you can factor into your research. That way, you won’t be taken by surprise when it comes to the cost of growing your own marijuana.
If you want to ensure the weed you grow is as satisfying as possible, then you should do one thing.