Has anyone tried to grow absinthe plants indoors?

It is more expensive having to pay for lights, electricity and such, but you have a lot more control over all the variables (light, co2, heat, humidity). You can also grow during the off-season, or set up a 2 or 4-week plant rotation and have fresh plants year round.

Most of the best "tomato plants" are grown indoors, the stuff grown outside just can’t compare with the quality of being able to create a "perfect" atmosphere.

Too hell with creating the "perfect environment" I say. I'm just tickled pink to real, fresh tomatos, sans pesticides, etc., all year long. Oh and lemons too. Damned lemon tree is less than a half inch at its thickest, and it has almost a dozen massive lemons. Meanwhile, see the Horizontal Snow thread.

Being a weed, it doesn't want perfect conditions.

CheechnChongsinthe!

"No mister DEA officer they’re wormwood plants."

"Anyone grow indoors?"


yeah, unfortunately.

Let's hope they don't order a tow truck,
when they come to get ya,
veggie.

Um . . .

A 2-4 week plant rotation?

What are you growing, wormwood sprouts for yer salad?!

Just coca plants.

Being an apartment dweller for some time now and getting an average of 2 hours indirect light a day to my windows, I have been growing indoors going on 4 years now. I’ve grown everything from vegetables and herbs, to cactus and orchids. NO absinthe plants specifically, but general growing rules apply. Having a climate control allows you to give specific growth needs to any given plant, which makes growing indoors a serious breeze. No chance of a hail storm ruining your crop, less chance of pest infestation, and if crop theft if an issue you can always lock your door.
The electricity bill and explaining to your neighbors why there’s a blinding light coming out of one of your windows are some of the only drawbacks that come to mind.
I’m trying to talk the wife in to letting me just rip up the carpet, and put down soil but she isn’t in to that idea too much.
On another note, a large wattage metal halide (400 watt) will provide ample room to grow a very decent indoor garden. If you’re growing leafy plants, go with halide. If you’re trying to fruit ‘tomatoes’ or other flowering and fruiting plants, use high-pressure sodium. Fluorescents are a good source of secondary light, but are a pretty poor primary source. Save your money for a good light, it’s the heartbeat of an indoor grow.


edit* Suuuuuure....I can spell hale. Hail too

Or just build a greenhouse.

You need to heat a greenhouse (bigtime) during the winter, and lower the temps during the summer making it pretty impractical for year round growing.

A storm caused this Hale to become stranded with his little buddy,
but I don't think the storm created any hail.

Goddamn Hale anyway

Depends on your climate.

Greenhouses just need venting in the summer, at least in AZ. Maybe they get hotter elsewhere?

I can't imagine it being more expensive to heat a small, well-sited greenhouse in winter in most climates (say, with a small kerosene or propane heater, to 40-45 degrees F, and probably only at night) than to run a 400W halide lamp 12-14 hours a day all year, plus the associated A/C costs to keep your house from heating up.

Ya, the A/C can be a real bitch. Most good high wattage ballasts come with a self contained heat control (basically an internal fan) to help maintain effective growing temperatures. They're not fail proof, but they are pretty effective.
The bill from my total of 1200 watts raised my electric bill about $15-20 (a little less, but including the summer time A/C) a month. One extra rotation per hour on the electric meter, per 1000 watts. I have all my lights in one room and each have an internal fan to relieve some heat, but I do have to run A/C in the summer to control it.
I've never tried to figure the cost of heating a greenhouse for the winter, but it's probably worth looking in to. 45 degrees would put a lot of flowering plants dormant, or end their growing year. But if one could maintain 70-75 degrees, it would be perfect!
I would recommend a good air circulation for a greenhouse with heating control, since the cool air would of course fall while the warmer air was rising. You wouldn't want the roots to be 50 degrees, and the leaves to be 70 degrees for example. Root temperature is essential to a healthy growing plant.

The short version: Don't waste your time and money. Wait to grow outdoor plants until you have a suitable place to grow outdoor plants.

The long version:

Greenhouses are typically used to extend growing seasons, not to maintain them year-round. That's what a conservatory is for. A greenhouse would be great to keep certain perennials going, for example, which can't survive the winter in your climate. They'd be dormant, but not dead.

If you live someplace hot, like me, then a lath house might be good to get the more delicate plants to maturity before the heat whacks them.

A greenhouse would also be nifty for starting plants like melissa early from seed. I bet it'd work for lemon balm, too. Heat nails them here, so starting them in mid-winter would work just fine, except the frost would nail them, too.

On another note, I really fail to see the point in growing most plants used in absinthe year-round. Some are annuals, so they're quick and easy from seed. The hardest to obtain (in good quality) are perennials that only bloom once a year anyway. And if, for example, you lived in New Zealand or some other place where you could legally distill at home in the first place, you'd still dehydrate your herbs before using them.

If you don't live in NZ or some similar place, I'd not really see much point in growing most of the plants at all, except out of curiosity or as a conversation piece. Artemisia absinthium, for example, is fairly toxic to surrounding plants, and pretty much a weed to boot. And big, about 4' x 4'. Not the best in a mixed border, or in a pot. It likes harsh conditions, anyway, and I believe takes two years to reach blooming age. That's a long time to keep a big shrub under a lamp in your closet, all for hothouse wormwood blossoms. (Ever eat a hothouse tomato that tasted better than field-grown organic? Hmmm.) Assuming you hit the temperature and number of daylight hours and watering just right to trigger blooming, of course. And you'd only be able to grow the Artemisia and a cactus or two under those correct conditions. Maybe some prairie grasses.

You could try to grow genepi (Artemisia glacialis or something like that . . .), but I think you'd need a meat locker with lights. It's alpine.

I see some of the plants used in absinthe would have little benefit from growing indoors due to size, growing times, etc. I was more interested in what kind of quality you can get from some of the plants compared to growing outdoors.

For example, if I set up a grow room (indoors not greenhouse), I can hook it all up to my computer and regulate everything from the number of hours per day and brightness of each light to how much water/nutrients to feed the plants. It would be a completely controlled environment, unlike growing outdoors. Would this not make for a better quality plant than one grown outside with random (natural) sun/rain/nutrients/etc?

Um, no.

Now, be about yer business.

Once you have your indoor growing conditions solid and you know the growth requirements of your plants, you can grow almost any plant as good or better than in the outdoors. Again, this goes back to being able to control more variables for your grow. No storms or animals to destroy crops etc.
Organic purist gardeners might scoff at indoor growing, but some of us have no choice. Of course there are organic fertilizers, but the whole ‘lights’ issue makes some people pitch a fit. Using my lights I’m able to grow strawberries, tomatoes, bell peppers, chilies, basil, cilantro, and many other plants year round. Living in a part of the country where winter temperatures drop and stay around 15-20 degrees for 4 or so months, I am at least doubling my harvests each year. The size of the plants and their fruits have been for the most part, larger and equally as tasty than any outdoors I’ve grown. The growing cycle is shorter to maturity by several weeks for most plants, and even by a month or more for others, probably due to the intensity of the lights and regulation of fertilizers.
Maybe try a little self controlled grow indoors and see how you like it. Not everyone will agree that indoors is better. Try for yourself and see which you prefer.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...4347780630&rd=1
Thousand watts for $165.00, no cooling system but you won’t beat that price. This is sufficient for a huge indoor grow. Personally I like having smaller wattage with multiple lights so I can adjust the height of the lights over individual grow areas, as opposed to trying to adjust the height of the plants.
Best of luck!

Go write a book pot head.
Leave us alone
or shorten your posts.
Take the first.

Jim, how do I get a bloodstain out of carpet?

If you want pot growing information go Google for it, it's not real difficult to find.
If you want honest indoor growing information from someone with experience, I'm here to help. I've been growing food for my family for years pal, and I've become pretty efficient at it. Don't read the posts if they're too long for you, I'm just trying to answer his questions.

And as Kirk alluded to, that's part of the reason I don't grow indoors (except in an actual greenhouse): the police.

Around here, excess light, especially for long hours / exact times of day, send red sirens to the police: pot grower! pot grower! pot grower!

LOL I remember a friend of mine's basement apartment was searched one time because of this. He had a large fish tank near the little window, with a timer on the light.

I don't want the police visiting my house every other day and searching for weed. Also, that shit would cost me probably $500 or more / mo. just in the electric bill.

Not to mention the fact that all the herbs in absinthe
are perennial weeds , most are evergreen ,
they will grow anywhere ,
and you can't get rid of them once they establish .
Weeds are generally not worth growing indoors.

I understand the whole pot growing assumption. It's a sore spot for me because I have let police in to check my growing before, more than once. I have a beautiful family and would never jeopardize them by something that ignorant. Pot growing in an apartment.

Questions like, "Don't waste your time and money"?



We ain't pot farmers. Any plant used in absinthe is legal to grow, and available at most substantial retail nurseries. Try Richter's online if you have problems locally.

You can get most cut and sifted herbs in your local health food store's bulk herb section. The only ones you can't get there are not sold due to low demand, not legal reasons.

The only reasons to grow one's own are to control the proportion of blossoms to leaves and twigs, or because something is simply not available and only needed in small quantities (e.g., genepi). This, of course, would still only apply were you to live someplace where distillation was legal. If a search for a pot farm brought on by your grow lights turns up a still, say goodbye to Misdemeanor World and hello to Felony Land.

Unless one grows something illegal or lives in an underground bunker while awaiting a nuclear holocaust, indoor growing is unnecessary.

Taking up one's entire poorly-lit apartment with computer-controlled floodlights and shrubs rather than saving for a residence which is better suited to one's needs is silly and wasteful.

It would be far more efficient to cultivate (pun intended) relationships with people who live in climates appropriate to growing the plants you want, if you want more control over the quality of raw herb. A review of this section of the forum should give you sufficient information to determine who knows a good source for what.

Note: There were no questions in this post. Except the first one, which was rhetorical.

Don't order anything from Richters.

Nope. Questions like this.

Oops.

for me, and another for you.

Because.

Brevity is the spirit of wit.

Who the fuck is Djim?

I hear a ghost.

...spouting pretentious bullshit like regular people.

A pooka?

I still might order a few things from them. They are the only place that I know of that sells Costmary plants for instance.

Take its advice.

Get a tan, for godsakes! A few hours outside a day won't lead to skin cancer. Hell, if nothing else it will make those folks at work quit laughing at you behind your back.


Jeeze!

Thanks for the advice Jim. Yes, growing indoors can significantly reduce growing times. Not only for having a greater quantity of light than the sun provides, but you can also leave them on for 18-24 hours per day while growing, and reduce to 12/12 to induce flowering (depending on the plant or course).


I don’t believe it works that way. If it says on the search warrant they are searching for pot, and they turn up a still, stolen piano, and $80 billion in counterfeit bills they cant use xit against you.

Go on believing that.

If you're growing anything illegal and cops come in to your house, they'll nail you for everything illegal that you have. You won't get out of it.
Unless you have thousands for lawyers fees to back up the "It wasn't on the warrant," and even then you can probably kiss your freedom goodbye.

Obviously, I do, every chance I get.

I was implying that they don't find you "growing" anything illegal, or however it is worded on the search warrant.
If they do find what they are looking for they can bust you for everything else they find.
If the don't find what is on the warrant, I don't believe they can use what they find against you in court (although they can still confiscate anything illegal).

Moloch is right.

A few weeks back, I got pulled over for a broken taillight. When the cop came to the window, I was naked, covered in blood, with a smoking crack pipe in the ashtray, and was slurping Everclear from a severed head.

Bastard gave me a $25 ticket.

You're THAT good???????????????

That is not the same thing at all. Searching of one's house requires a search warrant which will specify exactly what they are looking for. If you get pulled over in your car for nearly any reason, there is no search warrant required; the officer has what they call reasonable cause to investigate further.

This would be the same as if they did find what they are looking for; now they have reasonable cause to search further and turn up all your other xit.



Not bloody likely. In that scenario he would have busted you for everything. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Duh.

The sensible thing would have been to bow out gracefully.

Now call a criminal defense attorney and see what s/he says, dipshit.

If you are going to tell someone they are wrong, and call them a dipshit, you could at least back up your claim with some sort of facts/proof/etc.