How to Set Up DIY Light Dep for Outdoor Cannabis

To someone who has never grown a cannabis plant in their life, growing cannabis may seem as easy as taking their dog on a walk. But the more you learn about growing cannabis, the more you realize just how complicated the entire affair can be. And the more you learn, the more complex growing cannabis gets. 

In this share of complicated methods and techniques, there’s a hidden gem of a technique that’s so easy it should be one of the first methods growers use but it is often used by experienced growers who have discovered its secret. This technique is light deprivation. 

Light depping is a straightforward method that allows you to control the growth cycle of photoperiod cannabis plants even when you are growing them outdoors. But for this, you need a light dep hoop house, which can be a bit confusing to set up. Learn all about setting up a DIY light dep hoop house in this guide. 

What is the Light Dep Technique?

Light deprivation is a simple cultivation method that you can use on your outdoor cannabis plants to control the amount of light they receive. This is down to how photoperiod cannabis plants function; your cannabis plant goes through two major life stages: vegetative and flowering, and it relies on the light cycle or the amount of light it gets to move from one stage to the next. 

When your cannabis plant is in the vegetative stage, it needs a lot of light to grow big and sturdy, which is why you’ll be providing your plant with at least 18 hours of light during this stage. This is the stage when your plant will focus all its energy on development and root production, and if it gets less light during this time, it won’t grow as tall as you’d expect it to. 

When it has grown big enough, you have to switch the light cycle to 12/12, i.e., 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness, and the plant switches to the flowering stage. After the first couple of weeks of the light cycle switch, the plant still grows a bit (flowering stretch), but beyond that point, it stops growing and starts producing flowers and trichomes. 

For an outdoor cannabis plant, this light cycle switch occurs automatically when the summer ends and winter approaches. However, some growers may want to switch their outdoor cannabis plants to flowering a lot sooner, which is where the light dep technique comes into play. It offers various benefits for growers, such as the following.

• Multiple Harvests Per Season 

The biggest benefit of light depping and why many growers choose it is that it allows you to have multiple harvests per season. Light depping gives you control over the timing of your cannabis plant (when it will be ready for harvest). So, you can manipulate the growth stages for your cannabis plant to flower early. 

By gaining control over the timing, not only can you protect your cannabis plants from environmental stressors, but you can also harvest them a lot sooner and grow a second batch of plants before the winter arrives. So, this allows you to grow more cannabis plants per season, especially if the growing season is long. 

In some regions where the threat of winter is not so significant, you can even practice perpetual harvest outdoors with light depping, where you can grow staggered plants and harvest them as they mature. 

• Safer Harvests

In some regions, like the Pacific Northwest, where the weather is not ideal at all times and the winter comes early, light depping can help protect the plants. By light depping, you can harvest your plant before the weather turns for the worst, which keeps your plants safe. On the other hand, if you don’t use light dep, your plant may be exposed to the bad weather and suffer from stress. 

• More Yield Per Season

Have you heard about the sea of green training method? It relies on growing a larger number of smaller plants than one big cannabis plant. While it may seem counterintuitive to grow smaller plants, the yields from a SoG are actually greater than normal cultivation. 

Light depping outdoor cannabis plants can work in a similar fashion as it allows you to grow numerous smaller plants allowing you to get multiple harvests than growing a single batch of big cannabis plants. When someone says light depping allows you to have a bigger yield despite a smaller growth period, this is probably what they are referring to. 

• Cheaper Than An Indoor Setup 

Of course, the benefits listed above can be achieved in an indoor cannabis setup, too, but an indoor setup can be expensive. It requires you to invest in growing lights, fans, a hydroponic system, and so on — this can get expensive really fast. So, if you want to get some benefits of indoor cannabis cultivation while saving money, light depping is the way to go. 

Light depping still requires a bit of investment to make the light dep cover, but it is a lot cheaper than an indoor setup, and a decent DIY setup can last years with careful use and maintenance. 

• Less Time to Wait Around 

All the benefits listed above are fair and square, but sometimes, you just want to enjoy your cannabis sooner. In such cases, if you’re growing cannabis outdoors and want to harvest the plant sooner, you can use light depping to make it flower sooner. This is ideally used by hobby growers who are going to run out of their stash sooner than expected!

Making a DIY Light Dep Greenhouse or Hoop House

To implement an effective light dep technique, you need to cover your cannabis plant with a hoop house that is completely lightproof. If you live in Southern Oregon or Northern California, you’ll find these structures all over — they are used for multiple harvests in these regions by farmers. 

Hoop houses are excellent solutions for light depping as they allow maximum light exposure since your plants stay uncovered during the day, which aids optimal growth during the vegetative stage. Next, they are relatively inexpensive, so even a beginner with a small budget can set it up without a lot of hassle. 

Additionally, hoop houses are super easy to work with. They are something that you can add and take off whenever you need; they can come in handy during stormy conditions, too! 

A hoop house allows you to easily cover your cannabis plant with a lightproof tarp, but you’ll need some elbow grease to get it together. For starters, you need to measure your garden’s dimensions and the expected height of your cannabis plant. Then, you need to find the right spot to hoist the hoop house in your garden. The ground should be smooth and level with good light exposure. 

1. Gather the Supplies 

Now, you need to gather the materials needed for building a greenhouse, which are as follows:

• Wooden planks that are at least 6 inches wide 
• One or half-inch PVC pipes in 10-foot increments 
• PVC connectors or slips 
• A cutter for PVC
• Primer or glue that can work on PVC 
• Some metal brackets
• A drill machine 
• Some screws as per your preferences 
• A lightproof tarp 
• A clear plastic covering 

When choosing the PVC components, you need to figure out their size based on how big you want your hoop house to be. However, for the best results, do not make a hoop house that’s wider than five feet as it can be quite difficult to access your plant in a hoop house that’s too wide. 

2. Build the Base Frame of the Hoop House 

Once you have all the things in place, you need to start building the base of the hoop house with wooden planks that are at least six feet wide. The wide plank will hold the PVC properly without suffering from too much tension, but how much wood you use depends on how big you want your hoop house to get. 

Again, it’s recommended that you build a hoop house that’s no wider than five feet so you can access the plant easily without leaning on the hoop house, which can cause a lot of structural damage. 

So, cut the wooden planks in the right size and build a frame using screws. Then, place this frame on the ground and ensure it is big enough to accommodate your cannabis plants. If you are planning to use this hoop house for longer or during the winter months, you can even secure it with some gravel. 

Optional: Build Trenches on Either Ends 

If you are worried about humidity and mold in the hoop house, you should also build two 3 x 3 x 3 feet trenches on either hand of the hoop house. Here, half of the trenches should be inside the hoop house and the other half outside. This is quite a tiring process, but it will help ensure proper airflow. Once the trenches are dug out, build a hoop house over them and later, place a couple of fans in each trench to prevent stagnant air within the hoop house during the night. 

3. Build the Ribs 

Ribs are the PVC pipes that hold the tarp above the plants — think of them as the pillars of your hoop house. For this, depending on how long your hoop house is, you need to narrow down how many ribs you want to have. Ideally, the ribs should be about 1 to 2 feet apart. 

Once you have fixed the number, secure the PVC pipes on one side of the frame using metal brackets and screws. After the PVC pipes are secured, they’ll stick out into the sky; then, bend them to the other side of the frame and secure them using metal brackets. Your spine is ready. 

If you want to use trellis netting for training your cannabis plants, you can also cut the pipes at strategic locations, as per your plant’s heights, and use 4-way PVC slips at the cut points. Then, you can secure the trellis net to the 4-way slips when your plant is ready for training. 

4. Create a Spine 

Next, you need to stabilize the structure by building a spine for the hoop house. For this, you need to use the appropriate PVC connector of your choice and secure a PVC pipe to the top of the hoop house. This will ensure the hoop house doesn't move around. If you’ve added 4-way slips for trellising, you can simply connect the right-sized PVC pipes horizontally into the vacant slip openings to create a similar support structure. 

5. Lay the Tarp

Now that your hoop house chassis is ready, all that’s left to be done is laying the tarp. Most probably, you’ll be using a panda film that is black on one side and white on the other. So, place your tarp on one side of the frame with the black side facing inward and the white side facing outward; then, pull the tarp over the chassis when you need to black out your plant and secure it with ties or rocks. When you want your cannabis plants to get right, you can simply remove the tarp for the desired hours. 

It is recommended that you also place an inline fan to keep the humidity levels in check during the dark hours to prevent any risk of mold. 

Other Factors to Consider When Building DIY Light Dep for Cannabis

While building your DIY light dep hoop house for your cannabis plants, there are a lot of variables despite the easy mechanics of the setup. So, here are some things you must keep in mind when building your DIY light dep hoop house. 

• Cost of the Hoop House 

One of the first things that will come to your mind when building a hoop house is the cost of the entire setup. Fortunately, hoop houses are cheap to build and the cost entirely depends on how much you’re willing to spend on it. 

Of course, the best hoop houses are light greenhouses that you can purchase from a gardening store, and some of these are even completely automated, but they can be super expensive and are only ideal for commercial growers. 

On the other hand, DIY hoop houses made with basic materials are cheap. You can always start simple with PVC pipes, exhaust fans, and a panda film — all of which will set you back by $200 to $500, depending on the size and quality of materials. This is a good place to start, and over time, you can always upgrade the hoop house as required. 

• Best Materials for Light Depping 

Light depping tarps are what you need when building a DIY hoop house, and you’ll often find these tarps being sold by the name of panda films or blackout tarps. These tarps are the best options when light depping cannabis plants because they are black on one side and white on the other, which reflects light. 

If you want to go even cheaper, a regular plastic tarp also works but it won’t offer the same benefits as panda film. So, you’ll need to keep an eye on the temperature of the hoop house and a plastic tarp is also not the most environmentally friendly. 

It’s ideally better to splurge on the tarp and get a waterproof and durable one so that it can last for a few seasons with minimal care. It’s a bit expensive, but it is totally worth it. 

• Stick to the Schedule 

When you practice light dep on your cannabis plants, you’ll need to cover your plant for at least 12 hours every day when you want to switch your plant to flowering. For example, you’d likely pull the tarp at 6 p.m. and take it off at 6 a.m. It’s best to pull the tarp at night so your plant can still bask in the sun during the day. 

It entirely depends on when you want to cut your plant’s vegetative stage; most growers do this in July, depending on the region, but you can switch your cannabis plant to flowering whenever you deem fit, depending on your preferences, strain, and weather conditions. 

• Number of Harvests

The next thing you need to think about is how many harvests you can get per season using light dep. Generally, light depping can help you achieve two harvests per growing season, but if the growing season in your region is longer, you can even try for a third one but remember to start flowering a lot sooner for this. 

If you are just starting out, it’s best to stick to a single harvest per year and then move to two harvests. If you want, you can even try staggered harvesting, where you have multiple batches of cannabis plants in different growth stages, allowing you to harvest cannabis at regular intervals. 

• Choose the Right Strain

You also need to pick the right cannabis strain for light depping. There’s no point using a cannabis plant with a ridiculously long flowering time if your goal is to grow the plant early. Instead, you need to pick strains that grow fast and big and are resistant to environmental stressors. 

• Keep it Ventilated 

You also need to ensure that your hoop house is ventilated at all times when the tarp is pulled up. During the day, when you cover your plant, the sun’s heat can heat up the hoop house, which can cause heat stress to your plant and even make it prone to mold. So, use appropriate ventilation (fans) to keep the air fresh and cool inside the hoop house during the day. 

• Avoid Light Leaks

At all costs, you should avoid light leaks in your cannabis hoop house while light depping. Even a slight light leak can cause your plant to re-veg or turn into a hermie, so this problem is best avoided. You can do so by using high-quality tarps like panda film and checking them often to ensure there are no holes that may let the light in. 

• Train Your Cannabis Plant 

Light depping goes hand in hand with training; light depped cannabis plants do not grow as big as regular plants, so you need to train them to maximize their growth. The best training methods for this include LST, pruning, ScrOGing, and Sea of green. 

• Consider Automating the Hoop House

Covering and uncovering the hoop house every day and night is a hassle, so you’ll need some help. The best help you can get is an automated system, which will pull the tarp at the right times on its own. You can either get this setup from a horticultural store or DIY it at home using an automated timer, a motor, and a few ropes; it will take some trial and error but it can save you a lot of hassle in the long run. 

Summary: How to Set Up DIY Light Dep for Outdoor Cannabis

In the realm of growing cannabis, light depping stands out as a simple yet potent tool for cannabis growers. It allows you to control the growth of your cannabis plant in an outdoor environment while allowing you to induce the flowering stage early, achieving multiple harvests per season, and protecting your cannabis plant from bad weather. And when used correctly, this method can even increase your overall yield per season. 

To implement it, you need a lightproof hoop house, which you can construct with some wooden planks, PVC pipes and connectors, and a lightproof tarp like a panda film. All you need to do is build a frame with the wooden planks, secure the PVC pipes on one side bend them to the other side of the frame to create a rib chassis, and cover the chassis with the tarp. 

Remember to maintain proper ventilation, select the right strain, and prevent light leaks within the hoop house for successful light depping. Do this right and you will get to enjoy your outdoor harvest a lot sooner than ever before.