Editor:
I have been trying to understand a comment in the "The Week in Weed" column (April 17) for a couple of weeks now: "Not that outdoor marijuana is energy-free, by any stretch — Mills' study indicates lighting makes up only 32 per cent of a grow's electricity use."
This must be an error or Evan Mills is long on theory and short on practice. An outdoor garden, except for manual labor, is energy-free by every stretch. If lighting is 100 percent from the sun, where does the 32 percent figure come from? A couple of battery-driven timers? Pumping water? How does that compare with running a thousand watts or more of HID indoor lighting? I always enjoy Grant Scott-Goforth, but this quote paints a very unnecessarily bleak and inaccurate picture of outdoor growing which is so much more energy-efficient than indoor gardens by a huge, long stretch.
If you can grow corn, tomatoes, or any warm-weather crop, you can grow cannabis outdoors. Period. A 215 garden can teach you how to grow food and vice versa. No charge for the sunlight. Green, green, GREEN!
Timothy Crlenjak, Eureka