Sanctuary Preservation

The vast majority of medical cannabis gardeners are normal people with a regular schedule, simple lifestyle, and pleasant demeanor. They keep their gardens and grounds in line with neighborhood 

The vast majority of medical cannabis gardeners are normal people with a regular schedule, simple lifestyle, and pleasant demeanor. They keep their gardens and grounds in line with neighborhood standards. They do not have noisy wild parties, and they get along well with neighbors.

Even though medical cannabis may be legal where you live, neighbors, visitors, and family members may oppose it and create conflict. Indoor medical cannabis gardeners are able to attain peace of mind for themselves and loved ones by installing a secret entrance to gardens via false doors and difficult-to-find entrances through workshops, basements, and attics.

Some gardeners mount a tool pegboard or painting over the door to disguise the garden room’s entryway. The locked door is controlled with a remote electric door opener.

• Purchase seeds and clones at local medical cannabis dispensaries. • Do not have seeds or gardening products sent directly to your home or garden site. Have the merchandise sent to a “safe legal” address.
• Pay for mail order merchandise with a money order.
• Have a reasonable electric bill. Pay all bills and make all garden purchases with cash.
• Do not visit illegal cannabis gardens or real criminals who lie, cheat, and steal.
• Restrict access to your garden. Keep gardens under lock and key whenever possible.
• Make discovery and entry to the garden difficult.
• Secure the perimeter around the garden house, greenhouse, or outdoor garden. A sturdy fence, motion-detecting floodlights, security cameras, and possibly a guard dog will help ensure security for the sanctuary.
• Unload grow supplies a little bit at a time or from within a locked garage. 
• It is a bad idea to talk on the telephone about medical cannabis in states that do not sanction it.

Sanctuary Surveillance

Motion detectors are inexpensive added level of security for most all medical cannabis gardeners. A central receiver can be used to collect signals from several different wireless sensors. Motion sensors are also built into garden and industrial security floodlights. The lamps turn on when a small sensor detects motion. Other motion detectors can be used to activate alarms, security cameras, and sprinklers via a solenoid valve. Indoor gardeners use motion-detector floodlights around the exterior of the garden area to intimidate and expose unwelcome guests. Outdoor gardeners use motion detectors and security cameras to activate lights and sprinklers to scare off destructive plant predators—deer, rabbits, thieves, and so forth.

Predator trail cameras: Security cameras are affordable and easy to set up. With a security camera, you can monitor video and sound from your television or computer. Indoor gardeners set up cameras outside the building, usually trained on entry points such as doors and windows. Outdoor gardeners mount cameras to monitor activity in the garden. More expensive security camera systems can be remotely monitored via computer, iPhone, or Android telephone. Using your cell phone, you can literally watch your garden grow!

Inexpensive security cameras do not encrypt the video signal and can potentially be viewed by anyone with a similar camera that operates at the same GHz. Higher-quality models encrypt the signal and are much more secure. Medical cannabis insurance policies usually require garden-security video surveillance.

Outdoor gardeners can also use a garden camera or, as deer hunters do, a trail camera. Mount battery-operated weatherproof digital cameras in discreet locations in the garden and on trees along the trail. Some cameras are motion activated and others take photos at specific intervals. Download the digital images—stills or video clips—every week. Review the images to see if birds, deer, rabbits, thieves, or other perpetrators have been visiting your garden. Images have date and time codes to identify when the culprits appeared. Also use the cameras to take timed photos of your garden during the growing season. Compile all the photos sequentially to form a time-lapse video of the garden growing from beginning to end. Some cameras are equipped with a flash for nighttime photos. The flash also frightens and drives nocturnal deer and other animals away from the cannabis garden. Often, the flash is all the deer control needed.

After having had his cannabis crop stolen, a gardener friend installed several predator trail cameras around the garden and on the trail nearby. When suspected thieves found his garden again, the cameras snapped their pictures along with the date and time they visited. The gardener had plenty of time to move the plants to a safe spot. He also had photos of the thieves and was able to identify them.

Keep predator trail cameras in place all year to monitor deer hunters, potential thieves, and other plant predator animals. Find out where there is no human traffic and grow there. Search YouTube for actual predator trail camera videos.

Do not forget that others use trail cameras too! Hunters are everywhere in the USA, and trail cameras are inexpensive. Most often hunters use them to find prey. Do not fall victim to these cameras.

Self-portraits are not a good idea!

Sound Security

Insulate garden structures with a mass barrier like brick, thick glass, concrete, or metal to prevent sound transmission. “Soundboard” is popular in North America. Absorb sound with spongy or porous open-cell foams and spun fiberglass. Stop vibrations by dampening the energy and shunting it off into a pad made of foam, cork or arpet, with rubber or spring mounts.

Do not drive screws into walls when creating a sound barrier; use construction adhesive instead. Screws touching both interior and exterior walls transmit sound to the outside wall!

Build an extra room or box around analog ballasts to muffle noise. Remember to allow for airflow. Digital ballasts require minimal noise insulation, sometimes none at all. Place a thick pad under ballasts to absorb vibrations.

High-quality inline fans are much quieter and more efficient than squirrel-cage blowers. Install large inline fans and operate them at a low RPM to reduce noise levels.

Wrap ducting with insulation to baffle noise. Insulated ducting is also available. Fit duct outlets with a dryer hose wall outlet or something similar. The vent fan is then placed near the ceiling so it vents out hot, humid air. Weight and thickness of a partition dictate its ability to block sound. Soundboard added to a wall drops about 5 decibels (dB) of sound. A 3-inch (7.6 cm) airspace will lower sound transmission by 6 dB. Walls insulated with dense or batt insulation cut sound well. Use a decibel meter (see chapter 15, Meters) to measure the sound from your garden room.

Noise cancellation generators offer old technology to indoor gardeners. A microphone records the sound that is then analyzed by a computer. Sound waves with opposite polarity (180 degree phase at all frequencies) are generated and output through a speaker. This causes “destructive interference” and cancels most of the noise. Noise cancellation generators work best when sound can be contained in a small area such as ventilation ducting.