EXPERTISE NEEDED FOR INDOOR FARMS

Setting up a grow house on the scale of the ones found recently in the
Inland Valley requires expertise not only in the distinct growing
patterns of marijuana, but also in lighting techniques, irrigation,
electrical wiring and temperature control.

Equipment needed for a full grow house can be purchased for $50,000 to
$100,000, said Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Greg Garland, chief of
the department's narcotics bureau.

Much of it can be bought at hydroponics stores, which sell equipment
for growing plants indoors.

The final ingredient, of course, is marijuana plants, either clippings
or seeds. The easiest ways to net the raw material for growing plants?
Through mutual friends, black market channels or medical marijuana
dispensaries.

The best strains of marijuana are shared among networks of growers,
and can only be reproduced through a process called cloning - clipping
off and replanting stems from existing plants.

"When you have a plant that you can get $6,400 a pound for, you hold
on to that strain, and you try not to share it with a lot of people.
You trade it out among friends," said Darrell Kruse, former operator
of a medical marijuana dispensary in Claremont who has set up several
grow operations.

Starting with one batch of seeds or grouping of plants, clippings from
those that are most fruitful are generally detached and replanted as
"clones," ensuring that crops will yield the most, and highest-
quality, marijuana.

The lighting used in a grow house is a complex system of fluorescents
that mimic natural sunlight at different points in the yearly sun cycle.

By imitating a yearly cycle, with its accompanying lengthening and
shortening of days, a marijuana plant can be manipulated to grow buds
for as many as six harvests a year.

In the wild, there is one yearly crop. Female plants will begin
growing buds after the summer solstice - the day each year with the
longest amount of sunlight.

Before the summer solstice, a marijuana plant remains in a vegetative
state. In that state, plants simply grow in size.

Once the summer solstice hits, or is simulated, a female plant will
begin producing buds.

The summer solstice is "Mother Nature's way of telling everybody that
winter is coming," said Jackie Long, special agent supervisor for the
California Department of Justice. "If you're going to propagate, you
better start doing it now."

The system is rigged by indoor growers to ensure that doesn't
happen.

In indoor grows, professionals will plant only female plants,
eliminating the possibility of a male plant interfering in the process.

In its post-vegetative state, a female marijuana plant will grow its
buds until it is pollinated. If it is never pollinated, the buds will
grow and grow - producing a sticky, pungent substance designed to
attract bugs - until the plant dies.

It is these buds, produced in the artificial environment, that have
achieved THC measurements of more than 30 percent, more than 10 times
what an outdoor grow typically achieved in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nearly all of the equipment needed to set up an indoor marijuana grow
can be purchased at a hydroponics store. A quick Internet or Yellow
Pages search yields several such stores in the Inland Empire.

In Upland, Evergreen Hydroponics sells a variety of nutrients,
lighting and grow equipment from its single-room Central Avenue store.

Bottles of nutrients are decorated with ornate psychedelic renderings
of suns, moons and other images associated with marijuana culture.

Labels on bottles of nutrients make reference to the product's ability
to grow large, luscious fruit.

The intended use is made clear by the suggestive packaging. But there
is no mention of marijuana anywhere in the store. Prominently
displayed at the front counter are pictures of healthy tomato plants
that have produced plump, red tomatoes.

"They will get shut down as soon as (marijuana) is mentioned," Kruse
said. "I've been thrown out of hydroponics stores before for just
mentioning marijuana."

The presentation is similar at all hydroponics stores, Long
said.

"You see these hydroponics stores, and they're showing pictures of
tomatoes and stuff like that," Long said.

Long said tomatoes are not valuable enough to justify the expense of
purchasing hydroponics equipment, making it unlikely any customer
would purchase the equipment for that reason.

"Tomatoes is the word. That's the code word for marijuana," said
Kruse, laughing to himself. "I mean, who's growing tomatoes indoors?"

At Evergreen Hydroponics, a shop clerk was in no mood to talk after
being asked about equipment needed for an indoor marijuana grow.

"We don't talk about that here," he said. "And actually, now that
you've brought it up, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

[sidebar]

$35 billion: Estimated value of the U.S. annual marijuana
harvest

$13.8 billion: California's share of that total

4,416: Number of marijuana plants seized by San Bernardino County
law-enforcement agencies in a single month (June)

$15 million: Potential value of the plants seized in
June

$50,000-$100,000: Cost of equipment needed for a full-size grow
house

2.2 million: Amount, in pounds, of U.S. marijuana production in
1981

22 million: Amount, in pounds, of U.S. marijuana production in
2006

100: Estimated number of grow houses busted so far this year in San
Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles and Orange counties

91,286: Marijuana plants eradicated in San Bernardino County in 2006
by the law-enforcement group Campaign Against Marijuana Planting

61,451: Plants eradicated in San Bernardino County by CAMP so far in
2007

1,675,681: Plants eradicated statewide by CAMP in 2006

1,000: Plants a typical grow house can hold

500: Total amount of pot, in pounds, that those plants can produce per
harvest

3-6: Average number of times an indoor marijuana plant potentially can
be harvested each year

$4.5 million-$10 million: Amount in sales that a single grow house can
generate yearly

1996: Year California passed Propostion 215, the medical marijuana
law

2004: Year the state Assembly passed SB 420, requiring ID cards for
medical marijuana users