Winter’s coming…

You know what that means - bad weather and cold conditions for your plants.

Here’s an 9 step health check that’ll really help you fight the freeze.

You can monitor your day time and night time temperatures with a Temperature and Humidity Meter.

Make sure you position the probe in a suitable location, such as:

• In the shade at the base level of your plants
• Inside ducting

Your target temperature should be between 24^oC and 28^oC (during the day/lights on) and 2-5^oC lower (during the night/lights off), depending on what you’re growing.

Grow lights produce heat.

To put this heat to good use, run your lights at night when temperatures drop outside.

For a small area, a tubular heater is great. One customer claimed it costs them 1p a day to run.

To heat large areas quickly, you can’t go wrong with a Palma Electric Grow Room Heater.

It’s cheap to run because it’s hardly on. You'll only need to run it for a few minutes every hour and you’re sorted.

Outside air is cold.

If you draw it into your grow room, you’ll have a harder time keeping plants warm. 

Instead, try moving your intake fan so that you draw in air from indoors.

Doing this will also mean you’ll be drawing in CO2 rich, ‘lived in’ air. Bonus.

Make your grow room draught proof.

Fill in any holes. Seal up any gaps. Check no air is seeping in through door and window frame spaces.

A cold floor can really slow down plants growing in pots. Make sure there’s an insulating barrier between your plants and the floor.

The easy answer is a Garland Tray, or even better, a RhizoStand.

Your nutrient feed should be between 18^oC and 20^oC.

You can track your nutrient temperature with an Accuread Digital Nutrient Thermometer. 

If your nutrient solution is too cold, it’ll shock plant roots.

The quick fix? A nutrient heater.

To keep your nutrient warm during winter, try a Heavy Duty Nutrient Heater.

They don’t cost much and are easy to use. You set your target temperature, the heater does the rest.

Careful not to warm your solution too much, though – the warmer the solution, the lower the dissolved oxygen content.

If plants don’t have enough oxygen in the root zone, they’ll be far more susceptible to diseases.

Poor storage can damage your nutrients.

If they get too cold, some of the dissolved salts that make up your nutrients will crystallise (they become solids).

In this form, they are no longer part of the nutrient solution and are unavailable to your plants.

To prevent this, store your nutrients in a cool, dark place, out of direct sunlight, where temperatures sit between 10^oC and 19^oC

Get the best climate all year round, create a closed-loop set-up.

Your grow room's almost completely closed off. Hardly any air enters, hardly any air leaves. 

Instead of exchanging air, you treat air (e.g. cool, heat, humidify, dehumidify, add CO₂).

Doing this is by far the best way to grow.

To keep costs low, make sure you use a climate control system that’ll cool and heat your grow room. That way you can use it all year round. A Kahn Climate Control System is spot on.