Creating a Sustainable Growing Environment
Want to start growing vegetables indoors? Learn how to do it sustainably and start saving £££.
Want to start growing vegetables indoors and doing so sustainably? Here at Easy Grow we’re always looking at ways to introduce growing to those budding hobbyists or otherwise, to make it more efficient for those veterans out there who are looking to save money growing your own vegetables.
Aiming to create a more sustainable, environmentally friendly grow room should be the end goal for every grower (other than making sure your plants are happy and healthy, obviously). The ever-increasing cost of energy should be on the mind of every grower when it comes to setting up a new growing environment.
We’ve taken a look in to some ways that you can save on energy costs. If this is your first ever grow, or even if you’re a seasoned veteran, we think we’ve got some great ideas that can help. The first thing we want to cover is understanding the scope of what goes into building up a good growing environment. Fruits, vegetables and other plants need grow lights, ventilation, water and climate controlled growing conditions for photosynthesis in order to ensure a healthy growth. The only problem is, some of these components are powerful and will consume a lot of energy in order to run.
Here at Easy Grow, we sell some fantastic products which will help you create a more sustainable, energy saving growing environment. If you have any questions regarding these products, or if you are an end user looking for these products, get in touch with us and we will be happy to help.
The Size of your Growing Environment
Planning out the size of your growing environment is probably one of the key things you can do before you begin building it up. Knowing the size of your grow tent set up will dictate a lot of the decisions you make in terms of what components are needed, their size, power and type and give you chance to create a plan in order to make this grow room a more sustainable growing environment. To put this in to perspective, we estimate that a fully kitted out growing operation in a small 1.2 x 1.2 x 2.4m grow area will consume around 13,000KW/h per year. So, knowing your space and utilising it in the best possible way is incredibly important.
Cost Effective Plant Nutrients
Ensuring that your plants or vegetables have everything they need in terms of nutrition can be an expensive task, especially when growing vegetables indoors. A lot of nutrients on the market come to you in pre-mixed bottles that you can further diluted before using. However, this convenience comes at a cost. It can be much more efficient to begin your journey with a dry nutrient which you mix for yourself. These soluble powders also tend to have a much longer shelf life and so can be purchased in larger quantities, providing you with further savings.
“A lot of nutrients on the market come to you in pre-mixed bottles that you can further diluted before using.”
RAW=Soluble is a completely individualised, 100% water soluble nutrient range, carrying all of the essential nutrient elements as individual powders, alongside a complete grow and complete bloom mix. You can create your own nutrient recipes from these powders and significantly reduce costs without sacrificing the quality of nutrition provided to your plants.
Another dry nutrient stocked by Easy Grow is the Athena Pro range, a combination of three products; Athena Pro Grow, Athena Pro Bloom and Athena Pro Core. These products are targeted to the more advanced grower and can be used with specific dosage instructions to provide one of the best nutrient programs available today.
Making the switch to
LED Lighting.
When you are growing vegetables indoors, or plants, beginners and veterans alike should know that light is vital to ensure that your plants grow healthily and provide you with maximum yields. So why make the switch to LED lighting? To put it into simple terms, despite LED lights being more expensive to purchase, LED’s run much more efficiently and in the long run will save you money and is a great way to improve your grow tent set up and enable you to grow your plants or vegetables all year round and improve your grow tent set up.
While talking about sustainability in your growing environment, switching to LED is a must. But there are a few things you need to know in order to get the most out of this switch. You should consider the spectrum of your lights, the spacing between the lights and your plants and the distribution over the growing area. The combination of these elements will help you when choosing which light you need.
“LED’s run much more efficiently and in the long run will save you money”
There are a few other factors to take into consideration when making the switch, so what are they? Environment temperature is one of the biggest and most notable factors. LED lights produce a lot less radiant heat than traditional HID lighting. With HID lighting you will often find you are having to combat higher ambient temperatures due to the heat they give off, meaning you use more energy with more fans, or other air circulation products to control the environment temperature.
At Easy Grow, we deal with Lumatek lighting systems, while there are hundreds of brands out there, we feel that Lumatek offer a higher quality product with superb reliability and support, whilst also providing an extremely comprehensive range to cater for all sizes of growing environments. You can view the range of Lumatek LED Lighting supplied by Easy Grow on our website at www.easy-grow.co.uk.
Environmentally friendly choices for your heat solutions!
A fantastic way to upgrading your grow tent and creating a more sustainable growing environment is to look at how you heat up your grow room. During the colder months of the year, you may even need to increase the temperature in your grow area, for these occasions we have a fantastic, low power product; our ultra-flat, infrared grow room heater. This will help to maintain constant temperatures efficiently and effectively without taking up space, it can be hung from a hook as easily as a poster. The temperature and humidity can both be monitored with the Easy Grow Temperature and Humidity meter to ensure that your environment is on track for optimal results.
Harness the Power of CO2!
When plants are able to maximise the process of photosynthesis, the result is larger plants with larger yields. However, growing vegetables indoors under artificial light often lack enough CO2 to efficiently photosynthesise. Natural solutions are usually the best solutions and it is no different when adding CO2 to your grow area. Our ExHale CO2 bags provide a constant output of CO2 for 6 months! When expired, the bag contents can even be used as a soil amendment to provide your plants with further nutrition. ExHale CO2 bags really are a masterclass in sustainability. Even the bags themselves are 100% recyclable. These CO2 bags require zero power and no effort once set up, making them a great addition while creating a more sustainable growing environment.
Maximise Light, Maximise Yield.
When growing your vegetables indoors, it’s important to harness as much light from your lighting system as possible, you can further enhance the efficiency by utilising sheeting products to reflect light back on to your plants or vegetables. Easy Grow offer a range of reflective sheeting including ECO, Lightite® and Lightite® Pro. Our silver sheeting products offer the ultimate in reflectivity and provide maximum reflection of light lumens, while our diamond sheeting variants come with a raised diamond pattern to diffuse and spread light more evenly over the canopy of your plants and improve your grow tent set up tenfold.
Using an entirely light proof sheeting product such as Lightite®, you can be sure that there is no light escaping from your growing environment, allowing you to scale down the power requirements of your lighting solution and further reduce energy costs.
