5 Hot Problems in the Grow Room

Replacing sunlight and wind movement, adjusting seasonal changes indoors, and perfectly timing plant watering... maintaining your prized garden at peak health requires technology. Once you've acquired all the equipment to automate every aspect of supporting vitality in your grow room while reducing workload, don't forget this:

Technology doesn't replace your responsibility as a gardener, and from the moment you've connected everything, the clock starts ticking toward the day you'll be disappointed.

Technology plays a major role in our indoor gardens. Automated or not, you're always using something that involves technology. All lighting used by indoor gardeners is technological in nature. Electric motors used to pump water or move air, and both solid-state meters and types with moving parts - are still very commonly used in greenhouses and indoor gardens.

1. YOUR LIGHTS

Your plants need these sources for the full required daily light and at the correct height to optimize growing conditions. If you don't have the ability to regularly adjust lamp position, in some cases even daily, you'll lose the sweet spot and your growth will suffer. Ballast, bulb, or timer damage will leave your garden in darkness, disrupting the photoperiod (the time period each day during which plants receive lighting) or it can have an even worse impact... it will kill your plants.

Always keep in mind the heat produced by high-intensity discharge lamps. Check them daily, as failure can cause fire and fire can have devastating impact on multiple levels.

2. YOUR FANS

These are also very important. They need to run all the time. Make sure the fans in your grow room have manual switching. Most indoor garden centers offer this type of fan. Don't use digital fans or remote-controlled fans from big-box stores - they reset during power outages. So if power fluctuates and your lights come on, the fan won't work. Any fan can fail when you're away, and if you're interested in adjusting reflectors to optimize lighting, you need to mitigate heat with flowing air. If this airflow stops, your canopy heats up and your growth suffers.

3. YOUR PUMPS

Your solution for moving nutrient solution. If the pump in your reservoir doesn't turn on when it should, your plants won't be irrigated. In an intensive growing environment, this situation isn't good, and time isn't on your side. If you can't make it to your grow room for just a few days, you'll be very unhappy upon return. If only you'd checked once a day...

The other side of this problem is when the pump gets stuck. Then you face extensive cleaning work with possible building damage. Not to mention the new pump you have to buy. Both of these scenarios can be caused by a faulty timer or controller to which the pump is connected, so it's necessary to check these things before replacing the pump.

4. PEST INFESTATION

They move fast. It's an open salad bar in this space 24/7 and the conditions are perfect. Viruses and bacteria never travel alone. They want to invite their friends and have this unbearable habit of multiplying like crazy after infestation. It doesn't matter what type of virus or bacteria it is, they all have one thing in common.

Fortunately, the other side of this is that the faster you deal with a virus infestation, the easier it is to recover from the infestation and defeat them. Viruses can be a very good reason for indoor garden failure. If you check for viruses or signs of bacteria daily, then you can grow without using preventive chemicals and respond to situations as they develop. If you check your garden every 3 days, then viruses get the opportunity to multiply and are here with a three-day head start. By that time, things can get ugly.

5. RISING MERCURY

For those gardens that clearly require air conditioning, there will obviously be a loss during an outage. However, there is a level at which this problem can be prevented.

You can connect the lighting to a switch that turns off at high temperatures.

If your air conditioning unit or fans fail and the temperature starts to rise, then the setting on the switch will turn off the lamps to prevent excessive overheating or even a potential fire. Now you have 24 hours to fix it. But if you're not aware of this problem for 3 whole days...

There are so many things happening in real time regardless of how "automatic" a particular grow is. With a garden, we are always left at the mercy of Mother Nature, even indoors. Monitor your plants daily, they like company.