Hydroponics Indoor Grow Room Protection In Winter

Winter has arrived and now is the time to strategize and protect your indoor hydroponics grow room from the influence of dropping temperature. During winter, the main difficulty you face is that your indoor grow room is warmer towards the ceiling and colder near the ground level. This can kill your hydroponic plants or cause diseases and stress. To protect your plants, it is important that you ensure proper air circulation inside your grow room. If your indoor grow room is not well protected in cold weather, the low temperature would give fungi, pests and disease causing pathogens a good environment to thrive in. During winters your plants’ roots tend to be cold especially if your reservoir, pots or root zone chamber is placed on the ground level. One of the easiest ways of protecting the root zone is by creating an adequate temperature so that cold air is sucked from the bottom of the room.

You need to fix an aquarium heater to maintain the temperature of nutrient solution at 68F and monitor that it doesn’t drop below 68F. In certain cases, central heating system might not be beneficial for your grow room, in that case you can place a space heater to maintain the ideal temperature for your hydroponics garden. Heat generator would also be a good option to keep your grow room warm. In cold season, it is important to keep the humidity below 58% in your grow room, specially for dense flowers.

For your grow rooms you need to line the walls of the room with the heavy plastic sheet to maintain the temperature and staple them in place with the heavy industrial stapler. Try to keep the grow room ambient temperature in the ideal range, that is, 70 to 75° F, when lights are on, and 66 to 69° F, when lights are off. It is important to ensure that the temperature of your root zone should be in the range of 66-69° F in winter.

Winter is the time to cultivate bigger plants with balanced lights in your grow room. Whenever the light levels are low, give them a boost to protect your grow room plants. Hang the grow lights in the center of the grow room so that the light can cover the whole area most efficiently. Two or three fluorescent lights above your plants will reduce the chances of poor growth and yield. Fluorescent grow lights are very useful because of their inexpensiveness, easy availability, size and color spectrum. As a hydroponic gardener you can reap great benefits from adding fluorescent grow lights to your grow room setup. For a large hydroponic indoor garden, you need to use metal halide bulbs to maintain the system properly. These lamps produce more light than incandescent bulbs while creating very little waste heat, which may harm your grow room plants. Cold weather conditions demand close monitoring and a different growing technique compared to hot weather. Therefore, you should create your indoor grow room with proper lighting system to get bigger and faster yields.