Growroom Management
It takes a few until you have a room under control. This section is going to be all about how to properly manage a growroom and we will talk about what you need to turn your room into a turbo-charged growroom.
Growroom's for vegetative growth are usually run in a slightly different way to a flowering room. So, firstly the vegetative room - these rooms are usually ran at 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness (within a 24 hour period). These days the easiest way of controlling your lights etc is by using a simple plug in timer. This 18 hour light period is just like the long days of summer and will keep your plants in the vegetative state; where they produce leaf and not flower.
Plants in the vegetative stage need higher levels of humidity, around 70%, so they can absorb moisture through their leaves. A humidifier linked up to a humidistat will give you control over humidity. You should set the humidistat to 70%, this will make sure that if the humidity drops the humidifier will kick in and raise the humidity level. Once it has reached the pre-set humidity level it will shut off.
A veg room is normally run using less powerful lights than a flowering room - as young plants do not need as much light as a mature plant in full flower. Mother plants are often kept under a 4 tube propagation light. These lights run four 55 watt blue spectrum tubes with a total of 220 watts. This is a nice amount of light for a mother which will give you a steady amount of clones but not too much that it gets out of hand. If you need larger numbers of clones we recommend using a 250 watt HPS or MH light and grow the mother hydroponically in a Flo Gro system. Within a veg room you can easily have a mother plant with its own dedicated light, a bunch of clones constantly rooting and a pre-growth area, for rooted clones ready to be grown on.
A flowering room is ran in a slightly more aggressive way. These rooms will generally be lit by a HPS light often using 600 watt lights, as flowering plants require more light to produce healthy flowers. Humidity also needs to be lower, around 40-50%. So that large flowers don't attract moisture, reducing the possibility of mould growth. Flowers cannot shed moisture so if the surrounding humidity is too high, mould can grow and the flowers may rot and die.
There is also usually more air being moved around a flowering room, to help get rid of excess heat generated by the grow lights and also to keep fresh air around the plants. We would recommend the use of a dual fan speed controller - such as the Primair. These controllers have an intake controller which is set at the right level to control the air coming into the room. They also have a outtake contol which will control the air leaving the growroom and also has an override, which you can set at say 28 degrees C. As soon as the temperature gets to 28 degrees C or above, both fans will kick in at full speed until the temperature returns to normal. Once the correct temperature is reached both fans will return to their pre-set idle speed.
It is a good idea, depending on the size of the room, to have atleast 3 min max thermohygrometers. One should be positioned on the floor, one near the ceiling and one placed in the canopy of the plants. All three meters should be close in temperature. The canopy meter, however, will always read a slightly higher temperature because of the heat from the light hitting the canopy (a.k.a. the hot spot). The meter on the floor and the meter near the ceiling should be nearly the same. If they are different temperatures then it is telling you that you need to mix the air in the room more, to help balance the hotter and cooler temperatures. Plants hate a room that is inconsistent in temperature as this causes extra stress on the plant. Simply get an oscillating fan pointing at the ceiling, one pointing down at the floor and one just over the plants. This will keep the air optimum and is a massive factor in growing strong and healthy plants.
Remember a plant can over ever be as good as the room its grown in!