Category: Growing Environment

Growing Environment

The environment where you grow your plants significantly impacts their yields, composition, and health. This article will discuss several environmental factors that you can control to be a more skilled and effective cannabis grower. On top of this, we also evaluate some grow mediums and compare them such as coco vs soil.

Light

When growing cannabis, you should provide bright but not intense light. One of the significant factors determining your yields is the ideal light cycle for cannabis you provide, and with smaller grow lights, your yields will be limited regardless of what you do. The way your plant grows is also affected by light. The color spectrum of light, for example, can cause your plants to grow tall and skinny or bushy and squat. Some grow lights, such as LEDs, use a custom color spectrum to help your plants grow as quickly as possible. The amount of light you offer your cannabis is the most critical factor in determining yields and is even a factor earlier on when figuring out how to store cannabis seeds. The primary light source will be the sun, but how much sunlight does a cannabis plant need? If you are groing outside, you will need to know how to protect your outdoor grow. If you don’t have a lot of light, you can use a reflector to help your plants get more sunlight, you may also try techniques like the light dep cannabis method.

Reflection

Reflecting light at your plants will help you get the most out of your indoor grow lights. Instead of allowing extra light from your grow light to be absorbed by the walls of your grow space, you can use reflective material to rebound it back towards your plants. This enables you to get more yields from the same grow light without changing anything else in your environment.

Air circulation

Making sure your plants have a gentle breeze and plenty of fresh air all the time will make them develop faster. Grow tent ventilation also helps prevent white powdery mildew, bud rot and common cannabis pests like fungus gnats and spider mites. Ideally, you want a gentle breeze blowing over, though, and under your plants. It is ideal if all of the leaves are gently rustled. You don’t want to direct a fan at your plants because this can cause windburn, but you also don’t want any leaves to sit in stagnant or hot air. A simple oscillating fan or two can do wonders in the growing space.

Humidity

Unless extremely high or low, humidity should not cause significant issues with your cannabis crops. The amount of moisture required by your cannabis crops varies with the humidity for growing cannabis in the grow tent during the development phases. Pot crops use their leaves to obtain moisture from the air rather than their roots on high humidity leading to less water. Moreover, during low humidity, the roots will draw in more water.

Temperature

Temperature impacts several plant processes, and the most important is photosynthesis and PAR for cannabis. The light-dependent reactions are unaffected by temperature. Conversely, temperature strongly influences enzyme activity in light-independent responses. Low temperatures naturally slow down enzyme chemical reactions and decrease photosynthesis. High temperatures cause enzymes to lose their shape and functionality, slowing photosynthesis. To get higher yields, hydroponic systems for cannabis like deep water culture for cannabis must be kept at the proper temperature so that enzymatic processes do not stifle the essential photosynthesis systems.

It’s not enough to just have your seeds, you need grow medium, lights, fans, and more while also monitoring temperature and humidity. Learn how to maintain a conducive grow environment here.