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Dangers of growing indoors

Written by Fern on . Posted in Uncategorized.

  • Skin damage
  • Eye damage
  • Respiratory damage
  • High voltage power
  • Fire hazards
  • Water hazards
  • Chemical spills
  • Environmental contaminants
  • Moving parts
  • Theft
  • Insect Damage
  • Toxic mold and or fungus

Growing indoors can be extremely fun and rewarding, but if not paying attention or not planning properly it can be DANGEROUS too!

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that growing a plant is completely harmless! It takes a lot of energy and materials to produce plants indoors. in not designed correctly can actually damage your grow space. Because we are replicating an outside environment artificially indoors you need to have an indoor environment ready to be exposed to all of the growing elements. This combination of water, electricity, hot lamps, ,humidity, various chemicals to name a few. Mixed with moving parts like fans, pumps, or light movers combined with tight spaces can create a hazardous environment quickly if not well cared for. A good rule of thumb is “better safe than sorry”.

The Process:

  1. Plan ahead! Plan your electrical load and routing of cables to be clean, uncovered out of the way and secured. Seal all windows with light proof material as you do not want light affecting the night cycle.  Make sure you have access to drains, water and proper electrical.
  2. Make sure the ground surface of the space intended to grow is waterproofed. Water destroys floors quickly and efficiently.
  3. Keep all electrical components (other than water pumps) above waist level.
  4. Never use frayed or split extension cords. The risk of shock of fire is too great.
  5. Keep all vent inlets and outlets completely open and clear. Use a secured inlet filter if possible.
  6. Use protective glass when necessary and use protective clothing to guard skin from UV radiation.  UV rated masks can be easily found on amazon or ebay and gloves will keep your knuckle hairs from ending up in or on your plant. There are indoor Garden specific glasses from many vendors online as well. I have used a few and they all seem the same so if it is UV rated, green lens, it should be good. I go with the grandpa style ones for more face coverage from the lamps.
  7. Keep all nutrient containers upright, on a shelf or in a bin and clean up any spill immediately. You don’t want to take off paint with your PH down that got sprayed on the wall… dispose of empty bottles appropriately.
  8. Fan blades spin very fast. They don’t care what your hair thinks, or your fingers, or your pet bird. Plan on that.
  9. Your neighbors kid might be interested in why their back yard stinks, or about the god of light coming from your basement windows. Keep it quiet doesn’t just mean don’t talk about it, it also means don’t let any of it be seen. Many outdoor crops in my neighborhood went missing last year right BEFORE harvest… a waste of plants for anyone including the no-nothing thief. But if someone was willing to venture onto my neighbors back yard, whats to stop them from going into known basement grow? Leave nothing out or behind, do not keep anything around that indicates any indoor growing. USE AIR FILTERS!! I cannot express this enough. Every person, car, cat, mouse etc will know you grow smelly things if you don’t. Just use a filter.  Move things in and out under darkness, or by garage only and don’t share too much with unknown people in your neighborhood. You do not need to arouse suspicion unless you want the added problems that will come along.
  10. Keeping a properly de-humidified environment both in and out of your growing area is a must. If improperly treated, humid air can move up into your attic space and create the perfect environment for mold. You do not want to ruin your home over an indoor garden, so make sure to either vent out of your grow space into the outdoors or treat the air with a dehumidifier. It helps to have a dehumidifier with a drain hose attachment and floor drain nearby if you plan on running the dehumidifier 24/7 so you do not “forget” to empty the bucket as it will shut down when full and spike your humidity. We have seen this happen very fast using the My Smart Grow graphing data as we have tested it with a variety of setups and found that the hose to floor drain is the best for a medium room to keep safe humidity levels throughout an entire grow cycle. High humidity will also wear electrical contacts by promoting rust.
  11. Keep an eye out for insects that may find their way into your moist dark environment. I have seen ant’s make a hive in a hydroton potted mother due to a ventilation duct to the outside letting them in. Seal off any possible entry with foaming sealing insulation and treat the outside of your building around vents to keep insects at bay.
  12. Be safe and enjoy!

Best drying method

Written by Fern on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Hanging vs Jarring

That is the question. We have found the answer and will not be going back unless forced!

Are you tired of your well grown indoor crop smelling like dry grass!? Have an issue with mold while drying? Harsh burning or loss of taste? All of these can easily be avoided if you have a little patience.

You need to properly dry and cure your herbs. This topic is all over the internet and contains things from hanging to cutting to trimming and putting into a paper bag. Well, after years of trying many different methods and focusing on environmental impacts on the dry/cure times.  I have found there is one simple thing you can do to dry AND cure your herbs in one simple step. Though the step takes one month minimum, the rewards are outstanding.

The idea is simple. Let the chlorophylle and starches naturally break down. This requires the plant to stay moist enough that the chemical reactions can occur, but not so moist that mold can take a hold of the plant matter. You need to keep the plant matter no lower than 55% in order to keep a cure going. Once you pass this point you cannot add more water to get the process going again and the flavor and smell is pretty much “locked  in” at that point.

The Process:

  1. Set your My Smart Grow System tent to “Disable” in the settings which will automatically set 60-65 R/H vent actuation within your drying space. Keep the “lung room” dehumidifier set to 55-60% with temperatures no lower than 70f degrees or higher than 78 degrees. Your high power lighting cycle will be disabled during the drying curing period.
  2. Cut and hang the whole plant with your My Smart Grow controlled environment set to “Disabled” which defaults to the perfect drying settings.  Once Cured and dry, you can plug your lights back to the smart strip to be ready to set up the environment for the clone or seedling state. You then can switch your system up the to vegetative setting, followed by flower. The My Smart Grow system is a game changer for automated environmental control throughout the entire growing cycle all the way to a perfect storage cure.
  3. Now wait for 1 month and keep the environmental settings steady in order to have the best cure you have experienced. Patience is key here. Slow and steady will win this race!  Test the plants during the curing state. After the initial water weight is lost the plants won’t dry past your environmental settings and you are technically curing on the branch. If the environment drops below 50 and the drying plants do too, the cure will stop and the hay smell will lock in.  Testing will allow you to know how long you actually need to cure. You might be surprised as to what you find! You can monitor your environment with the MSG system and not see any outlying data points or you need to make changes to your venting or “lung room” to keep the parameters in check and get the best result. This is something very hard to perfect in a jar which requires random “burping” out of the moisture that builds up in a sealed jar.  The My Smart Grow system automatically turns your any room into an automated curing environment with no worry of mold or drying out too fast.
  4. Enjoy-

Top 5 problems with growing indoors

Written by Fern on . Posted in Uncategorized.

There are a lot of obstacles to overcome when growing indoors. I am going to tell you my 5 top problems with indoor growing.

  1. Keeping the correct temperature for the plants. Understand that no electronic equipment makes 100% use of the electricity it consumes. A percentage of the electricity’s work capability will be wasted and the result is heat.  That heat transfers into your environment unless you take precautions. Air-Cooled lighting hoods, cooler running lights, proper control of ventilation will all help in keeping an optimal growing environment.  The My Smart Grow Automation system will allow you to monitor current environments and then make the proper changes needed to make the constant perfect environment needed for your plants.
  2. Keeping the correct humidity. Proper humidity allows the plant to breath and transpire water in the perfect symphony. Humidity adds pressure to the plant which is in itself a water pump. The added outside pressure of a over humidified plant will cause the plant to work abnormally hard to bring fresh water up from its roots as well as providing a perfect environment for mold to grow. Neither are good for your plant. On the opposite spectrum, too low of humidity will cause the plant to lose too much water due to the “suction” of water from its stomata causing a stalling of the plant trying to keep it’s fluids. You want and need an environment within 55-65 during the vegetating and early flowering periods, followed by 45%-60% humidity in flowering, lower in later flowering.
  3. Improper lighting schedule or timer malfunctions. You need absolute dark during the dark period. This means actually standing in your operating room, in the dark to see if there are any light leaks. Light leaks are both from the outside of the room in, as well as any LED or other indicator lights from power strips or ground fault outlets. You would be surprised as to what has a little LED light on it now a days. These light leaks stress the plant, and if prone to hermaphroditism can cause female plants to grow “male balls” full of pollen and pollinate your plants creating a female/hermaphroditism prone seed.
  4. Airflow. Fresh air is needed throughout your grow environment. You will need more than just a ventilation fan, you will also need an “air mover” to blow around any stale air pockets around the leafs. The air movement will aid in the transpiration of Co2 on the leafs promoting health and vigor. This can be done with any cheap oscillating fan set up to a nursery style metal variety depending on coverage and air movement needed.
  5. Water. Both too much and too little. Too much, you can at a long term issue cause root rot, short term you can flood your grow space with a hose that was left on.  Make sure to have a reservoir that cannot overfill your grow tray. Also make sure your grow tray has an overfill exit back to the reservoir in case your drain gets clogged with roots, which is inevitable with the My Smart Grow system because it creates the perfect growing environment causing fast growing of the root system.  You can solve the root plugging simply by moving the plugging roots out of the drain and re-folded under the root mass away from the drain.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

Written by Fern on . Posted in Blog.

Cleanliness and Attention to detail:

Cleanliness is next to godliness. Understand that you are producing a product that you and your friends are to consume. Dust, dirt, mold, hair, pet dander, are all possible contaminants that can fall onto and ruin your sticky flowers and leaves. You should make sure to keep a “clean room” as your grow space. Do not let pets, into the space as they can track in mold spores hair and dander that will get placed deep into your flowers. Hair (when burned) is toxic, as is mold. For food crops this is also extremely important as you do not want salmonella or e coli on your greens! Make sure to clean all walls with a hydrogen peroxide solution or bleach solution before and between grows to start with a clean slate. The humidity and temperatures that fruits and flowers thrive in also can create the perfect environment for different types of mold and fungi. These issues can be thwarted by a variety of techniques employed by a clean grow space design with plenty of airflow, and attention to the details of the environment.

 Attention to detail is absolutely needed. In the past you needed to have the attention span to make sure that all of your power connections are tight, timers set properly (Don’t forget daylights savings time!), water levels are proper, air  humidity and temperatures are proper, Hydro water pumps are proper, PH set, Nutrient levels set, ventilation for the lung room working. Now you can have the My Smart Grow System monitor most of these for you, giving you more time to grow! 

At My Smart Grow we believe in working Smarter, not Harder.

Written by Fern on . Posted in Blog.

Energy:

Growing takes more than your own mental and physical energy, it also relies on the energy from your home when grown indoors. Being smart with your energy and time will save your mental and physical anguish down the line.  The My Smart Grow System was designed to keep energy waste at the minimum, as well as allow for easy future expansion once your process is in place. 

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