(Or, How to Keep Your Favorite Hobby from Blowing Up in Your Face)

There comes a time in almost every endeavor when the risks you’re running come to the front of your mind. Sometimes, it’s a ‘wow, that could’ve sucked!’ moment of preventative inspiration, and sometimes it’s just after receiving a particularly expensive lesson from the proverbial School of Hard Knocks, but we’ve all been there - most of us, more than once.

This month, in no particular order, I’m here to share some of the nastier potential pitfalls of indoor gardening in the hope that I save someone from a nasty lesson, or worse. So pay attention, because the crop - or even the life - you save, could be yours!

Playing with Gas - CO2 enrichment is a well-proven method of improving the yield of your crop, and is one of the basic reasons for choosing a sealed room approach. However, how you get your gas matters, and how you distribute it matters even more. First, you really never want more than about 1500ppm of CO2 total in your garden; more than that does no good, and can even stunt the growth of your little green beauties. For the vast majority of situations, 1000ppm is plenty. Use a sensor and regulator, because you can’t smell or taste CO2, and it is toxic above 4000-5000ppm.

The winter growing season is once again upon us, heralded of course by the arrival and passage of shopping season. I’ve been getting lots of questions lately about water chilling, Light Emitting Plasma, and aeroponics; so, I thought I’d help you all out by taking a look at these pieces of new technology that can really help your indoor growing adventure become even more successful…and give you an excuse to go shopping for yourself after the season officially ends…

A quick Primer on Lighting Choices for your Garden

Talk about lighting your garden, and immediately an argument erupts; what kind of lighting is the best? Tried and true fluorescent, powerful, but power hungry, HID, or one of the new crop of lighting choices like LED, induction or plasma? Since there is no way any one of these is definitively better than the others for all situations, I thought I’d use this month’s column to navigate you, my cadre of crop-masters, through the different choices and help you with the decision about which is best for you in your specific setup.