Maybe you want to indoor garden but you think you can’t afford to. Good news! Fall is coming, temperatures are dropping and the time is right to get you started you on the path to success. With these colder temps, we are afforded an opportunity to get our foundation under our feet while we don’t have to beat the heat.
Getting an indoor garden started in the fall is good because you can generally harvest a few crops during the autumn and winter seasons before being faced with the decision to upgrade your garden or shut it down for the summer heat. Providing you live in a region with relatively dry winters, your humidity should be either sufficient or easily enough controlled with standard household items.
While you can afford to skip a few basic pieces of grow room equipment for now, you will still need the bare minimum to get started. NOTE: This list is intended to highlight the must have items for any indoor grower and should not be considered a be all, end all list. We will be continuing this article in the future to show how your base efforts can be upgraded to any indoor gardeners paradise.
Starting from the top, lets pick a good light for a low cost. The 600 watt HPS system is a reliable light source capable of producing an abundant harvest with a mid level energy draw and heat. For our first time grower we will select a magnetic ballast, budget level lamp and a simple bat wing reflector.
We’ll also be going with a wall mountable fan to help keep our environment consistent and move some of that warm air around the grow room.
Panda film is a tough plastic sheeting suitable for covering walls and floors to help protect them and reflect light. It is also light proof making it an excellent choice.
The Can 2600 and flange is a high quality, affordable carbon filter designed to eliminate odors and exhaust your grow room air using the inline fan and ducting, keeping it cool and fresh at all times.
For the plants themselves, we have a nice big bag of ocean forest potting soil and (6) 2-gallon nursery pots with saucers. This is just about the perfect soil to pot ratio, which leaves you with little to no extra soil making a mess of your space. The Soil provides nutrition to the plants throughout their 3-4 week vegetative period, which will help cut down on nutrient costs.
Since maintaining a proper PH is important for nutrient absorption use a ph control kit to monitor and change as necessary the acidity of your water.
Once your ready to send your plants into bloom (use an old Christmas light timer to set your lights to 12 hours on, 12 hours off) you will need to supplement your plants with some additional fertilizer as the soil will need to be revitalized weekly.
Be sure to hold up those branches with some bamboo plant stakes too, these will not only help the plant cope with the weight of it’s massive harvest, it will provide a good framework for training as well.
Pure Blend Pro Soil Bloom is a great one part complete fertilizer that will provide your plants everything they need during their blooming phase.
A hygrometer/thermometer to measure your temperature and humidity will be a useful tool now, and indispensable to help alert you to temperature changes in your environment before they get too severe.
And there you have it, a simple, cost effective indoor garden capable of providing professional results on a budget of $500.00 or less. Stay tuned as we show you how an additional $500 that can effectively TRIPLE your overall output and put you into the big leagues of indoor growing.
6 x 2 gallon pot $6
6 x Saucers $6
Total: $492