When growing any type of plant indoors via hydroponics or not, the importance of good ventilation may escape the “average” grower. If you pay no attention to the airflow of your operation, weGrow highly encourages you to try setting up a ventilation system. If you’re trying to reach above and beyond the “average” grow to get nice, sticky buds out of an extremely healthy all-female crop, you’re going to need to consider air flow for several reasons.

Reasons Why Ventilation Helps

Below is a short list of reasons why ventilation is necessary in a good grow operation. A plant’s propensity to grow is dependent on whether it has the three things necessary for photosynthesis: light, CO2 and water. Though ventilation doesn’t provide direct CO2, it keeps fresh nitrogen and oxygen rich air coming into your room.

As plants breathe in CO2 and yield oxygen, you have to consider the CO2 to oxygen ratio in natural air. There are about .038% CO2 in the volume of air whereas oxygen accounts for a whopping 20% of ambient air’s volume. This means that even on a rudimentary level of growing without using CO2 regulators, your plants suck through the CO2 in the natural air pretty quickly.

If you have a stagnant room without any form of ventilation, your plants will absorb the CO2 present within a matter of days to weeks, then, they’ll get progressively weaker… and sicker… All because your air is stale! weGrow doesn’t want that for you…

See below for more reasons why ventilation helps:

• With higher humidity levels and good ventilation, mites are less likely to plague your plants
• If you’ve got stagnant, humid air, you’re inviting mildew to ruin your plants – keep air moving and the problem will desist
• Premature bud drop is a phenomena where buds fall off of your plant before harvest – this can be prevented with good ventilation
• TEMPERATURE REGULATION!!!! As air moves by your plants, it brings the temperature of the air and plants down
• If you’re breeding plants, fresh moving air helps tremendously with pollination
• Entire ventilation systems may be used for the purposes of cooling your ballasts in addition to giving your plants fresh air

Implementing Good Ventilation

The first thing you’re going to want to do when you set up a ventilation system is get a climate-controllable air conditioner – you’ll be able to program the temperature of the air to what you want it at. Use additional pedestal fans if you have a large grow room to increase air flow in all corners of your room. For specific plants that need cooler temperatures, consider using clip-on fans or areas of your room outfitted with smaller, 4″ Axial fans. Get axial fan cords here. Make use of inline duct fans if you aren’t piping your ventilation through the roof via chimney or jerry-rigging – this will reduce the chance that breezes will impede air flow out of the room.

DON’T BLOW AIR DIRECTLY ON YOUR PLANTS.  As this will cause windburn and dries them out. – Blow air at lower levels on your plants that just makes the leaves flutter. This makes the main branches stronger so they can support large buds.

Too much air can dehydrate them quickly. Have the air passing by the plants but not in immediate range of your plants. Remember – when you adjust the temperature of the room, you adjust the temperature of the plant.

If you follow these basic recommendations for setting up a ventilation system, you’ll find your plants growing bigger buds come flowering time consistently due to the regular  replacement of air containing much needed CO2. For growers who’ve been using ventilation since they started growing, consider using a more advanced technique of integrating CO2 dispersion for your plants. Increased CO2 levels will dramatically increase harvests every time!