Indoor plant cultivation and associated savings

The financial burden of indoor growing is a common myth that unnecessarily discourages novice growers from making full use of grow tents and harvesting luxurious yields several times a year in the comfort of their homes. This article aims to dispel the myth of indoor growing being expensive and instead highlight the savings and other benefits it brings to cultivators.

• Let's start with numbers. On our e-shop you can get a complete basic grow set including an odor filter for discreet operation in your home starting from 6 790 CZK.
• If you worry about the electricity bill, the real costs to run such a “magic box,” as we like to call it, are in the order of a few hundred crowns per month, which is negligible at least compared to the value of the harvest, whether you grow vegetables and fruit in organic quality or medicinal herbs.
• Most households also allow the use of low-tariff hours for the lighting cycle.
• Once you start choosing your first growbox with accessories (lighting, ventilation, etc.), we will gladly advise you tailored to your possibilities so you have a clear idea of future costs.

“INVESTING IN QUALITY ALWAYS MEANS THE GREATEST SAVINGS IF YOU MEAN BUSINESS WHEN IT COMES TO CULTIVATION.”

Beginning growers naturally tend to choose the cheapest goods, but the technology used in only slightly more expensive devices results in such a significant difference in operational efficiency that your initial investment will pay back within the first few growing cycles.

Here are some practical tips on how to save on the operating costs of an indoor grow:

• Try to choose each piece of equipment and then use it as efficiently as possible to reduce any potential energy losses to an absolute minimum.

LIGHT

• You can make use of every ray of light, for example thanks to quality reflectors or hoods if you choose discharge lamps as your artificial light source.
• The same applies to reflective foils. Simply by carefully and regularly cleaning reflective surfaces (both reflectors and reflective foils), you ensure maximum efficiency in using light radiation and leave no chance for pathogens or pests.
• In smaller grow boxes and propagators you can use energy-saving lamps (CFL) for cultivating young plants.
• If you take indoor growing seriously in the long term, you will save considerable money by using LED grow lights, which outperform classic discharge lamps in overall operational efficiency.
• Plants grown under discharge lamp light should be shaped evenly for maximum light absorption. In the case of modern LED panels, even light dispersion is already ensured. For full-spectrum models this is further refined into a perfect imitation of natural sunlight, so a single light source is enough for all developmental stages, and you also save on purchasing a hood—which is unavoidable when using discharge lamps—while most discharge lamps are suitable for only one specific developmental stage (growth or flowering).
• Another advantage of LED lights is the ability to hang them close to the plant tops thanks to their low heat emissions without risk of burning. This again increases overall operational efficiency.
• To highlight the savings when using LED lights instead of HPS discharge lamps, here is a concrete example. If we replace a 250W HPS lamp with full-spectrum LED diodes of equivalent output, the investment will pay back by at latest the sixth growing cycle, which—for example with autoflowering varieties lasts about 2 months, so within a year the investment is returned and you enjoy higher-quality flowers or fruits and higher yields already in the first year.
• Because we are well aware of this fact, finely tuned LED growbox sets with complete accessories are among the most advantageous purchases you can make, saving you additional money when starting indoors. The image below illustrates what such a set includes.
• Below we also provide a link to a separate article on the topic HPS vs. LED.

VENTILATION

• You can clean fan blades with compressed air after each growing cycle, which will result in reduced noise during the next cycle and, last but not least, longer service life.
• The fan speed can be regulated based on the temperature inside the growbox in the case of quality devices; when the lights are off the temperature naturally drops, which automatically reduces the fan's electricity consumption.
• EC motors also contribute to significantly longer equipment life.
• Ballasts and other accessories that emit heat into the space can be placed outside the grow area, which again reduces the required fan performance.

How to save even more in indoor growing?

• Definitely on nutrients. But not in terms of quality. We mean the advantage of larger pack sizes. In our range you can also find popular value fertilizer sets. For soil cultivation our customers most like the BioNova Starter pack Soil Supermix.
• Large, more cost-effective packs of individual products have relatively long shelf life if stored in a cool, dark place.
• You also save in indoor growing due to a reduced risk of pests and plant diseases, since their elimination and prevention costs in outdoor cultivation are on average considerable. For indoor cultivation quality prevention like Canna CURE is usually more than enough and is always cheaper than any solution for already developed problems.
• Another way to save when growing indoors is revitalizing (recycling) spent substrate. You can read a separate article on this topic on our blog.

Below you can get inspired by specific items from our range that are focused on savings, and if you are already beginning to suspect that a home growroom does not have to be an expensive hobby, we will gladly advise you on selection, installation, and anything else you may need. Do not hesitate to contact us at the known address info@higarden.cz.

For economical indoor growing we recommend among others these products:

• LED growbox sets with complete accessories (from 8 990 CZK)
• Viparspectra PRO Series P600 (2 990 CZK)
• Value fertilizer and additive sets (from 229 CZK)

What to read next?

• Growing under artificial lighting: HPS vs. LED
• Avoid the most common mistakes when growing plants
• Great results are possible even with a smaller budget!