Indoor vs. Outdoor, or Is It Better to Garden at Home or Outdoors?
This topic in the world of gardening rather resembles the question “With dumplings, or with cabbage?” from the well-known Czech film Snowdrop Festival. It depends on each grower’s preferences. Or on experience. In this post, we compare both methods of plant cultivation.
Indoor plant cultivation
Advantages:
- Heat, frost, prolonged cloud cover, periods of drought, relentless downpours, hail or gales - in short, all weather whims are completely irrelevant when you grow indoors and have absolutely no effect on your harvest.
- You also do not have to deal with the season. You can harvest several times a year. Many of our customers, for example, harvest six times a year, and thanks to a grow box at home, they have a constant supply of their favourite herbs, fruit or vegetables. That is why indoor gardening is becoming increasingly popular all over the world.
- Some grow tents, such as the German Homebox models, are also fully adapted in terms of both design and functionality so that they can easily become part of any interior.
- Combined with a quality odour filter and a quiet fan, this is literally a discreet magic box. How do you choose your first grow tent with everything included? You can read about it HERE.
- A controlled growing environment also significantly reduces the risks associated with pests and diseases. And if they do appear, the limited space makes them relatively easy to eliminate compared with a garden. Identification is easier too. Some pest species appear outdoors only at night, so you do not see them because you are asleep. The problem is that by day you also no longer see the damage they managed to cause during their nocturnal activity in your garden. In the enclosed growing environment provided by grow boxes, this simply does not happen, because any pests have nowhere to escape until you eliminate them.
- Another advantage of growing plants in a grow box, where you control all the aspects that determine the results of your efforts, is usually higher yields and the overall quality of the crop. Even if you tried your very best when growing outdoors and were blessed with natural talent, beginner’s luck or even extensive practical experience, the reality is that an outdoor harvest never reaches the same parameters as a crop grown under a lamp in a grow box.
- Indoor plant cultivation is also a gateway to the world of hydroponics and, in the spirit of technological progress, gives growers the opportunity to experiment and discover new possibilities.
Disadvantages:
- The biggest disadvantage of indoor gardening is generally considered to be the high initial cost. However, we would like to say that thanks to modern technologies, which bring a quick return on the initial investment, this disadvantage is now more of a myth.
- This is all the more true because you can buy a complete grow tent set with all the necessary accessories, tailored to your needs and current budget. After all, there is a separate article about how great results can be achieved even with a smaller budget. Read HERE.
- Whether you choose the cheapest starter option for the first few flowers, or select a larger or professional version for a bigger harvest, is entirely up to you. Grow box sets are pre-tuned to excite you about growing in the comfort of your home from the very first indoor harvest. And if you are an experienced grower, you will be interested in versions that please your wallet - in short, those that stand out for their excellent price-performance ratio.
- Whether it is a source of artificial lighting, ventilation equipment, or other equipment for the grow tent, including hydroponic systems, there are currently many products on the market that are characterised by low electricity consumption. The electricity bill is another negative item that appears on the list of PROS and CONS of indoor growing.
- The question, then, is whether the classic disadvantages of indoor gardening are still disadvantages today, but we certainly do not want to claim that electricity or equipment for home growing cost nothing. We are only saying that it is certainly worth everything that an indoor garden brings growers several times a year!
Outdoor plant cultivation
Advantages:
- Minimal costs. You practically only need a quality fertiliser suitable for soil and a growing medium plus some pots. Soil itself already contains a greater or lesser amount of the most important nutrients, so fertiliser consumption is usually lower than in indoor growing in pots and even much lower than when growing indoors in hydroponic systems.
- Another saving that outdoor gardening brings is related to water. Apart from periods of drought, rain takes care of irrigation, even when you are away for a few days. An experienced gardener also collects rainwater, for example in clean containers, and then uses the “rainwater” to water beds in the garden as well as growing containers placed outdoors.
- Sunlight is also free, but it is not a one hundred per cent advantage, as we will explain a little further below.
Disadvantages:
- While in a home grow room you can provide your plants with optimal conditions for growth and the formation of lush flowers and fruits rich in valuable substances, when growing in a garden or field you expose them to the constant effects of natural phenomena, which, in addition to weather conditions and fluctuating sunlight intensity, unfortunately also include the completely unrestricted movement of various pests or bacteria. When growing outdoors, we therefore place particular emphasis on proper plant protection.
- When growing ornamental, medicinal or useful crops in our climate conditions, outdoor plant cultivation unfortunately also means uncertain weather, unlike a grow tent, where you can simply ensure a perfect microclimate with adequate ventilation and thanks to the high-quality materials from which modern grow boxes are made.
- Outdoors, your plants do receive natural sunlight, but just think back to the past summer and it is clear that there may not have been enough of it. Lower temperatures in the summer months and sunshine hidden behind clouds then inevitably lead to lower yields and also affect the final quality, as sufficiently compact inflorescences do not form and the fruits often do not have enough time to ripen fully.
- Full-spectrum luminaires used for indoor growing perfectly imitate sunlight for plants. We especially recommend full-spectrum LED lighting from Lumatek, or perhaps the “LEDs” from Viparspectra.
- It is important to mention that if you spend several months or weeks caring for plants outdoors, only for them to fail to ripen, and then be irreversibly destroyed by weather, pests or some plant disease, or possibly by wildlife, this is an unpleasantly frustrating experience.
- In winter, of course, your outdoor garden is out of the question.
A certain compromise between growing at home and outdoors is represented by greenhouses, but more on that in one of our next posts. We hope that, in the beginning, we have helped you compare both sides of the two imaginary coins, and if you would like to ask us any additional question on the topic of indoor or outdoor plant cultivation, do not hesitate to write to the well-known address info@higarden.eu.
We recommend these products:
- Best-selling basic grow set including odour filter (6,790 Kč) - an excellent price-performance ratio for successful indoor beginnings!
- LED Set 300W Attis MASTER (19,990 Kč) - an investment that will pay off quickly if you are serious about indoor growing!
- Hydroponic systems (from 2,599 Kč)
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