Set up the grow room before bringing in any plants. Construction requires space and planning. Once the grow room is set up and totally operational, the room will be ready for plants.Step One:Choose an out-of-the-way space with little or no traffic. A corner in the basement or a spare bedroom is perfect. A 1,000-watt HID, properly set up, will efficiently illuminate up to a 6 x 6-foot room. The ceiling should be at least 5 feet high. Keep in mind that plants are set up about one foot off the ground in containers and the lamp needs about a foot of space to hang from the ceiling. This leaves only three feet of space for plants to grow. If forced to grow in an attic or basement with a low 4-foot ceiling, much can be done to compensate for the loss of height, including cloning, bending, pruning and using 400-watt lamps.Step Two:Enclose the room, if not already enclosed. Remove everything that does not pertain to the garden. Furniture and especially drapes and curtains may harbor fungi. An enclosed room allows easy, precise control of everything and everyone that enters, exits and who and what goes on inside. For most growers, enclosing the grow room is simply a matter of tacking up some sheet rock in the basement or attic and painting it flat white. Make sure no light is visible from outside. If covering a window, do so discretely so that it is not boarded up. Insulate windows and walls so a tale-tell heat signature does not escape. Often basement windows are painted to look like the foundation. Place some stuff – books, personal effects, household goods, etc. – in front of the window and build a box around the things so that a natural scene is seen from the outside. At night, bright light leaking from a crack in an uncovered window is like a beacon to curious neighbors or bandits. Step Three:Cover walls, ceiling, floor everything with a highly reflective, material like flat white paint or whitewash. The more reflection, the more light energy that is available to plants. Good reflective light will allow effective coverage of a HID lamp to increase from 10 to 20 percent, just by putting a few dollars worth of paint on the walls. Reflective white Visqueen® plastic is inexpensive and protects walls and floors.A vent fan and an oscillating circulation fan are essential to keep a healthy environment.Step Four:See "Setting Up the Vent Fan" in Chapter Six. Constant air circulation and a supply of fresh air are essential and often inadequate. There should be at least one fresh air vent in a 10 x l0-foot room. Vents can be an open door, window or duct vented to the outside. An exhaust fan vented outdoors, pulling new fresh air through an open door usually creates an adequate flow of air. An oscillating fan works well for circulation. When installing such a fan, make sure it is not set in a fixed position and blows too hard on tender plants. It could cause windburn or in the case of young seedlings and clones, dry them out. If the room contains a heat vent, it may be opened to supply extra heat or air circulation.Step Five:The larger your garden gets, the more water it will need. A 10 x10-foot garden could use more than 50 gallons a week. Carrying water is hard regular work. One gallon of water weighs 8 pounds, 50 x 8 = 400 pounds of water a week! It is much easier to run in a hose with an on/off valve or install a hose bib in the room than to schlep water. A 3-foot watering wand attached to the hose on/off valve makes watering easier and saves branches from being broken when watering in dense foliage. Hook the hose up to a hot and cold water source so the temperature is easy to regulate.Step Six:Ideally the floor should be concrete or a smooth surface that can be swept and washed down. A floor drain is very handy. In grow rooms with carpet or wood floors, a large, white, painter's dropcloth or thick white Visqueen® plastic, will protect floors from moisture. Trays placed beneath each container add protection and convenience.Step Seven:Mount a hook strong enough to support 30 pounds for each lamp. Attach an adjustable chain or cord and pulley between the ceiling hook and the lamp fixture. The adjustable connection makes it easy to keep the lamp at the proper distance from plants and up out of the way during maintenance.Step Eight:There are some tools an indoor gardener must have and a few extra tools that make indoor horticulture much more precise and cost effective. The extra tools help make the garden so efficient that they pay for themselves in a few weeks. Secure all the tools before bringing plants into the room. If the tools are there when needed, chances are they will be put to use. A good example is a hygrometer. If plants show signs of slow, sickly growth, due to high humidity, most growers will not notice the exact cause right away. They will wait and guess, wait and guess and maybe figure it out before a fungus attacks and the plant dies. When a hygrometer is installed before plants are in the grow room, the horticulturist will know from the start when the humidity is too high and causing sickly growth.Step Nine:Read and complete: “Setting Up the HID Lamp” at the end of Chapter Two.Step Ten:Move seedlings and rooted clones into room. Huddle them closely together under the lamp. Make sure the HID is not so close to small plants that it burns their leaves. Move 400-watt lamps 18 inches above seedlings and clones. Place a 600-watt lamp 24 inches away and a 1000-watt lamp 30 inches away. Check the distance daily. Hang a precut string from the hood to measure distance.Necessary Tools: ThermometerSpray bottlepH testerLiquid biodegradable soapHygrometerPruners or scissorsWire tiesSheetrock screwsScrewdriverMeasuring cup and spoonsPencil and notebookMoisture meterLight meterYardstick to measure growth!
