So you want to get bigger yields from your crop? Here are seven grow tips (in no particular order), that when adhered to, will help to ensure the healthiest and most vibrant crops possible in your growing environment. These growing secrets are the culmination of decades of growing experience from the author and countless other dedicated growers spanning the globe over. Follow them closely; they have worked for others and they can work for you.

One: Keep it optimal.

Technologically-advanced products are accessible to consumers making it effortless to supply bright light to plants indoors with HID (High Intensity Discharge) lighting. These crop lighting systems are available in various wattages for different levels of light output relative to the area needing illumination. Bigger wattage equals more light. However, it’s extremely important to consider the level of heat created by all of the lighting components.

The amount of heat produced by HID lighting systems is tremendous and must be properly managed to maintain optimal temperatures in the growing environment. Hot and dry environments will really stress your plants out, causing them to produce poorly. In the majority of indoor growing situations the plants will yield better and be of higher quality when the temperature does not reach above 85°F at the tops of the plants when the lights are on.

Temperatures above 90°F, in most situations, are a huge contributor to reductions in yield and overall crop quality in indoor gardens. The heat forces work at a high metabolic rate, meaning all the biological processes are accelerated. Couple this with high intensities of light, nutrients and air movement and you are working the plant at its upper limits. What tends to happen is that one factor, for example, CO2 for the leaves or oxygen for the roots, is lacking while other variables are driven at their maximum. This is like driving a high performance car at top speed while the engine is lacking oil; although everything else is working great, the car will grind to a halt and will possibly experience irreversible damage because one important component is lacking. The same goes for your crop. Do what is necessary to keep the optimal temperature, even if it means using less light intensity in the growing environment.

Two: You are what you overeat.

Growers have access to some pretty amazing crop feeding technologies. We all get excited about using them, although in our quest to give our plants the best, we can sometimes “kill them with kindness.” It’s important to keep a handle on the overall feeding strengths that we apply to our crops, and also the ratios of the different types of ingredients that are found in various products. Most of the time, the dilution rates on crop product labels are recommended for stand-alone applications, as the manufacturer cannot possibly account for everything and anything else you may be applying to your crops. For example, the levels of base nutrients, additives, biological inoculants, etc. all contribute to the overall feeding strengths, and how the plant will react. Furthermore, the quality of the growing environment itself will affect how suitable a feeding strength for the plants will be.

Growers often discuss feeding strengths in terms of PPM (parts per million), while EC (electrical conductivity) is probably the best unit of measurement, as it is universal from one region to another. PPM is not universal, as different conversion factors are used by different measuring equipment manufacturers (PPMs are actually conversions from EC, the base measurement).

In most growing scenarios, it’s rare for there to be any need to feed over 2.0 EC. Follow a complete feeding program from a reputable manufacturer, as piecing together your own feeding program can be a real hit and miss affair. Even when following a manufacturer’s complete program, it still pays to monitor your feeding strengths using TDS/EC testers. Remember after mixing all of your nutrients into the water, you can always add more fresh water to dilute the nutrient solution to lower strengths if necessary.

Over-fertilized plants produce poorly, are prone to insects and diseases and usually the taste and smell is less than desirable. Besides watching your overall feed strengths, and applying nutrients in a “feed, feed, water” regimen on soilless mediums, flushing the growing medium every couple of weeks can help keep nutrients from building-up and causing problems.

Three: The plant is boss.

If your plants aren’t ready for the next growing phase or increased feeding strengths, you should wait. Following recommendations is always a good idea, however, to do so blindly is not. Just because a chart says after three weeks that you should “flip” the plants into flower doesn’t mean that you should. Some strains will grow very little once flowering has started, so ask yourself if they will be at the right size for a healthy harvest at maturity.

Conversely, some strains and plant varieties grow leaps and bounds, upwards of +300 per cent, once flowering is initiated. With these varieties, the wise grower can be sure they are flowering early enough, so that they will not out-grow the space available in the garden.

Determining the right size to flower can take a couple of trials to get right, especially if you are working with a plant variety that you are less familiar with, or perhaps a strain within a plant variety that you have not yet cultivated. Do some research, and ask around. Growers who have experience with a particular strain or variety may be willing to share some insights. Note that hydroponically-grown plants will usually develop at a faster rate than soil grown plants, although overall yields are often similar.

Four: Simplify.

In an effort to make ourselves better growers, we sometimes pull the mad scientist cap on a little too far. It’s a great idea to experiment from crop to crop, however, you need to be realistic about how many variables you experiment with to really determine the cause and effect of particular inputs and practices.

With nutrients, for example, if you are not following a complete program, or if you’re using a tiered grower level system, don’t add too many new products at once; especially if they are not on the manufacturer’s crop feed chart. To really see how a particular product performs, you need to run at least one cycle with that being the only variable changed.

Same goes with the environment. If you are running experiments to find the optimal temperature for your strain in flowering, it’s not a good idea to switch from 1000 watt lights to 600 watt lights and turn around and say that one temperature is working better than another.

Set-up your grow with a “fool-proof” system, whether in terms of nutrient programs or an optimal growing environment. From there, consider changing one variable at a time per crop to really “dial-in” your growing environment accurately and precisely. Otherwise, you can only guess at any changes you see in the plants, for better or worse.

Five: Put some love into it.

Most of us get into growing indoors because we have a passion for growing things, or we are especially fond of the plants that we are cultivating. If taking care of your plants is not much more than an obligatory chore for you, don’t expect too much back from your plants in return; they will feel the same way about you!

Even growers who start out with a very strong passion can find themselves treating growing as a job after several years. It should never feel like a job. Perhaps it’s time to take a break from growing, or hire a reliable crop-sitter for your garden. You have to be in touch with your plants as often as possible. Plants are honest; they will ask for exactly what they want, and won’t hesitate to tell you what they don’t like. However, if you are not observing or “listening” to these signs because you are in a hurry to get in and out of the garden, you will overlook some very important “suggestions” from your plants, and your yields and crop quality will suffer. Basically, you will never be able to realize the full potential of your garden. After all, you only get out of it what you put into it, and that’s not just reserved to your gardens.

Six: Use a high quality light reflector.

If you are growing with HID (High Intensity Discharge) lighting, use a high quality, engineered lamp reflector to ensure that your garden receives the maximum number of lumens, in an even and consistent spread. There is no sense in having one high-yielding plant directly under the reflector, while the surrounding plants produce poorly due to uneven light distribution.

Poorly designed lamp reflectors may look good to the human eye, although their performance in re-directing light from the lamp to the garden can be extremely poor. Hot spots can be created in the garden canopy when a reflector is not re-directing light evenly, for example over an area of three square feet or four square feet. Lesser quality reflectors may provide intense light directly beneath the lamp, although they do not do a good job of spreading the light intensity to reach the plants on the outside of the garden canopy.

There are some tremendous differences in the ability of one reflector over another to re-distribute the light intensity evenly, in a desirable lighting foot-print for your garden. To ensure that you are making the most use of the lights you have, look for reflectors that offer a photometric chart that illustrate their performance. Use the right reflector for the right wattage lamp; sometimes mogul extensions may be required when working with lower wattage lamps, and finally, invest in a light meter; it will tell you exactly what intensities the plants are receiving, whether right under the reflector or towards the outside edges of the garden.

Seven: Add some life.

Whether you garden hydroponically, organically, in soil or soilless mediums, your crop will benefit greatly from introductions of bio-active and bio-available substances rather than just providing flat-lined, synthetic NPK nutrients.
Plants have evolved in an environment as diverse as the earth itself, so they have learned to make excellent use of all of the building blocks in nature provided to them. Growers who add another dimension in crop nutrition through the application of bio-active nutrients and supplements are often rewarded with higher yields, noticeably higher crop quality and fewer problems such as insects and diseases.

Freshly brewed aerobic teas are an excellent source of nutrients and beneficial life for plants. If your system is not well suited for root applications of aerobically brewed nutrient teas, you can apply them as foliar sprays with some level of benefit. Also, there are some specialty inoculants available that are specifically formulated for hydroponics growers, and contain super strains of bacteria such as Bacillus and Pseudomonas as well as beneficial fungi such as Trichoderma and Mycorrhizae. These are available as liquid concentrates or powdered formulations, and can be added to a variety of cropping programs. Most often they are applied to the roots, and when specially formulated, will not clog-up hydroponics growing systems. They are especially well suited to soil and soilless growing medium applications.

So, there you have it. Seven growing tips, that when followed and adhered to, can offer just about any grower in any growing situation a bigger yield, healthier plants and better crop quality. Sure there are many more tips and tricks that all stack up to maximum yields, however, these are a great place to start. Remember that it is never any one tweak or trick that makes your garden successful; it’s the culmination of all the little things you do to make your garden grow better. You will only get out of it what you put into it.