Confined to growing indoors for the summer? Looking to set yourself up a winter garden? Or looking for a great gift idea for the indoor grower? No worries, we’ve got your back! Because at ChilLed we’ve selected our favorite top 5 items indoor growers love to use, from the best LED lights to environmental controllers that do all the work for you — we made sure to include in a bonus for you too!
1. All-In-One Gardening Kits
Not sure if gardening is right for you? Then an all-in-one kit that sets you up with everything you need is a great option. When you want to garden but have no clue how to, they are great and can teach you most, if not all, of the basics, with ease.
The one place gardening kits like the Aerogarden fall apart is when you find out you love gardening and what to expand but find no parts of these kits can be used to help. Many find these kits take up more space and require too much work to run them alongside a more efficient and larger gardening setup you’ll be jazzing for after you’ve discovered your green thumb. You can’t really break down these units and use their individual parts to expand, either.
It’s slightly trickier in the beginning when you don’t know what to look for, but going for a more DIY route and putting together your own all-in-one kit may be the smarter route if you think you’ll stick to indoor gardening. And while it’s a little more work, you open yourself to so many options, bigger plants, soil gardening, better pruning results, etc. You can start by using a preexisting kit as a guide for what you’ll all need.
However, even when you outgrow them, kits that can hold 4 to 8 herbs and side comfortably on your counter are great for growing your herbs and clearing space for bigger plants in your main garden.
Big Things To Look For:
- Go bigger rather than smaller. In general, with fully grown plants, expect the unit to only comfortably hold half to just a third of the slots available/number of plants advertised.
- Available in both soil-based and hydroponic-based kits, hydro kits are great for growing herbs on your kitchen counter, as soil can be a bit messier and more prone to attracting insects.
- Want to build your own kit? — You’ll just want a light, nutrients, plant container/reservoir, grow media, pruning shears, and seeds.
2. LED Grow Lights
As someone who used to wire together CFL for their grow lights, let’s just say, getting a professional grow light is like waking up on Christmas day and without a doubt are some of the best items indoor growers love. And today, there are no better grow lights than the modern LED grow lights.
Not only do the new breed of LEDs feature a superior light spectrum and spread to our crops than HIDs and CFLs, they now cost nearly the same, but last way longer and deliver way more light vs. heat, unlike the others. And their flat and compacted design has them taking up so much less space than your old grow lights. Space is often limited in indoor grows, making it tricky to grow certain crops, so the last thing you need is something taking away more space like an HID bulb that requires a ballast, reflector hood, and larger exhaust system.
Big Things To Look For:
- LEDs that output predominantly “white” or natural light (3000-5000K) are the best route to go vs. ones that bathe your plants in purplish light.
- Aim for a LED with a PPF Efficacy that’s 3+ μmole/J — this basically tells you how much light you’ll get from the energy that goes in.
- Bar and board LEDs that have their diodes evenly spread out across the entire unit instead of concentrated in a single area, providing superior light spread.
- LEDs are bright, so make sure you’re protecting your eyes with grow room sunglasses!
3. Grow Tent
Preferring hot and humid weather, our plants’ preferred environment doesn’t quite match ours’. And that’s just one of several reasons a grow tent that has its own separate environment from your house is a great idea when you can’t dedicate an entire room to your garden.
From the joy of opening your tent in the morning to lay your eyes on your sea of greens to discouraging pests and dirty carpets to the ease of hanging ventilation equipment, grow tents are a staple in indoor gardening for a reason.
Big Things To Look For:
- At least 2 appropriately sized holes for ventilation equipment (1 intake & 1 outtake), viewing window, side pocket/pouch for tools, a sturdy zipper, good insulation to prevent water leaks, and small enough to completely hide from light if growing short-day plants.
- 2×4 and 3×3 tents typically fit 3 full-sized plants and are considered small gardens.
- A 4×4 tent typically fits 6 full-size plants and is considered a medium-sized garden.
- 4×8 tents and up fit at least 8 full-size plants and 20 starter plants or herbs comfortably and are considered large gardens.
4. Seeds
Unlike outdoor gardeners who have to abide by Mother Nature’s schedule for growing plants, indoor growers don’t. And with all the time in the world, many indoor gardeners develop an affinity for starting their crops from seeds.
When properly stored — which isn’t difficult — seeds often stay viable for several years, making them a great idea for gifts. If you know your friend like spicy foods and grows indoors, hot pepper seeds like ghost peppers can be a great idea. Of course, if they’re a toker and the sticky icky is legal in their state, cannabis seeds are always a fun gift. Unless you know otherwise, you’ll definitely want to avoid gifting seeds from large or awkward crops like corn or vining crops like melons, which can be quite tricky to contain indoors. Seeds are definitively items indoor growers love, but some care does need to be taken.
Big Things To Look For:
- Be careful what time of the year you order your seeds. While many seeds are hardy with the ability to freeze them for long-term storage, extreme temperatures on shipping trucks can still deteriorate their viability, especially if they are recalcitrant seeds.
5. Controllers
There aren’t too many things more indoor growers love than environmental controllers. They help run our gardens for us, including turning on/off our lights, changing our light spectrums, activating airflow devices when temperatures and humidity fall outside optimal levels, and can water our plants — all the while we are asleep and snuggled up in our beds. Without controllers, we would never be able to leave our gardens!
Big Things To Look For:
- While controllers are becoming incredibly intuitive, with the ability to monitor and control your entire garden with a phone app, at the very least, you’ll want a simple light controller that turns on/off your grow lights, so your plants stay on a consistent schedule.
Bonus: Meters
Where would we be without our meters? From testing the intensity of our lighting sources to the contents of our water, meters are a big deal in indoor gardening, where plants tend to be a bit more sensitive to environmental fluctuation. A lot of growers question whether they truly need a pH, EC, or a light meter. They aren’t essential like grow lights, fertilizers, seeds, etc., so when our budgets are tight, they are the first items we often pass on.
And by developing keen eyes and a good intuition — plus a good bit of luck — many of us can get away without needing meters. BUT, the second we have the option to use one, oh boy, do we fall in love with them! This is a great gift category too since it includes items indoor growers love like pH adjusting and calibrating solutions that most indoor users use an abundance of.
Big Things To Look For:
- pH meters are notorious for breaking down, even lab-quality ones. Costs are all over the place too, so I suggest finding one that sits in the middle range. The more expensive one with replaceable probes can be a great investment too, as probes are slightly cheaper than meters in the middle range (both have about the same lifespan). While rare for the meter itself to break, it happens more than it should, even with the expensive ones, so I suggest the middle ground for newcomers.
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Nick
Gardening is a never-ending journey. And not only am I here to document mine, I’m here to help you with yours. From growing up on a farm to wiring DIY lights for a basement to growing out in the open again, it’s fair to say I’ve been around the garden block.
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