Once vegetable crops or blooming plants mature and begin to flower, dial back the nitrogen fertilizers. Too much nitrogen at this stage encourages plants to put the energy into more leafy green growth instead of flowers and fruit.

When plants enter flowering mode, you can switch to a low-nitrogen fertilizer or hold off altogether until baby buds and fruits begin to appear. When fruit is about 1/2-way developed, you can begin adding balanced fertilizer back on a week (liquid) or monthly (granular) basis so that resources go to fruit development.

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LED grow-light bars (in all white or nanometer-specific colors) are available with small reflectors. You can fit them under cabinets or grow shelves just like the T5 fluorescent units. If T5 fluorescent grow lamps are putting out too much heat for your seedlings or young plants, switch them out for these LED bars.

Use full spectrum LED Bars for white colored light in your living spaces.

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You can use a CFL in household lamp fixtures and as grow spotlights for small indoor houseplants or cuttings. Just as with T5 fluorescents, you will have to place the CFL fairly close to your plant so you don’t lose light volume. Because of their moderate heat output, this is relatively safe.

Fitting into household fixtures also makes these lamps easy to hang horizontally or vertically if you need to get more light at lower levels between large plants.

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Harvest dry seeds while still on the plant, once they have completely matured and dried. The dry pods will be easy to open or will burst open on their own, and the seeds inside will be hard and completely dry.

Keeping seeds in a cool, dry place will help extend their life. Be aware, however, that the longer you store seeds, the more their germination rate decreases.

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When growing plants indoors, it is critical to understand how temperature affects your crops and how to manipulate it to improve your yields.

Your grow lights can give off heat, but you can employ high-intensity lighting in small spaces if you use an air-cooled hood. Air-cooled hoods can be connected to ducting which moves air in, through, and out of the tent, removing heat produced directly from the grow lamp.

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Most hydroponic systems combine a few simple parts: the container, a water reservoir that holds the water, a pump that moves the water around the plant’s roots, and an air pump to keep the water oxygenated.

Aeroponic systems use water to mist plant roots several times a day. Plants are suspended in small nets or baskets that may contain clay pellets or perlite to provide stability. By misting plant roots intermittently instead of keeping the roots suspended under water, you can cut back on potential issues with oxygenation or disease problems.

I have a couple of tall grow tents in my garage. The flowering tent has HPS lighting, and the vegetative tent uses CMH lighting. Large LED and fluorescent fixtures also work well in these tents. The grow tents are perfect for winter garage growing.

They are insulated, so the HID lamps keep them warm enough during the day and prevent plants from freezing at night.

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A chilling-hour requirement is a safety mechanism plants employ so they don’t produce flower buds too early, potentially losing their flowers (and thus fruit and seeds) to cold or freezing temperatures. The plants keep a memory log of the amount of chilling time they have experienced at the right temperatures to trigger the flowering process.

Tulips, hyacinth, hardneck garlic, columbine, foxglove, and stone fruits like peaches, apples, and cherries are just a few examples of plants that require vernalization. If these plants don’t receive the necessary chilling time, they won’t flower, set fruit, or develop bulbs.

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