Optimizing Photosynthesis for Indoor Growth

Starting any new business or personal project can be daunting if you don’t understand how everything works, and when it comes to an indoor grow operation of any kind you have to start with an understanding of photosynthesis. Let’s begin at the end. Assume it’s several months from now and you’ve successfully grown your first crops in your indoor operation. How did you get there? What made your plants succeed where others might have failed? It all begins with photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is a fairly complex process that all plants use in order to grow, flower, and spread their seeds to ensure the continuation of the species. In the process they provide a lot of other benefits to every other living creature on the planet and that’s why there’s no doubt that photosynthesis is the most important life-giving process on this planet. I know it may seem like we’ve strayed a little bit, but I think it’s important to understand how important this process is before explaining how you can ensure that it works well for you and your plants. In this article we’ll go through the entire photosynthesis process and how you can use it to your advantage to grow the best indoor crops.

Chloroplasts and Chlorophyll

Inside every plant are cells known as chloroplasts. These chloroplasts are the engine that drives the photosynthesis process. It might be easier to think about these chloroplasts as the factory floor where a product first starts – in this case your product is plants. Inside these chloroplasts is something called chlorophyll and it’s this substance that gives plants their familiar green color. The chlorophyll enables the plants to absorb sunlight and turn it into useful energy that helps the plant to grow.

Sunlight is used to create sugars which are used for food energy and plants. Essentially, the light from the sun kicks the manufacturing process into high gear. The chlorophyll absorbs that sunlight and uses it to combine CO2 and H2O (water), which produces sugar that it can use for energy as well as a waste product we like to call oxygen. The problem with an indoor grow operation is that direct sunlight isn’t available to kick the photosynthesis process into gear, and that’s why we need artificial light such as LEDs to act as a replacement. It’s important to have the right type of light from the spectrum of colors available to ensure the natural pattern of growth is copied as closely as possible. This will result in healthy plants and great crop yields.

How a Plant Uses Glucose

Your plants will use the sugar produced in this photosynthesis process for all aspects of their growth. It’s essential during the seeding stage and right on through to the flowering and fruit stages as well. Without this sugar your plants simply wouldn’t grow.

The Importance of Respiration

Another process that plants use for healthy growth is something called respiration. As your plants use the glucose (sugar) they produced during the photosynthesis process they also initiate another process called respiration, which is the result of a chemical reaction in combination with oxygen that produces both water and CO2. This process creates extra energy that also helps the plants to grow healthier and stronger. It’s this part of the process that helps plants to keep going even when they’re not receiving the light they need. The respiration process generally creates more sugar than the plants need and that extra sugar is stored to be used during those lean times; all of this process begins with making sure your plants have enough light to begin the photosynthesis process.

Don’t Mind the Humidity

While we all love a nice warm summer day we’re not always so happy if that includes too much humidity, but the same can’t be said for your plants. For a plant, a lot of humidity is a good thing and they need somewhere between 65% and 80% humidity for healthy growth. As you might suspect, that’s because it means there’s more moisture in the air; without water, photosynthesis can’t occur so it’s important that you provide your indoor plants lots of water in that closed environment to ensure the right mix of humidity as well.

Finding the Right Temperature

There are two places we don’t find an abundance of plant growth on this planet – in the far North and in desert regions. The reason for this is that plants don’t do well in extreme temperatures, either cold or hot. For optimal plant growth and to ensure that the photosynthesis process can function as it’s supposed to, it’s also important to maintain a temperature range that’s conducive to plant growth. Ideally you’ll want to keep your temperature somewhere between 70° and 80°.

The Optimal Amount of CO2

Hopefully all of the information provided here should be pretty straightforward so far, but where it gets interesting is making sure that your plants have enough CO2 (carbon dioxide) for the photosynthesis process. CO2 makes up about 0.03 to 0.04% of our atmosphere, but the ideal percentage of CO2 you need for the healthiest plants is about 0.1% so the question is, how can you introduce more CO2 to your plants environment to help make them as prosperous as they can be? The way to do this is with the introduction of plant foods and supplements.

A Little Understanding Goes a Long Way

The main thing you should take away from this article is that providing your plants with enough light to kick start the photosynthesis process is essential to a successful indoor grow operation. Hopefully you now have a better idea of why that is. It all starts with the right mix of light, so make sure you look over the reviews carefully to make sure you choose an LED light system that will actually work for you.