I'm sorry to break this to you, but you could own the world's finest grow light,
enjoy the purest water source, and mix with the highest quality nutrients, but
if there's no carbon dioxide in your indoor garden, then your plants won't
grow. Period. That's because light, water, and nutrients form just part
of the equation for botanical success. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is the other
crucial component, and plants absorb this invisible gas directly from the air. Now,
bear with me for a second because this is important: light is essentially an
energy source; the Big Bang of photosynthesis in the form of photons.
Discrete packets of energy, photons hit your plants' leaves, and this energy
allows plants to grab a passing CO2 molecule from the air, and combine it
with some water sucked up from the roots. The result? Well, don't get too excited
just yet. The CO2 and the H2O fuse together to form simple sugars called
trioses. The rudimentary triple carbon sugars are then combined inside
the plant into carbohydrates, and in case you need me to tell you, carbohydrates
are like a plant's very own battery cells, insofar as they allow energy to be
stored internally within the plant, and this is kind of important as it's the
same energy which goes on to power nutrient uptake, growth, bloom, and all the
good stuff. Wow! I mean, just, wow! One more thing before we
get to the nitty gritty: you may have heard that CO2 levels in the atmosphere
are rising, and sure, we're currently at over 402 parts per million thanks to our
penchant for burning fossil fuels, but while this is up a scary 44% from
just 250 years ago, when we were at just 280 ppm, CO2 levels used to be a lot, lot
higher. Some scientists claimed the last time we were around 402 ppm was
800,000 years ago. Some say no, it was twenty million years ago, long
before humans ever existed. In either case, it's just a passing moment to a
plant because when our leafy friends started first colonizing the land around
450 million years ago, CO2 levels were 17 times more concentrated than they are
today; up as high as 7,000 ppm. Okay, so what's
the point of this geological atmospheric history lesson, Everest? Well, plants have
already evolved and adapted mechanisms to exploit high CO2 levels, much higher than
400 ppm, so some indoor growers elevate CO2 levels in their indoor
gardens, in the hopes of sending their plants into Paleozoic overdrive. In fact,
in optimal conditions, yields can be increased by 20 to, get this, 50%, even
more. Growers use CO2 cylinders, or generators, to infuse more CO2 into their
indoor gardens, typically up to 1200 or 1,600 ppm-- that's 3 or 4 times
the standard atmospheric levels of 402 ppm. Sure, you can go higher than this,
but the law of diminishing returns really starts to kick in around 1700 ppm.
Cylinders of CO2 gas are expensive, hence most growers use a propane burner,
as propane is a good deal cheaper. Burning a gas, of course, introduces extra
heat and humidity into your grow room, but bear in mind that, generally speaking,
plants typically thrive in a slightly warmer environment, say the low 80s
Fahrenheit, rather than mid to high 70s, and elevated CO2 conditions. CO2
generators come in different sizes. For instance, the Ares Series by Titan
Controls has models that house between 2 and 10 burners. The 10 burner unit is
good for gardens up to 1600 square feet. Whichever burner you choose, it should
come with a power supply for ignition, chain, hanging hooks, hose regulator, and
instructions. The chain and hanging hooks are important because you want your CO2
to be dispersed from up high, as pure CO2 is heavier than air. You'll also need a
high quality CO2 monitor and controller. This sniffs the air, works out the CO2
concentration, and adjusts the supply of CO2 accordingly, until it reaches your
desired setting. Again, Titan Controls have got you covered here. With the Atlas
series, such as this Atlas 2, it comes factory calibrated and preset to elevate
CO2 levels up to 1500 ppm-- my recommended top level. You can also buy
handheld CO2 sniffers, such as this Atlas 5. It measures temperature and humidity,
too. It comes pre-calibrated, and is very handy if you're inspecting other people's
gardens, and you wish to look very official and important. Superb, quite
nice, chap. CO2 supplementation is a lot easier in sealed grow rooms-- you just
dose during the day up until an hour before lights out and ventilate at night,
or at least dump the CO2 at the beginning of the night cycle. This is
important or your plants will turn yellow. Sorry about it, folks. Plants don't
want CO2-rich air at night. Now, in a ventilated grow room, this gets a little
bit trickier, and there's no point injecting extra CO2 only to vent it
straight out. So, growers tend to cut their ventilation for 15 minutes and dose
CO2, and then ventilate again, you know, on alternating cycles, during the day cycle,
thus giving their plants time to absorb the extra CO2. It's a lot easier
if you're using air-cooled hoods on a separate ventilation system, as you can
keep these going while your garden's ventilation system is switched off. Okay,
this is just a 101, so I'll stop here. Let me know what I missed, and we'll cover
that stuff in the 102. Now one thing I would like to add is that CO2 enrichment
turbo charges the garden and sometimes catches growers unaware. Once I've got my
second room built-- yes, it's coming-- we can do some interesting comparative stuff,
and I'll also go over some DIY CO2 generation methods using good old water,
yeast, and sugar-- yeehaw! Thanks for watching. Remember: subscribing to my
channel is free, and it really helps with the motivation, so please just do it. Bye
for now, amigos. This is Everest, exhaling some CO2 your way.