When planning out the ideal space for your plants’ vegetation, or “veg” phase, there are several important considerations. The needs of your crops during this growth phase are different than during the germination, seedling, and even the flowering phases. It is important to set the stage properly to ensure a good harvest by ensuring that your veg room is set up properly. Let’s first consider what the veg room is and why it’s important.
The veg phase of development happens starting at about two weeks after germination and can last for up to ten weeks leading into the pre-flowering phase. For optimal results, this phase should be carried out in a separate veg room. This where the rooted clones, or seedlings from the plant nursery are transferred to so that they can continue to mature. It is in this room where the plants become hardened off and acclimated to higher intensity light and a drier climate compared to where they had their initial development.
In the veg room, or just prior to being placed in it, plants are transplanted into larger containers so that they have room to fully develop. They will elongate during this period and keep getting taller, heavier, and bulkier. Weaker plants should be culled out during the veg phase.
While plants in the veg stage can be kept in the same space as plants in the flowering phase, it is not necessarily the best idea to do so. Plants in the veg phase should be kept closer together than plants in the flowering phase. They have different environmental and light needs in the two phases. Setting up a room with the intent to provide the best of both worlds, will only result in mediocre results for both phases. Plants will neither reach their full growth or flowering potential if not kept apart in their respective environments.
When planning to create the ideal environment to support your plants in the veg phase, it is important to consider all of the needs to create an ideal veg room.
Needs for a Veg Room
A perfect veg room setup will provide everything your plants need to fulfill their botanical potential. This includes proper lighting, temperature control, and humidity control. Each of these factors must be managed such that their output is consistent and at sufficient levels to allow for your plants to develop as best as they can so that they can set buds and offer a bountiful harvest.
The optimal light spectrum for the veg phase is not the same as the optimal spectrum for the flowering phase. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of different grow lights on the market and it is important to choose one (or more) that will give your growing plants what they need. During the veg phase, your plants will need only about ⅕ to ¼ the wattage as required for the flowering phase. There is not one particular type of light, ballast, or model that is “perfect”. There are numerous considerations to making sure your lighting works in your particular setup.
Growers can use High-Pressure Sodium (HPS), Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH), or Light-Emitting Diode (LED) lighting. Each has its pros and cons. HPS lighting is more inexpensive than LEDS and spreads light widely. For veg rooms however, LEDs may be the better option since they emit less heat and are more efficient in their light delivery, which is ideal for veg rooms that are laid out with a more efficient use of space.
Ultimately the lighting option chosen has to work with your layout and goals. If you use the same space for all phases of growth, your choice of lighting will be different than if you have a dedicated veg room. How that veg room is setup will also dictate the type of lighting to choose. Each style of light spreads light and utilizes energy differently. If you are unsure which to select, work with a professional or your sales rep to find the lighting option that works best with your veg room.
Temperature and humidity controls are vital for a veg room setup. Just as with lighting, the particular needs of plants in the veg phase are different than for flowering or germinating. In general, veg room temps should be maintained between mid 70s and low 80s F (24-28C) with veg room humidity levels between 60 and 70 percent. When plants are first moved into the veg room from the rooted clone or seedling phase, the humidity should start higher as they will be more prone to drying out until they have a more robust root system and until they acclimate to the more intense lighting. The humidity can then be stepped down by 5 percent every few days until achieving that 60-70 percent range.
Once all of these three main needs have been accounted for, it is time to start setting them up in your veg room.
How to Set Up a Veg Room
The plants in a veg room can be packed much tighter together than in a flowering room. You will need approximately four square feet of flowering space for each one square foot of veg room space. This is important to consider so that you don’t inadvertently grow more plants than your flower room or rooms can accommodate.
Your growing method will dictate exactly how much space you will need to make sure that your plants in their veg state achieve maximum light output on their canopy. If using only floor space, or a single layer of table-top space, it is safe to estimate that you will use at least 70 percent of that room’s space. Factor being able to get about 7 plants for every ten square feet of growing space.
Where possible, your veg room should be set up so there is as efficient a transition between phases as possible. If you do your own cloning, your mother plant or plants should be kept in a separate veg room than your production plants if possible. If not, you will want to protect your mother plant as much as possible in the veg room. In larger growing facilities, this means making sure that people do not have to go through those rooms to get into another space. Entry into the veg room should be limited to only those who need to go in, and only when there is work to be done.
If space is tight in your veg room, or you just want to be able to grow as many plants as you can, then it is time to think about maximizing floor space by adding rolling benches, and/or vertical racks into your veg room.
Maximizing Space in the Veg Room
If flowering room space is plenty, but veg room space is limited, or if you really just want to grow a large quantity of plants, then there are several options to maximize the footprint of space in your veg room. Rolling benches and vertical racks will increase the amount of growing space available in your veg room without increasing the square footage of your veg room footprint. You can up to double or triple the amount of space you have by incorporating these systems into your operation.
Growing your crops up off the floor on a bench surface is not only more ergonomic for the grower, but it allows for better air circulation around each plant and reduces the chances of your plants encountering certain pests and diseases. Choosing rolling benches when possible, is an even better choice. Rolling benches can allow a grower to utilize square footage that would otherwise be lost to aisle space.
In some setups this addition alone can increase the amount of plants that can be grown in a veg room by up to 50 percent more. Rolling benches work by utilizing the space that would otherwise be dedicated to walkway space. Each bench top on a rolling bench, literally rolls on a series of 2 inch pipes. So long as there is enough space to roll them aside to gain access and walk alongside them to work, you can set up as many rolling inches side by side as your space allows. By adding additional trellis support, these benches can serve double duty by being used in the flowering phase as well once plants have been sufficiently spaced out.
Plants in their veg phase are smaller than those that have reached their flowering stage. Since they don’t require trellising, it is possible to consider growing vertically in your veg room. Vertical racks allow you to add a second, or even third level on which to grow out your plants. Vertical racks may be permanently affixed to a veg room floor or wall. This reduces the chance that one gets tipped or knocked over.
For spaces that must be used for multiple phases of crop production, having the ability to move growing racks around, to add or subtract as needed, is extremely handy. For this reason, there are many vertical grow rack options that are mobile and on castors. These wheels can be locked in place or temporarily affixed to a point in the veg room to keep them secure. Mobile, vertical racks also make cleaning easier if they need to be disinfected at a time, when the entire space cannot be.
If you have traditional ceiling mounted grow lights, the vertical rack option will not work out so well since the canopies of the upper levels will block light needed by the lower ones. Fortunately it is not difficult to add grow lighting onto each layer of a multi-tiered, vertical grow rack. There are also numerous models available that already come with grow lighting installed on each level, ensuring that each tier of plants receives sufficient light to develop properly.
Vertical grow racks that are set up on a rolling system, similar to that of a rolling bench, create additional efficiencies in space that neither rolling benches nor stationary vertical grow racks can offer on their own. This synergy allows for far more efficient use of utilities as well, since there is less empty space that is being heated, or cooled.
Regardless which system you opt for, once you add either rolling benches or vertical racks, it is important that your climate control system can adequately circulate air around, under, and above each layer of plants. Additional fans placed at various heights can help with this.
How to Manage your Veg Room
Once you have your veg room space, and all of the needed systems and components, it is important that they all get managed appropriately. This is another “layer” in the goal of and practice of maximizing efficiency. Once your plants are ready to move from the nursery into the veg room, it is important to cull the ones that are underperforming before repotting them. You don’t want to waste resources on a plant that is never going to yield a harvest for you. Build-in a cushion of 10 to 25 percent that may fail to produce, or that may underperform in some way.
If your flowering spaces allow for 100 plants, for example, transplant and move into the veg room 110-125 seedlings or clones, knowing that you will be making another round of culling, and maybe two, before they go on into the flowering room. This should be done every time you upsize your plants into a bigger container. Ultimately, only the strongest plants should be selected to move on into the flowering phase. If you are fortunate, this could mean almost all of them, but the point in transplanting extras along the way is to make up for some inevitable loss.
The lighting cycle needs to be carefully dialed in. Ultimately during the veg phase, the goal is to have 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness. When you first move your seedlings or rooted clones into the veg room, 18 hours may be too intense. Some growers will build up to the 18/6 schedule by reducing the hours of lighting initially and then building up to 18 hours. Other growers may instead reduce the intensity of the lighting and introduce more wattage until the appropriate amount of light is being emitted.
Yet another method during this transition period is to adjust the lighting schedule to be on for six hours, then off for two, building up to nine hours on, three off, until ultimately landing on the 18/6 lighting cycle. Anyway you choose to approach this, plan that for the first week or so after moving into the veg room, your systems may require some careful tweaking.
It is important and worth noting that there are some safety considerations to keep in mind when managing your veg room lighting. Water and electricity obviously don't play nice together. Make sure that all ballasts and electrical devices are not in the path of irrigation, unless they are designed to be submerged or to operate in a wet environment. Grow lights and water don’t mix.
Grow lighting, if not hard-wired, can become a tripping hazard with their wires and cords. Use cable-ties or some other method to keep cords out of the way of aisles or anywhere you or others may walk. Don’t coil up extensions or reflector cables. They can get hot and burn. Instead, just make sure they are out of the way.
Additionally a safe veg room can be achieved by periodically checking all connections to and between lighting fixtures. Adding a fire extinguisher, properly rated to put out the types of fires that could arise from overheated grow lighting is also advisable.
With safety and efficiency in mind, it is easy to layout and utilize a veg room to achieve stellar results.
