Monitoring CO2

I have spent most of this year learning about hydroponics from scratch. Drawing on books, internet sites and of course, my own projects and experiments. I have tried to select methods and products that support the easiest production of high-quality food without too much fuss.

I have learned that there are some aspects of indoor hydroponic gardening that are so absolutely critical that you cannot skimp on them without seriously compromising your results. Lighting is an excellent example- I have spent way more money than I should have on various 'economical' lighting systems before finally purchasing a high quality digital ballast, HID lamp and reflector system.

The next thing that I learned was that monitoring and maintaining proper pH levels in nutrient solutions is crucial to plant health and crop success. Monitoring pH sounded to me like some sort of chemistry nightmare but it is absolutely a simple process (using the right products) and is incredibly important.

My point is, I have been looking for the correct aspects of indoor gardening to optimize. By this I mean that if I'm going to spend additional money, time or effort on indoor gardening, I want to see a significant result in my produce. There are several topics that are often discussed/argued in online forums that I feel do not represent huge wins for the investment- rather, they are micro-optimizations which are below the radar here at the Bucket Farm.

However, a lot of research has indicated that there's another worthy optimization that I have not yet paid special attention to: Carbon Dioxide. As I'm sure you're aware, during the day plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. CO2 is an essential environmental element for plants and they would die without it.

Manufacturers of various systems that provide supplemental CO2 for indoor gardening usually claim that plants will grow faster and produce more fruit/flowers if you supply additional CO2 to your growing area. I have seen claims that fruiting plants can yield up to 40% more fruit if CO2 is available to them in abundance. If true, this would certainly qualify as a Bucket Farm upgrade that would be worth the effort so it's worth looking into.

The first thing I'm going to do is figure out how much CO2 is in use in the Bucket Garden right now. Gases are usually measured by PPM, or parts-per-million. 'Normal' background CO2 in the outdoors is usually between 250 and 300 PPM. Many plants are said to be able to make good use of CO2 in concentrations up to 1000PPM and beyond, with (supposedly) astounding results.

The natural place to start seems to be acquiring a CO2 meter so that I can get an idea of how much CO2 is present in my current system so I can figure out how much CO2 I'd have to introduce in order to reach a concentration of 1000PPM for astonishing growth.

The first thing that I discovered is that CO2 meters are expensive! However, I eventually located the CAM Desktop CO2 Meter which seemed to be a great value for the money. This meter even has an optional feature that allows you to connect it to a PC and save off a log of CO2 levels over time. I will be sure and collect this data over a 24 hour period and post it here.

My CO2 meter arrives today. I'll take some immediate readings this evening and post the results. Based on the results of the 24 hour CO2 log, I'll discuss a plan for providing supplemental CO2 to the Bucket Farm.