When seasonal weather proves unpredictable, your climate controlled greenhouse needs a steady hand. Scorching hot today, cold tomorrow— it’s tricky to maintain an ideal greenhouse environment when the weather changes so much from one day to the next.
Each new season brings with it fluctuations in light levels, temperatures, and humidity levels, all of which you must respond to by adjusting your climate-controlled greenhouse environment to keep things consistent for the health and quality of your crops.
While controlling the environment inside a climate controlled greenhouse seems like second nature for experienced growers, it’s a complex process that requires balancing numerous factors.
Every decision, from opening and closing vents to adjusting heating and lighting, is made with the needs of the plants in mind. Additionally, improper control of your equipment can lead to costly, inefficient energy usage, which directly impacts your bottom line.
Understand Your Plants’ Seasonal Needs
At the center of these decisions is an understanding of your plant’s seasonal needs. Balancing the competing demands of different crops means knowing how they respond to changes in light, temperature, and humidity levels during the year.
This knowledge allows you to stay ahead of issues like plant stress, overheating, or nutrient problems to keep your plants happy, no matter what happens outside.
When you understand plant responses to seasonal changes, you know when to intervene—whether to increase light levels as the days grow short or adjust nutrient levels as plant growth patterns change, for example.
By staying in tune with your plants, you lay the groundwork for everything that follows, including making your job easier by using automation and advanced greenhouse climate control systems to maintain the ideal greenhouse environment.
Leverage Automation for Consistent Monitoring
Thanks to the wide range of settings and options available on today’s greenhouse environmental control systems, it’s never been easier to keep an eye on what happens inside your climate-controlled greenhouse.
With the latest advances in environmental control systems, you benefit from features such as:
• Remote access
• Central control of equipment
• Alert notifications
• Multi-zone control
• Multiple setpoints
• And more…
Automated climate control for greenhouses removes much of the behind-the-scenes work of maintaining your greenhouse environment. You can fine-tune your controller by creating guidelines for it based on your growing parameters.
With the help of sensors, automated systems monitor every aspect of the climate controlled greenhouse environment in real-time, 24/7. They automatically adjust heating, lighting, ventilation, etc. to keep conditions just right for your crops and free you up for other tasks.
Customize Your Greenhouse Controls
Advanced greenhouse climate control systems give you the flexibility to grow according to your needs. You can tailor them to fit your operation perfectly, according to its size and growing requirements. What’s handy, particularly during seasonal transitions, is their ability to store your settings and various other data for later use.
Controllers such as Wadsworth Control Systems’ Seed Controller, for example, have a seasonal settings function or zone profiles that allow you to dial in your settings for the season and then save them for use the next year. You let the controller know what date you want it to switch over to your seasonal settings, and the controller does the rest.
Most modern greenhouse environmental control systems also track important data such as outside weather conditions, temperature, humidity, light levels, and irrigation frequencies year after year. You can compare this data with your crop yield data to adjust your setup as needed.
For instance, if you had a particularly productive early or late crop the year before, you could review the factors that contributed to those results and make changes to try and repeat that success this season.
Stay Ahead of the Weather with Smart Controls
We’re seeing more growers tie their greenhouse climate control systems to weather stations to read their outdoor climate and automatically adjust everything from vents to fans and other equipment in real-time.
For example, if your system is linked to a weather station, you can set it to turn on the heat when it detects that outside temperatures are starting to drop.
If you want to take things a step further, you can opt for an environmental controller with predictive weather capabilities that can link with a local weather service to gather data. This allows you to plan for the weather instead of reacting to it at the moment.
For instance: Say the weatherman forecasts 40 mph winds and rain for your area at 2 p.m. As the wind speeds pick up, your controller responds by shutting the vents ahead of time at 1 p.m. When it detects rain approaching, it closes the vents and makes other adjustments to protect your crops before the rainstorm hits.
With these types of weather tools in place, you can tailor your greenhouse environmental control systems to suit the specific needs of your operation and your local climate, ensuring your climate controlled greenhouse has the optimal environment for growing healthy plants year-round.
Trust Your Instincts and Experience
Using technology to monitor makes up only part of maintaining a consistent environment inside your climate-controlled greenhouse during seasonal changes. Equally important is your growing experience.
Experienced growers develop an innate ability to detect subtle environmental changes and anticipate the needs of their plants in the greenhouses they work in regularly. You should never discount the human factor when growing plants.
Make the Most of Every Season
You’ve got the skills and instincts to handle whatever the weather throws your way, but a little extra help never hurts.
By using advanced greenhouse climate control systems and staying responsive to your plants’ needs, you can make each season work in your favor.
Whether you’re a seasoned grower or just starting, Prospiant has the tools to help you grow better. We can recommend and source the best environmental controller for your specific growing requirements and integrate it with your greenhouse systems for maximum efficiency and performance.
Talk to our experts today. Let’s work together to create the perfect growing conditions and optimize your climate controlled greenhouse for every season.
*We work with partners to ensure proper, compliant performance of engineering and design services.
Dive Deeper with the Experts
Do you want to learn more about how to use environmental controllers effectively in your greenhouse? Check out this informative on-demand webinar where Paul Golden, Sales Manager-Commercial Growing at Prospiant, and Nick Earls, Crop Specialist at Wadsworth Controls, dive into the intricacies of greenhouse environmental controls. They explore cutting-edge techniques and technologies that can make it easier than ever to optimize your greenhouse environment.
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