Grow cabinets at home. Advantages, disadvantages, where to buy them

Hello to all agrohuerters! Fortunately, the green world is more and more in our daily lives, and urban agriculture is a reality. Today we will see a very effective and easy way to have our own plants at home, a different method to cultivate a garden at home: the » growing cabinets «.

In today’s post we will see what grow cabinets are, what their components are, the advantages and disadvantages of growing in grow cabinets, and some very cool examples!

What are grow cabinets?

As the name suggests, grow tents are small structures, similar to cabinets, inside which you can grow. Thanks to them, we can have in our own home a good production of the plants that we like to consume the most.

The parts of a grow cabinet are as follows:

• A support structure called a “closet”
• Inner reflective panel. This panel is essential as it will allow the plants to absorb more light.
• light spotlight Logically, without a light inside, our plants will not be able to grow. For this reason, these cabinets are equipped with a lighting system that, thanks to the reflective panel that «amplifies» the light, will allow our plants to develop.
• Ventilation system. It is very important since, on the contrary, the humidity inside the grow cabinet would increase a lot and diseases could appear in the plants.
• Irrigation system. The drip irrigation system is often not incorporated, so you must water them by hand.

Examples of grow cabinets

There are small grow tents (like the one in the image above) that are perfect, for example, for small aromatic cultivars for cooking.

Other medium or large ones, more suitable for plants that will grow taller such as peppers or tomatoes. Here are some large grow tents we saw at the Chelsea Flower Show in London a few weeks ago:

There are also growing cabinets for the kitchen, which integrate with the furniture and create a very special corner, a very stylish orchard inside the house.

I liked this large built-in cupboard to grow indoors, some more sophisticated, with large light sources, automated irrigation and a perfect integration in any corner of the house, since the doors (although they are lined on the inside with the reflective panel) can have the same exterior finish as the furniture in the room or room where they are located.

Main advantages and disadvantages of growing in grow tents

You already know that all things in life have their pros and cons. This new cultivation method also has several advantages and disadvantages that we will see below:

Advantages of grow cabinets

• There are many sizes of cabinets, so you can have one or the other depending on the number of plants you want to have inside.
• They take up little space and can be easily moved around.
• If you don’t have outside space, it’s a good way to grow your own plants at home, as the lighting system in the cupboard will act as ‘sun’ and provide the plants with the light they need.
• If they have an automated irrigation system, they do not require much time or dedication.

Disadvantages of grow cabinets

The main drawback of this type of cabinets is, without a doubt, the price. The grow cabinets that are sold in specialized stores are very expensive, with most exceeding 100 euros. Therefore, a good solution is to make your own grow cabinet! Later we will explain how to make a home grow cabinet.

If anyone has in mind to buy one, I leave you some examples of different web pages where you can find them:

• Urban Garden Grow from small grow tents of around €80 to large structures and complete kits to grow at home in grow tents.
• IKEA proposes another type of grow cabinets, simply with the support structure (without covering) which is also interesting. We like that they promote this type of home accessories, for this reason, we leave you their video here.

As you can see, we can grow our plants in very different places! We have already seen in other blog posts that there are many types of urban gardens, such as rooftop gardens, school gardens, or you can even grow below ground level, such as underground gardens.Today we have seen a new type of garden, these interesting growing cabinets to grow plants inside the house, indoors.

I hope you liked the theme! If you are interested, you can see more information about this in the post « Make a home grow cabinet step by step » that we are about to publish , and you can also leave us your opinions, doubts and suggestions about the grow cabinets!