The Grow Guys

The Grow Guys Gardening supplies and hydroponic specialists

28/08/2026

Here's a job that takes twenty seconds and doesn't need a product, which is probably why nobody talks about it.

A plant that's just been potted up will often start to lean. The reason is simple: the root ball hasn't anchored into the new media yet, and the top growth weighs more than what's currently holding it down. Left alone it leans further, and eventually a stem kinks. That's a real loss, and it was entirely avoidable.

Put a stake into the media, close to the stem but clear of the root ball so you're not spearing roots.

Run a twist tie around both the stem and the stake, and leave it loose. You are supporting the plant, not restraining it, and the stem still needs room to thicken as it grows.

One twist to close it. That's the job.

A 30 metre twin spool of twist tie costs about ten dollars and lasts years. It's the same material we use for training anything getting top heavy inside a tent, so it earns its place well beyond repotting.

If you're local, come in and we'll show you the tie in about ten seconds. Much easier to watch than to read.

Twist tie: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/hydro-bitz-twist-tie-2x30m

27/08/2026

Building a fully automated indoor grow usually means stitching together a light from one brand, ventilation from another and a controller from a third, then troubleshooting compatibility for the next six months.

The VIVOSUN VGrow Smart Grow Tent puts the whole stack in one cabinet.

Samsung LM301H EVO diodes, tunable across veg and bloom, so a single fixture covers the full lifecycle. Ventilation and circulation are built in. The GrowHub app handles lighting schedules, climate targets and irrigation from your phone, wherever you happen to be.

Order it through The Grow Guys and the bonus bundle comes with it: the FlexFeed drip irrigation kit, a pleather organiser, two 3-gallon fabric pots and two replacement filters.

Two additions I'd make on day one. A clip fan, because air movement inside the canopy is one thing automation can't do for you. And a small humidifier if you're chasing fast vegetative growth.

The outside is double-sided faux leather, so it sits in a study or a living room without looking like a piece of equipment.

VGrow: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/vivosun-vgrow-smart-grow-box-ecosystem

FlexFeed drip kit: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/vivosun-flexfeed-drip-irrigation-kit

26/08/2026

Fungus gnats in a well-run tent aren't a sign you've done something wrong. They're a sign you've done something right.

Think about what you've built. Stable temperature, stable humidity, media that stays evenly moist. That is close to a perfect environment for a plant, and it's a perfect environment for fungus gnats too. Winter makes it worse, because everything stays damp longer.

The mistake we see most is treating the adults. Yellow sticky traps and UV glue cards are excellent monitoring tools and we sell plenty of them, but catching the fliers doesn't solve anything. By the time you're catching them, eggs are already in the media and the larvae are down in the root zone chewing root hairs. That's where the damage to growth actually happens.

Go at the root zone instead.

Broad Blue Media Protect Granular is a systemic granular. A light sprinkle across the media surface, watered in, gives around six weeks of protection against fungus gnats, mites and aphids. For sap-suckers already established on foliage, Broad Blue Protect works as a systemic spray on the same timeframe.

Important: both products are labelled for ornamental plants only. Do not use them on anything you plan to eat. For edible crops use Root Cleaner as a soil drench or Green Cleaner Plant Wash instead.

Media Protect Granular: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/broad-blue-media-protect-granular

Full pest range: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/pest-management

25/08/2026

Two things make a yield. Genetics, and environment. Most growers put nearly all their attention into the first and treat the second as something that happens to them.

Environment means VPD, vapour pressure deficit. It's the relationship between temperature and humidity, and it determines whether your plant can transpire properly and move water and nutrients where they need to go. When VPD is out, everything else you're doing is working uphill.

The pattern that costs people the most is seasonal. Growing gets treated as a warm months activity, the room shuts down when it turns cold, and half the year disappears. Or worse, the run continues without adjustment and comes in well under what the same setup produced in autumn.

Cold isn't a reason to stop. It's a reason to use a different tool.

And the same applies in reverse. A hot January night pulls VPD out of range just as effectively as a cold July one, which is why climate control gear is not a winter purchase. It's a control purchase.

A consistent room gives a consistent result. That's what you're actually building.

Climate control range: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/grow-room-environment-control

24/08/2026

Every big plant started in a small pot, and most of the transplant shock people complain about gets created in about four seconds of rough handling.

Here's the order of operations.

Start with a pot that has a drainage hole. Fill it to roughly where the base of the old pot will sit, then stop and check before you commit.

Then the part that decides everything. Support the plant, turn it over, give the sides one squeeze and let it slide out. If you're pulling on the stem, you're tearing roots. Keep the root ball intact and the plant barely notices it moved.

Mycorrhizae goes straight onto the exposed roots and a little into the hole. Direct contact is the whole point of using it. Sprinkled over the top of a finished pot it does nothing at all.

Backfill loose. Firm enough that the plant stands up, not compacted. Roots need air as much as they need water.

If your media stays damp, cap the surface with a gnat barrier. Fresh mix and a wet top layer is exactly what fungus gnats are looking for.

Then water in light. Higgins Plant Tonic at 2ml per litre, 250ml is plenty. You're settling the media around the roots, not feeding hard.

Higgins Superior Soil: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/higgins-superior-soil-aroid-tropical-potting-mix-8l

Higgins Plant Tonic: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/higgins-plant-tonic-kelp-fulvic-biostimulant

23/08/2026

Here's something you don't often hear from the person selling it. Would I run Athena in soil? No.

Not because it's a poor nutrient. Because it isn't designed for soil, and using it there is the fastest way to conclude that a very good product doesn't work.

Athena is built for recirculating systems and for coco. Those setups give you clean water in and precise control over exactly what reaches the root zone, and that's the environment the formulation is designed around. Soil comes with its own biology and its own buffering capacity, so you're stacking precision on top of something that's already doing its own thing.

Match the feed to the medium. That's the actual takeaway here, and it applies well beyond this one brand.

For anyone running coco or recirculating, the Athena Blended Line Starter Kit is the full eight-bottle system in one box at $249.95.

It also comes with the home grower's handbook and a $100 voucher for Athena's online video library, so when a question comes up three weeks into a run, there's somewhere to go for the answer.

Kit: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/athena-blended-line-starter-kit-32oz

Full Athena range: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/athena-nutrients

22/08/2026

Here's a number worth writing on the tent. Sixteen degrees.

Below 16 degrees in the root zone, nutrient uptake stops. Not slows. Stops. And that single fact explains a huge number of the winter problems we get asked about in store.

The pattern goes like this. Plants start looking off, growth stalls, yields come in under what the same setup did in March. So the grower assumes it's a feeding issue, changes the nutrient brand, tweaks ratios, starts chasing a deficiency.

There was never a deficiency. The food was sitting right there. The roots were too cold to take it.

Two fixes, neither complicated. Heaters from AC Infinity or VIVOSUN, which run off a controller and hold a set point. Or heat tubes, which come in a range of sizes and pair with a thermostat so they cycle to your target temperature instead of running flat out.

Neither is a big install and neither is winter-only. Any tool that gives you control over room temperature earns its keep in the shoulder seasons and on the cold summer nights too.

Full climate control range: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/grow-room-environment-control

Heat Saber tube heaters: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/heat-saber-shields-by-horti-air-grow-room-heater

21/08/2026

Most failed cuttings aren't a technique problem. They're an environment problem, and it's usually the same two things missing.

Here's the propagation setup we put together, and why each piece is in there.

A small tent, because you're not trying to light a room. You're controlling a shoebox, and a contained space holds warmth and humidity right where the cuttings are.

A 26W blue-weighted light. The Horti-Vision TLED in Grow spectrum does the job. Blue drives vegetative growth, and cuttings do not want a big flowering fixture parked over them.

Root zone heat with a thermostat. The VIVOSUN Seedling Heat Mat with Thermostat lets you set the root zone temperature rather than hope. This is the piece most people leave out and it's the one that moves the needle hardest.

Humidity. A cutting has no roots. It is drinking through its leaves, so if the air is dry it simply runs out of water. A small ultrasonic humidifier fixes it.

From there, strike into whatever you prefer. Eazy Plug cubes, Grodan rockwool, or a Seahawk cloning station.

Full propagation range: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/propagation

Propagation tents: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/propagation-grow-tents

20/08/2026

The most common objection we hear about adding a heater to a tent is the power bill. It's a fair question and the maths usually goes the other way.

A domestic oil column heater draws somewhere around 2,000 watts. The AeroFlux Smart Grow Tent Heater by VIVOSUN draws 700. So on wattage alone, the thing most people are already using is the expensive option.

But wattage isn't really the point. The oil heater is designed to warm a lounge room, so it heats hard, cycles off, lets the space fall, then kicks back on. Your root zone and your canopy ride that swing all night, every night.

A grow heater sits on a thermostat and holds a target. That's what you're buying. Not heat, stability.

And stability is what your yields are made of. A room that sits where you set it produces a repeatable result. A room that swings eight degrees overnight does not.

Winter is not a reason to stop growing. It's a reason to use a different tool.

AeroFlux 700W heater: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/vivosun-aeroflux-smart-grow-tent-heater-700w

Full climate control range: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/grow-room-environment-control

19/08/2026

Thirty days. That's roughly how long a pH pen holds its calibration in regular use before it starts drifting, and the frustrating part is it never tells you. The screen still shows a number. The number is just wrong.

Here's the full process on the Aqua Master Tools P160 Pro2, which does pH and EC in one pen.

Start with the probe sitting in electrode cleaner for about ten minutes. That glass bulb is the sensitive bit, and cleaner lifts the film off it. Skip the RO water.

Rinse, dry, pH mode. Into pH 7 first, wait for it to settle, press CAL. Rinse. Then pH 4. Two points, because 4 and 7 sit either side of the 5.5 to 6.5 range you're actually growing in.

Then swap to EC. Probe into the conductivity standard, hold CAL, arrow up until it reads exactly what the bottle says. Ours reads 2.76. Confirm with the power button.

Then store it wet. KCl or electrode storage solution in the cap, every single time. That one habit is the difference between a pen that lasts years and one that dies in a season.

Pen: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/products/aqua-master-tools-p160-pro2-combo-pen

Calibration and storage solutions: https://www.thegrowguys.com.au/collections/ph-control-calibration-ph-ec

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Unit 10/110 Gleadow Street
Launceston, TAS
7248

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