Seedlings thriving in the grow box
14 years ago indoor growbox, indoor seed starting, onions, peppers, tomato
I have almost everything planted at least germinating in my grow box. As you may be able to see from the labels I am growing a variety of peppers this year as well as a few different onions and tomatoes. I also have garlic and some onions I overwintered already outside and peas already in the ground.
I did successfully grow some peppers in the grow box over the winter, though as you can see below their size was lacking and the plant has been perking up a bit with some new growth once I added some better controlled heating and the LED lights.
Tags: grow lights, growbox
Computer grow box gets 120 watts of LEDs
14.1 years ago computer, indoor growbox, LEDs
Always running out of room in my grow box I needed to expand it some. Though the CFL lights I was using worked great for my 3 square foot space, though by nearly tripling the square footage CFLs wouldn’t scale out anymore. Looking at my other options such as HPS (High Pressure Sodium) or Metal Halide I really didn’t want to deal with ballasts and cooling I decided on going with LEDs. After doing some research I came upon the 120w Extreme Flower LED grow light and after talking to the great people at Advanced LED Lights they were gracious enough send me with one of their lights to try out.
Now as soon as I opened the box I noticed the sticker that said "Do not look directly at light.” Being a moron I just had to plug it in and test out this warning, now it was not like staring at the sun but it was definitely much brighter than my Christmas grow light and I would not recommend others to do this.
The light offers a unique blend of 11+ wavelengths of color ranging from 380nm to 760nm and if you read my post of the importance of wavelength to plant growth this is critical for vegetative and flowing plant growth. The great thing about growing with LEDs if you can pick the specific wavelength produced for maximum yields, though other lights also provide this spectrum they also produce much in the range that is appealing to our eyes (yellow and green) which the plants could live without. This is the reason why this 120 watt grow light can produce the results of a comparable 250w High Pressure Sodium light.
I still have some work to do on my new bigger grow box before I can move this years plants in, but I am excited to see the results this new light will bring. Stay tuned for more updates.
Tags: grow lights, growbox
Controlling my growbox with a mobile phone
14.5 years ago computer, electronics, indoor growbox, Uncategorized, windows phone
How many times have you been riding the bus and have been curious what temperature your computer growbox was running and if the plants needed to be watered? Ok maybe never, but I decided to solve this problem anyway. There is also no point in identifying that you may have a problem without having a way to do something about so I also implemented the ability to override the controls on the growbox by using a Windows Phone 7 application on your new T-Mobile cell phone or any other cool Windows phone.
Design
I made the design for this pretty simple, unfortunately I could not connect with my growbox directly using a mobile device because the computer is behind a firewall (which is a good thing) so I used machine that both the mobile phone and growbox can contact cheapvegetablegardener.com. After creating a quick web service with the following methods the growbox and mobile device could now talk to each other:
- SetStatus(StatusInfo) – GrowBox sets this status every minute
- SetOverride(OverrideInfo) – Mobile sets override to default functionality
- GetStatus() – Mobile Phone gets status
- GetOverride() – GrowBox checks for potential overrides requested by Mobile device
Mobile UI
Now I have the two devices talking here is the basic UI. The top half of the screen shows the growbox temperature, cpu temperature, and the moisture content. All of these statues change color (to yellow and red) as their values get to critical levels (too hot, too cold, too dry)
The middle section shows the current state of the growbox letting me know if the lights, heater, exhaust fan, and/or water pump are on or off. If a situation occurs where you want to override this state you can do this by simply clicking the status indicator.
The bottom part of the screen shows temperature and moisture levels over the past 24 hours. The graphs are rendered using Google Charts for simplicity though am thinking about creating my own custom solution to get the graphs just right. It also displays a current screenshot inside the grow box and you can transition between views with a finger swipe.
Screenshots
| Temperature history graph | Moisture saturation history graph |
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Overriding the heater setting |
Status screen following heater override |
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Though this covers most of my required functionality, I still need to add some cool transition animations and some additional analytics, but thought I would share my current version.
Tags: growbox
Growing basil indoors with a desk lamp
14.5 years ago basil, indoor growbox
I recently moved to a new office building and unfortunately I had a lacked a few years at the company to get a window office. With a desire to have some plant life in my office, I grabbed a couple of the basil plants I cloned, dropped them in some potting soil, and positioned a desk lamp with a CFL bulb. I can’t seem to find my lamp timer so the light has been staying on for 24 hours a day.
The results have been great, the plants are thriving with great green foliage (much greener than its cloned parent was outside this summer) Shortly after taking the picture above a harvested some of the leaves and used the top portion to clone into a new basil plant.
Just shows you don’t need a fancy grow box or AeroGarden
Tags: growbox
Growing Pepper Plants Indoors
14.8 years ago Bhut Jolokia, indoor growbox, jalapeno, peppers
Pepper plants need specific environmental (temperature and humidity) conditions to establish growth and create high yields. If the temperatures get too low it will stunt its growth or not produce blossoms, when the temperatures get too high the plant will drop it blossoms resulting in no or reduce yields.
The perfect temperature range for peppers is between 70 and 80 degrees F for Bell peppers and hot peppers can handle a little warmer temperatures up to 85 degrees. If their environment gets below 70 degrees the plants will struggle, which given even in August we don’t hit an average of 70 degrees F for any success a greenhouse, hot box, or a growbox is requirement. If you are a frequent reader of this site you probably already know I go with the last option.
With a few CFLs (or incandescent if extra heat is needed) the peppers plants are happy in the growbox. With exception of once a week watering with a diluted fertilizer at 50% recommended on the box they pretty much take care of themselves. If we do get a nice warm day I will bring them out for some natural light. This also invites some natural organic pest control of any aphids which may have found their way into the growbox. When the plants begin flowering this also gives some bees an opportunity to do a little pollination, this can be done by hand with a paint brush or Q-Tip though my success rate is much less than the bees, though they have been doing this for millions of years…I am still a little new at this
As mentioned above controlling the proper temperature is critical, I do this with a combination of computer controlled fans and lighting to maintain the proper temperature, though this could also be achieved by using a $10 outdoor digital thermometer and a occasional adjustments to venting or fan control to maintain a good temperature range.
Last year I only grew jalapeno pepper plants, but this year I am also trying Cayenne, Sweet Yellow, and Bhut Jolokia pepper plants. Though it is quite a bit more work growing peppers in my area, I like challenges and to do things that others say can not be done, call me stubborn.
Tags: growbox
Earth Day in the garden
14.9 years ago cilantro, cold season crops, garlic bulbs, onions, peppers, tomato
I decided to take the day off to catch up on some things at home and as I ended up outside of course I went right to the garden.
We have seen a few warm days here in the Northwest and in my area we haven’t dipped under 40 degrees at night so seemed like a good time to plant a few of my tomatoes spending their time this winter in the grow box.
Above are a New Yorker and Persey both of which are new for me this year. They have been growing great even with my neglect during their youth. I also have some Green Zebras, Husky Cherry, Sweetie Cherry, and Yellow Cherry. I did attempt Red Brandywine but the seeds I got appear to be duds.
Given it is always good to have a Plan B so I have twins of these tomato plants still in puts which I can bring if a cold snap comes and kills off the plants I ambitiously planted in the ground.
Elsewhere in the garden I have some herbs: Parsley and Oregano, with Basil being an unfortunately casualty which I will plan on buying from the store and try again next year.
Next I checked out my larger garden bed to see my peas, cilantro, onions, carrots, lettuce, strawberries and garlic
Lastly I checked out the peppers in the grow box which they will stay until we have some warmer nights (at least 50 degrees) otherwise can cause significant stunting of growth. So until then they will remain happy in the grow box and given they are still pretty small, still plenty of room to grow…
Tags: cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, growbox, herb garden, outdoor plants, pepper plants, strawberry plants, tomato plants, vegetables
