The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Science Fair: Why don’t strawberries grow during the wintertime?

16.7 years ago indoor growbox, strawberries

My 6 year old daughter was the inspiration for the PC grow box for her science fair project to figure out why strawberries don’t grow during the wintertime. She started by picking a strawberry plant from our garden (snow still on the ground) and we potted it in a terra cotta pot which she carefully painted ahead of time. We put it in the grow box in our garage with the lights on for 14 hours a day. As she saw significant changes in her strawberry plant we took pictures. After about a month of growing we went through the pictures and she wrote her report explaining the changes.

She definitely had a good time standing by her display proudly telling people about her project and answering any questions that the various visitors had. She did take a break to take a look at some of the other kids displays which I took note of the gardening related ones which would be great for a science projects for any of your budding scientists:

– Seed germination (soil or paper towel)
– How plants grow with different color of lights (colored transparent plastic)
– How plants grow when given different liquids (water, soda, milk, vinager, diet soda)
– Effects of being mean or nice to plants
– Effects of music on plant growth
– Hydroponics
– Effects of temperature on plant growth

Tags: cheap, garden seeds, grow lights, growbox, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, vegetables

Strawberries in the PC Grow box (UPDATE #2)

16.7 years ago indoor growbox, strawberries

The strawberry plant is doing better than I ever expected, should have some fresh strawberries in a week or two. Hopefully no one tells them it is not June…

Tags: cheap, growbox, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, vegetables

Strawberries in the PC grow box (UPDATE)

16.8 years ago indoor growbox

Well the strawberry plant seems to be doing great in the $20 PC grow box. Can’t wait to try it out on my recently planted seedlings.

Tags: cheap, garden seeds, growbox, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, vegetables

Strawberries in the PC Grow box (FINAL UPDATE)

16.8 years ago indoor growbox, strawberries

Okay, I promise this will be the last time I talk about our strawberry plant in the grow box. After a little more than a month in the grow box our plant went from a small lifeless plant to one that looks like will bear about 10 strawberries. We are planning on moving it to the garden with the rest our strawberry plants later this week to make room for the growing tomatoes.

How strawberry plant looked when we started 40 days ago.

Picture of my daughter showing off her strawberry before she ate the first one.

I sampled on the strawberries and must say I do miss “local” strawberries, looking forward to the rest of them in the next couple months.

Tags: cheap, growbox, led, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, tomato plants, vegetables

What is a lumen?

16.8 years ago indoor growbox, lumen

Lumen is a measurement of the intensity of light; one lumen is equal to the brightness of a candle at 1 foot away. Just to get an idea on a clear summer day by the time the light from the sun hits reaches us on earth it has an intensity of up to 10,000 lumens. If you wanted to simulate sunlight in your house you just need to hook up 6 (100 watt incandescent or 29 watt CFL) light bulbs and stand one foot away.

Fortunately plants only need 100 to 4000 lumens to sustain vegetative growth depending on the variety, so indoor growing can be setup fairly inexpensively. For example, with our strawberry plant in a grow box experiment we can get away with just 2 CFL bulbs and provide enough light to provide the 1500 lumen required to allow vegetation and flowering. All of this for about $1.00 a month of electrical usage, at $5.00 a pint for strawberries maybe I can make this profitable.

Tags: cheap, growbox, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, vegetables

Cheap PC grow box for less than $20

16.9 years ago indoor growbox

I enjoy when I can be rewarded by overcoming mother nature, so when my 6 year old mentioned she wanted to figure out why strawberries will not grow in the winter for her science project I couldn’t have been prouder. Once she determined the reason was because it was colder and the sun wasn’t up as much, she suggested using lights to help them get more light and warmth.

The next obvious step was to create a grow box, now if this wasn’t cheap vegetable gardener I would just buy a commercial grow box, but by now you should know better than that…

Looking through my garage I found my first victim, an old PC case. After a few screws and a few drilled out rivets I had a good structure for the grow box. Next I added some Styrofoam insulation which I got at Home Depot on all 4 sides (this step is optional if your PC grow box will be inside)  Also at Home Depot I picked up a cheap extension cord, lamp timer, and a socket plug adapters that allowed me to plug right into the extension cord. Followed by a small hole in the top and about 45 minutes my work is done.

In January we had a strange couple weeks of 20 degree days so I also added an incandescent build for some extra light but more importantly little extra heat. Which I made from a old lamp taking up space in the garage. With all the sides up the box is able to maintain a 70-75 degree temperature even with the chilly conditions in the garage.

After a little over a week we seemed to be getting some good results with our first blossom on the strawberry plant my daughter chose under snow in our garden.

Costs for Cheap PC Grow Box

Some of our other grow boxes
Fully automated computerized grow box (Project Everbearing) Beta 1
Cheap LED Light and Grow Box

Tags: cheap, grow lights, growbox, led, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, vegetables