Monday, October 3, 2011

Indoor greenhouse


I have, on occasion, seen grow tents referred to as indoor greenhouses, and that is probably an apt term to use in respect to the environmental control that can be achieved.

Today, I officially began using both of my new indoor grow tents to actually grow something to maturity. I decided that it would be much simpler to use single pot AutoPots in both tents, sharing a common reservoir, as the nutrient needs would be the same for both systems.

The system shown above will be growing a medium sized determinate variety called Balcony Hybrid, while the other tent will be growing a variety called Totem.
In addition to the nutrient reservoir, the tents are also sharing timers for lighting and ventilation,

The light, shown in the photo, is the light mentioned in my September 25th post. It is a 126 watt, 6 band Flower Series grow light. I measured the intensity of the light, in the position shown above, and the reading at plant level was in excess of 5,000 footcandles. In the tent containing the Totem plant, I will be using a 90 watt 3rd. generation red/blue/white LED.

In normal operation the valve is covered, however, I purposely left the cover off the AutoPot smart valve until I was assured that the reservoir was feeding nutrients to the tray.

My primary objective at this point is to become familiar with using the tents, while learning to control the environmental conditions, if the tomatoes are a success, that will be a bonus.

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