Gonmon's grow chamber and plants

[Gonmon]

Got a new L. harpophylla



And my L. liliputiana is starting a new growth *crossing fingers for flowers this time!*


I'm thinking of taking down my grow chamber and setting up a 48"x24"x72" baker's shelf like a lot of other people here have. I could fit so many more plants in this space with more shelves . My grow chamber ain't working out too well either, the plants around the edges and ones hanging aren't getting enough light, the front plastic doesn't seal so humidity is only 50-60%, the new growths on my stanhopea allies are all rotting, and I can't see my plants through the plastic. If I got shelves I have a 4 bulb 4 foot t5 already which I'd use on the top shelf for all my cattleya and other high lighters. Then I'd need a lower light section for the bulbos, which I think I could get away with two t5s 12" apart? And then I'll have a shelf for the stanhopeas, which will have to be like 30 inches tall. Two or three t5s for that? Another thing I'd have to figure out is how to enclose it. Clear plastic like whats on my grow chamber would work, but I haven't come up with a good idea on how to attach it to the shelving unit. And how in the world would I make a sealing door? Oh well, something to think about.

[naoki]

Nice Laelia! I've wondering how it's going with your set up. With regard to going with baker's shelf, you may have an issue with heat if you are planning to put 9 T5HO in it.

I use a 48"x24"x60" grow tent. Similar to you, orchids don't do well without an enclosure here due to the humidity issue of North. With this enclosure, in which I can control relevant parameters well, the orchids are pretty easy to grow now. Anyway, at first I had 4 bulb 4 foot T5HO + 2 bulb 4 foot T8. It was overheating (above 90F) even though the ambient temp was around 75F (summer temp of Alaska). So I removed T8, and put a 28W LED, instead. Then I installed ZooMed HydroTherm to operate exhaust fan (set at 84F) and a humidifier automatically. Now the exhaust fan is only required when the amibient temp is around 75F (only 1-2 month in Alaska), and humidifier isn't required if the exhaust fan isn't operating (I get 65% day, and 90% night with passive humidification). I also removed one T5HO bulb in the summer time. But I think I'm going to reverse the day and night this summer (so the light is on at night, and it is off during the day).

So if you are thinking of moving to a smaller, enclosed space with lots of T5HO, you probably need to worry about the heat.

[Gonmon]

Thanks for the reply. I did wonder about the heat. Didn't think it would be an issue but guess I was wrong. If I put my 4 bulb fixture on the top shelf outside the plastic enclosure maybe that would be fine to only have 4-6 bulbs on the inside. I want the temp to get up to at least 80 in the day with 70-80% humidity. An exhaust fan for excess heat is an option, then I can use my Arduino greenhouse controller I just started planning! My plants are in a 12x15' basement room with a 120g aquarium, so in the room temps stay 68-75, RH 40-50.

What LEDs are you using?

In idea I just had to enclose it in plastic is build a wood box frame a bit bigger than the shelf and tack the plastic to that. I could get a polycarbonate sheet for the top so I can put a light on that.
If any of you reading use a baker's shelf, what do you put under it to catch water?

[naoki]

If you put the top T5HO outside, it will help a lot with heat.

I'm surprised that yours raises RH by only 10%. In my place ambient RH is 10-30%, and I can get reasonable RH (65% day) in the enclosure (my orchids so far don't require cloud-forest-class RH). I put 4 of 2x1 foot nursery tray below the bottom shelf, and these are filled with 1 inch of water. Humidity tray doesn't work well outside of enclosure, but this works quite well in an enclosure. When one of the trays becomes dried up, I notice that the humidity is lower by 5-10%. I'm not sure your current setup has something like this. I don't use these to catch water, though. I water them in the bathroom.

My LED is Sunshine Systems GrowPanel 45. As I mentioned in the "Growing Under Light" section recently, I can't recommend this unit any more. The company used to have a decent reputation, but it appears that their customer support disappeared completely, and there were lots of complaints recently in Amazon Customer review. I do like how plants grow under this unit, but it doesn't seem to last, and they do not respond to RMA request. I do also have 90W UFO 4-band LED grow light, but it is noisy, and the light is not evenly distributed, so I don't like it.

Arduino controller sounds interesting. I started to play with Rapsberry Pi recently, and I was also thinking something similar (environment monitor/logger/alert + automatic control of exhaust fan, humidifier, and drip irrigation). HydroTherm is great, but it can't be programmed to do finer control (like seasonality).

[Gonmon]

I think the the cause of my low humidity is that the front doors are just loose hanging plastic, and I cut them too small... I could remake the doors but it's a pain and I would have to buy more plastic. I mainly want to upgrade so I can fit more plants in a smaller space. And with the variety of plants I have it's hard to find happy spots for ones with different light demands.

Arduino's are amazing, but so much to learn! I hardly have any electronics or programming experience so I don't really know what I'm doing. I've found threads of other people doing similar projects, I plan to just copy them and tweak things a little . Still waiting on parts from china otherwise I'd have more to talk about.

[Island Girl]

You could try something like this:

Charley's Greenhouse & Garden 4-Tier Grow House

Or this, if it would fit in ur basement?

Charley's Greenhouse & Garden Portable Growhouse, 4 ft x 4 ft

[Gonmon]

Well.... I actually just finished making GrowBox v2.0 . Sorry I didn't update as I went, was just focused on getting the thing together and my plants situated. I decided to make a new box from scratch because
1. It is cheaper than the metal racks (only a few bucks)
2. I got more grow space for the foot print
3. I just like making things

This time around I made it a little smaller, 5 foot long 30 inch wide and eighty inches tall. The metal rack that's closest to that is 6x2x6' and $159. I spent about $80 on wood, and $45 on the shelves. There are three shelves on mine, the bottom one is 30" tall, the middle 18", and the top is 24". The bottom and middle shelves each have two 54w t5 lights powered by an IceCap 660 ballast. The top light has a 4x54w t5 grow light. With my old dinky light meter it shows each shelf is getting 1500-2000 fc. Onto the pics!

This is how the sides are made. The entire frame is 1x2 pine, except for the side bottom rails which I made of 1x6.


This is the top, the center hole is where the 4xt5 shines through, it is covered in window insulation plastic. The long side parts are mylar, and the two little spots in the middle of the ends is open.



The corners are a little odd. Since I wouldn't be able to fit the whole thing through the door to my room I had to assemble the box indoors. The 5 foot long pieces are glued and screwed into the uprights of the side pieces. This made for a pretty wobbly setup, but I couldn't think of a better way to do it.



Here is the frame up.


It wasn't very sturdy, or straight I blame the crappy warped wood from HD . To tighten it up a bit I added some cross bracing, and ended up using a spreader bar against the wall to push the the darn thing into square. Here it is all done.


The doors are trifold with that window plastic. They are pretty crooked so there's a 1/4-1/2" gap around the top...

---------- Post added at 07:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 PM ----------

A few extra pics, bought my first DSLR. An old Canon 350D.
Cynoches Wine Delight 'JEM' sending out a spike woot!


My B. biflorum 'Lil' needed repotting so I chopped it up and mounted it to this sphagnum ball. It's a foam sphere covered in long fiber sphag and a hanging hook on top.


Ghetto macro shots (shooting through the lens backwards) of baby flytraps and water droplet on U. reinformis



My mangosteen likes me!

[Tindomul]

Wow, great collection. I love the Drosera.