Gonmon's grow chamber and plants

[Gonmon]

Well since I wanted more room for more plants, and hopefully seedlings in the future!, I built a big plastic box.



The stand is made of 1x2's and plywood, and the grow chamber is 1x2's with plastic film attached. The main light is on the left, it's a DIY led rig.

It is 24 3w CREE leds, two groups of 12 powered by two ELN-LPC-700 drivers. On the right of the chamber is just a 100w pigtail fluorescent bulb in a clip on socket. I have a par38 bulb on order through a local fish guy that I'm going to try over the right side. There is only one fan in it so far, A Silverstone Suscool 121 mounted over the DIY led blowing down. I need to put more ventilation in, later.. I have a 4 bulb t5 fixture in the stand for my drosera seedlings and future seedlings/tissue culture.

Here's a Drosera binata seedling


The DIY led is mounted 40" above the shelves. Everything has been doing well for the month that this thing has been completed. Growth is decent, and some plants are blushing a bit, like this LC. Mini Purple 'Tamami'


I've got 30 or so orchids of mostly Catts, Stanhopea allies, and bulbophyllums. Those are the groups I'm most interested in and want to do some breeding with. So here are a few of my plants.

Bulbo phalaenopsis 'Pleasant Dreams'


Bud on a Paph hybrid I picked up at the Milwaukee show last weekend.


Neofinetia falcata I also got at the show.


Masdevallia erinacea in my dart frog vivarium.



Bulophyllum maquilingense also in the viv.



Kegelliela atropilosa plant

Buds, were 2 spikes but other rotted


Laelia tenebrosa recuperating after scale insect attack. The plant came to me bareroot with no live roots. The newest growth was six inches tall and hadn't started rooting when the bugs got at it. The plant stopped growing and got severely dehydrated. I sprayed it with Malthion and put the plant in a large ziploc bag with a bit of moist sphagnum in the bottom. A few days ago some roots started popping out so I put in a pot and propped the bag over it.


Blc. Rustic Spots


Mangosteen seedling starting to grow again after doing nothing for a month.


More to come, as it comes

[jai_star]

What an amazing grow tent , it gives me ideas on how to expand my grow tent when i get too many plants! Well done

[WhiteRabbit]

Very cool!

[NatalieS]

Everything looks really happy and healthy. Good growing!

[naoki]

Very nice. Wow, you can bloom these high light orchids with 72W of Cree white LEDs? Do you grow them 100% under light or do you put them outside in the summer? How much light (foot-candles) are you getting at the leaf level? It will be great if you can share more info about your DIY LED rig (e.g. which Cree, where you get heatsinks etc)!

[Gonmon]

Originally Posted by naoki

Very nice. Wow, you can bloom these high light orchids with 72W of Cree white LEDs? Do you grow them 100% under light or do you put them outside in the summer? How much light (foot-candles) are you getting at the leaf level? It will be great if you can share more info about your DIY LED rig (e.g. which Cree, where you get heatsinks etc)!

Actually I haven't been growing under the LEDs long enough to bloom anything, my chamber's only been up for a month. The Blc and Neo I bought budded. Most of my plants I've only had a few months. My Kegeliella atropilosa (Stanhopea relative) is the only plant that has budded entirely while under the LEDs. The Bulbo maq and Masd erinacea are in a vivarium under two 24w t5ho. I got a really old light meter with a bunch of other junk, and I'm not sure it works. It is a LIMHID Light Intensity Meter. Under my lights it read 50 fc, outside in the sun it's over 5000. I borrowed a PAR meter from a local fish club a few months ago, and took readings of the LED light before I put lenses on the LEDs. If I remember right it showed ~250 micro-mol/m2/s 18" below the light. I think the light is little low for catts and such right now, based on leaf color of some plants.

My LED light has 24 three watt CREE brand LED pcb stars. I bought them used from a fish forum. There are 10 XPE Cool White, 10 XPE Neutral White, and 4 XRE Royal Blue. New ones would cost about $5 a piece, so I you wanted to make a light it wouldn't be cheap. I built mine for experience before making one twice the size for my reef aquarium. The heatsinks are just 3/4" aluminium U channel from home depot. The LEDs are attached to the heatsink with thermal pads, double sided heat conducting stickers basically. Twelve LEDs are soldered in series, + from one to - of next. Each group of twelve is connected to a ELN-LPC-700 driver. The driver plugs into the wall and outputs a constant 700 milliamps of power to the LED string. 700mA is half of the rated power for these LEDs, so I could run them twice as strong as I am now, but I'd have to buy new drivers. There is also a 1ohm 5w resistor in each string of LEDs so I can use a multimeter to read how much current is running through the strings. That's basically it. It's really not as complicated as it sounds If you want more info on doing a DIY LED pm me and I can link you to some threads on the fish forum.

[naoki]

Thank you for the info, Gonmon! I also check aquascaping forums, and see lots of DIY LED, but I haven't seen much discussion in orchid forums. It's one of things I'd like to do eventually.

50fc seems to be low, but it will be great to see how your plants grow under this setup!

[Gonmon]

The Paph is open now. Looks pretty nice IMO except the top sepal could be more erect.


It's a seedling, malipoense x emersonii 'Bear'. The best part of the flower is the feel, it's covered in hair and feels like velvet. Pretty neat.

I bought a Holcoglossum wangii in flower. I pollinated it with Neofinetia but the Neo flower was starting to fade so don't know if it will take. The flower dried up but the column still looks good.


My Nepenthes alata is starting to inflate a new pitcher, the first one in my care!


And the Mangosteen leaves are doing good.


Some bad news is I've found more scale and mealybug on a few of my Catts. Going to pick up some Neem Oil and hose em down. My tissue cultures also took a hit, half of them were contaminated. It looks like they contamination came from the seed, so I need to try some different ways of disinfecting. All of the moldy cultures were Nepenthes though, which are notoriously difficult to sterilize.

[thakshila smith]

Do you able to grow mangosteen over there. Its rather a tall tree. I have a plant just the same size.
But planted on the soil.
You see I poured Borax liquid recently and now got branches at four sides.
Try to place it on the garden which could supply large space.
I wish it long life.

[Gonmon]

Originally Posted by thakshila smith

Do you able to grow mangosteen over there. Its rather a tall tree. I have a plant just the same size.
But planted on the soil.
You see I poured Borax liquid recently and now got branches at four sides.
Try to place it on the garden which could supply large space.
I wish it long life.

Thanks thakshila. I won't be able to grow the mangosteen outside for sure. It will have to stay inside under lights until I am finally able to build a greenhouse . From what I know mangosteens are slow growing, the place I got it from said it would take 10 years before it was big enough to fruit. Hopefully it doesn't take that long....

Anyways, might as well update here. The scale and mealybugs are all gone, lots of Nepenthes seedling are coming up but not any in vitro, and lots of new growth going on. My Par38 style LED bulb came and I got it up over the right side of the tent, but it burnt out in a day. So a new one is on the way. I got a few new plants. I bought a Cattleya schilleriana 'Jean' x self, Bulbophyllum biflorum 'Lil', Cattleya walkeriana 'Blue Moon', Cynoches Wine Delight 'JEM', and Lc. Renate 'S&W' from Ebay. I also did another order with Andy's Orchids and got some great plants! Laelia fournieri, Laelia liliputiana, Laelia lundii, Sophronitis coccinea, Encylcia bractescens, Brassovola nodosa "Mickey Mouse", and Bulbophyllum tingabarianum. All came super healthy with new grows. The Sophronitis has 4 old bulbs and 5 new ones! And the oldest just popped out a bud. The Laelia fornieri also had buds but the stem rotted . The Mickey Mouse came with 2 buds which both opened, and one I pollinated with the LC Renate. On to pictures!

Mangosteen


Sophronitis coccinea


B. nodosa



Lc. Renate 'S&W'


L. fournieri, was really looking forward to these flowers...


Cynoches Wine Delight 'JEM', smells nice but not very strong


Masdevallia herradurae, supposed to smell like cinnamon but I got nothing


Kegeliella atropilosa, didn't get any pollen to take...


Nepenthes seedlings


Drosophyllum lusitanicum germinated in vitro


Drosera regia seedlings liking the 4x t5


Drosera seedling flat, capensis and binata


Propagation going on under the grow tent


Full tent shot!