Does anyone grow food under lights indoors?
I am starting to see that as long as I live where I do and can't get in touch with the community gardens in my area, I am stuck with indoor container growing. I have a lot of south facing windows, but I also have privacy issues with raising my blinds all day while I am not at home. Does anyone here use lights to grow veggies inside? If so, would you be willing to share your experience?
-
rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
Very difficult. Most veggies like full sun, meaning even if you do leave your blinds up they will not get enough light just from a window.
I start seeds indoors under lights every year, but then they get moved outdoors. Trouble with keeping them indoors is that they get big. Depends on what you want to grow I guess. Lettuce spinach chard are cool weather crops that don't get too big. But they won't like it if the house gets too hot (in summer, or in winter if you keep the heat very high). A lot of herbs (eg basil) aren't hard to grow in containers and could be done indoors. Maybe peppers if you have room for a three gallon container. Maybe beets and dwarf carrots. But remember you are talking about a fairly elaborate set up here, with shop lights with fluorescent tubes, hung so that you can put them down just a few inches above your plants and then raise them as the plants get bigger. And running up your electric bill keeping them on at least 12 hrs / day.
I hate to ever discourage a gardener, but you might be better off to wait until you have at least a balcony to put your containers on.
I start seeds indoors under lights every year, but then they get moved outdoors. Trouble with keeping them indoors is that they get big. Depends on what you want to grow I guess. Lettuce spinach chard are cool weather crops that don't get too big. But they won't like it if the house gets too hot (in summer, or in winter if you keep the heat very high). A lot of herbs (eg basil) aren't hard to grow in containers and could be done indoors. Maybe peppers if you have room for a three gallon container. Maybe beets and dwarf carrots. But remember you are talking about a fairly elaborate set up here, with shop lights with fluorescent tubes, hung so that you can put them down just a few inches above your plants and then raise them as the plants get bigger. And running up your electric bill keeping them on at least 12 hrs / day.
I hate to ever discourage a gardener, but you might be better off to wait until you have at least a balcony to put your containers on.
It is definitely doable, but as the previous poster said, it can be expensive and elaborate. It all depends on what you want. Me, I live in Michigan and go into gardening withdrawal in the winter. I've got several big closet type rooms in my basement that I'm dreaming of converting to grow rooms for veggies and maybe some strawberries. But it will require installing reflective panels on the walls and grow lights from the ceiling on chains to adjust the height as the plants grow. And some type of shelving, which can be improvised pretty cheap.
As an example, in my area I can run my 4-bulb T5HO fluorescent grow light 12 hours a day for just under $13 dollars a month. The light is 4 feet long by about a foot wide. And that's basically the footprint for the light output. I can get away with placing multiple trays perpendicular to the light, but it's not ideal because the parts of the tray not directly underneath the lamp will not get as much light.
Another way to go would be to spot light each container. I've seen high wattage CFL bulbs that screw into a standard fixture that cost around 10-15 bucks a pop. You could use those in a brooder-style light and clamp it to a pole stuck in the container.
It's all about how much time, effort, and money you are willing to spend, as well as how much of your indoor space you're willing to give over to growing and if that space needs to stay attractive to you. Giving less to any of these issues will mean you have to give more to the others. An attractive grow operation that you wouldn't mind in your living room or bedroom is going to be truly expensive indeed. But if you have the resources, the sky is the limit really. You can grow dwarf tropical fruit trees indoors anywhere on earth if you're willing and able to spend the money creating the environment they need.
As an example, in my area I can run my 4-bulb T5HO fluorescent grow light 12 hours a day for just under $13 dollars a month. The light is 4 feet long by about a foot wide. And that's basically the footprint for the light output. I can get away with placing multiple trays perpendicular to the light, but it's not ideal because the parts of the tray not directly underneath the lamp will not get as much light.
Another way to go would be to spot light each container. I've seen high wattage CFL bulbs that screw into a standard fixture that cost around 10-15 bucks a pop. You could use those in a brooder-style light and clamp it to a pole stuck in the container.
It's all about how much time, effort, and money you are willing to spend, as well as how much of your indoor space you're willing to give over to growing and if that space needs to stay attractive to you. Giving less to any of these issues will mean you have to give more to the others. An attractive grow operation that you wouldn't mind in your living room or bedroom is going to be truly expensive indeed. But if you have the resources, the sky is the limit really. You can grow dwarf tropical fruit trees indoors anywhere on earth if you're willing and able to spend the money creating the environment they need.
-
applestar
- Mod
- Posts: 30540
- Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
- Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)
I can't distill everything I've been posting into a single post, but if you look for my "Winter Indoor" threads over the last three? years, I've described a number of plants I've grown indoors, mostly under lights but some received good sunlight as well.
Some have been successful and others haven't. I've tried to describe problems I've encountered, and I've had successful years as well as failures with same kind of plant but sometimes different varieties or due to different pests or diseases.
Some things are better suited for indoor growing, and each has own quirks. Space, temperature and light levels are primary concerns. Safe to say, plants needing really big space and full sun even outside are practically impossible. My experiments are from winter indoor conditions, so you may encounter other variables during the summer.
Some things are better grown to mature plants outside in the summer, but will do very well afterwards indoors. Smaller sized pepper plants are a good example.
Some have been successful and others haven't. I've tried to describe problems I've encountered, and I've had successful years as well as failures with same kind of plant but sometimes different varieties or due to different pests or diseases.
Some things are better suited for indoor growing, and each has own quirks. Space, temperature and light levels are primary concerns. Safe to say, plants needing really big space and full sun even outside are practically impossible. My experiments are from winter indoor conditions, so you may encounter other variables during the summer.
Some things are better grown to mature plants outside in the summer, but will do very well afterwards indoors. Smaller sized pepper plants are a good example.
-
ButterflyLady29
- Greener Thumb
- Posts: 1030
- Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2015 9:12 pm
- Location: central Ohio
I've grown lettuce under shop lights in the basement and it did great. I got several salads out of a few plants and the plants had no pest problems and there was very little dirt on the leaves. Spinach will bolt if you leave the lights on for 10 hours or more so 8 or 9 hours might work, I haven't done any other experiments with it. I had good results with basil and Parisian carrots.
My set-up is just a shelf with a 6 tube florescent light with daylight bulbs over it. It's the same set-up I use for seed starting and overwintering plants. I had planned on trying it with day-neutral strawberries but didn't get around to it this winter but I have read of other people growing them with great success.
My set-up is just a shelf with a 6 tube florescent light with daylight bulbs over it. It's the same set-up I use for seed starting and overwintering plants. I had planned on trying it with day-neutral strawberries but didn't get around to it this winter but I have read of other people growing them with great success.
I know this is a somewhat older post, but one of the many reasons I signed up for this forum was threads like this!
First year growing anything, I only get 4-4.5 hours of direct sun light on my 3rd floor porch, so I also supplement with an extra 10-11 hours on top of that using 4 23w 5000k cfl's and 1 43w 2700k cfl.
I'm not growing anything special, just a learning experience (plan on growing a lot more stuff on my porch next season), but my Jalapeno and baby bell peppers are exploding with growth. I'm going to attempt to produce through the winter using CFL's, might add another 40-60w of lighting. Going to do it in a closet, almost like an "illegal" grow lol.... I know they'll "survive" the over wintering, I'm going to find out if I can make fruit all winter
I know CFL's don't penetrate foliage all that well, so my hopes are by having lights above and around the sides of the plants will make them thrive, plus will be lining the walls with reflective material, and of course monitoring temperatures.
First year growing anything, I only get 4-4.5 hours of direct sun light on my 3rd floor porch, so I also supplement with an extra 10-11 hours on top of that using 4 23w 5000k cfl's and 1 43w 2700k cfl.
I'm not growing anything special, just a learning experience (plan on growing a lot more stuff on my porch next season), but my Jalapeno and baby bell peppers are exploding with growth. I'm going to attempt to produce through the winter using CFL's, might add another 40-60w of lighting. Going to do it in a closet, almost like an "illegal" grow lol.... I know they'll "survive" the over wintering, I'm going to find out if I can make fruit all winter
I know CFL's don't penetrate foliage all that well, so my hopes are by having lights above and around the sides of the plants will make them thrive, plus will be lining the walls with reflective material, and of course monitoring temperatures.