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2'x6' Grow Closet With 8 Tube 432 Watt Quantum BadBoy T5 Fluorescent Light - An Ongoing Log

I live in Las Vegas, and for a long time i've been wanting to try growing some full size vegetables in my house over the winter. I do have a garden in my back yard with four 4'x8' raised beds, but it can get down to 20 degrees here (with snow) in December and January. So during the cold season, growing Summer veggies like peppers, tomatoes, and basil indoors during the winter is the only option for me.

Since I had limited space in my house, I figured i'd pull out the wire shelving in one of my 2'x6' closets and hang an 8 tube fluorescent light in there (Quantum BadBoy T5). I screwed two hooks into the ceiling and hung it using two ropes with ratchets at the bottom so I can easily move the light up and down as needed. This closet was too small to use a light that generates high heat like an HID. There would also be no way to vent that type of heat properly without cutting holes in my wall or ceiling, so an HID was not an option. Since the closet was already painted white inside, I decided not to go through the hassle of trying to hang mylar.

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I'll be growing primarily tomatoes and peppers using soil. The tomatoes will be grown in these 5 gallon buckets. I'll drill holes at the bottom of the top bucket, then insert it into another bucket so it's able to drain. For peppers, i'll put them in smaller containers, maybe 2-3 gallon. They'll sit all around the tomato buckets along with some basil.

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As for the tubes in the fixture, there are four cool 6400k tubes, and four warm 2900k tubes. This should provide a good balace of foliage and flowers. I thought about using all 6400k at first, then switching to all 2900k for flowering.. but we'll see how this goes first.

According to the Quantum Horticulture site (they make the bulbs i'm using), here are the stats for the bulbs:

Bloom Bulb - 93.5 Lumen / per Watt for 2900 Kelvin
Grow Bulb - 88.Lumen / per Watt 6500 Kelvin
High Lumen Maintenance: 90% over 10,000 hours

The bulbs are 54 watts each, so that gives me 20196 Lumens from the Bloom bulbs, and 19008 Lumens from the Grow bulbs, which is a total of 39204 lumens for the entire fixture. The closet is 2'x6' and the fixture is 2'x4'. That gives me a total of:

-4900.5 lumens per square foot directly under the 2'x4' light

or

-3267 lumens per square foot across the entire 2'x6' closet.

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For the growing method on the tomatoes, i'll be setting up a "scrog" which means "screen of green". I'll put a grid with 4.5" squares across the entire closet, about 2ft up from the edge of the buckets. Once the tomatoes start hitting the grid, i'll train the branches outward along the bottom of the grid for maximum light exposure.

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So that's about it. I'll post my log here and we'll see what I can grow with 432 watts of fluorescent tubes :)
 
great idea...I especially like the wire grid idea...very ingenious...

have you figured out how many lumens/ft 2 you are gonna have? are these fluorescents T8s or T5s?
 
damn your not playing around with those flouros.

never heard of scrogging toms lol, id love to see how that works out.
why not just grow some determinate bush verity? or is the screen more for supporting the trusses?

edit: oooh i see you beat me to the punch with the edit.
 
great idea...I especially like the wire grid idea...very ingenious...

have you figured out how many lumens/ft 2 you are gonna have?

According to the Quantum Horticulture site (they make the bulbs i'm using), here are the stats for the bulbs:

Bloom Bulb - 93.5 Lumen / per Watt for 2900 Kelvin
Grow Bulb - 88.Lumen / per Watt 6500 Kelvin
High Lumen Maintenance: 90% over 10,000 hours

The bulbs are 54 watts each, so that gives me 20196 Lumens from the Bloom bulbs, and 19008 Lumens from the Grow bulbs, which is a total of 39204 lumens for the entire fixture. The closet is 2'x6' and the fixture is 2'x4'. That gives me a total of:

-4900.5 lumens per square foot directly under the 2'x4' light

or

-3267 lumens per square foot across the entire 2'x6' closet.


damn your not playing around with those flouros.

never heard of scrogging toms lol, id love to see how that works out.
why not just grow some determinate bush verity? or is the screen more for supporting the trusses?

edit: oooh i see you beat me to the punch with the edit.

I might try some determinates too. I just want to try different things really. It's more of an experiment to see what's possible under this light.
 
wow...thats a bunch of light...plenty to grow under...

the combination of blue and red is good...

good luck with your grow...
 
it will work great. I use a mix of Warm / Cool for starting everything inside - and I know the light I use would bring everything to full maturity - i've had small tomatoes form on a couple plants that I left under as experimentation. The Scrog is a great idea and one that i always thought I'd employ if I did indoor tomatoes! Here - Check this - you may want to make a smaller version for your needs. You've already got all the light - you'd just need the bottom portion.

http://www.instructables.com/id/My-Indoor-DWC-Hydroponics-System/

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EDIT :

Since you know about Scrog - you may know about supercropping. Do some google searches - I used to have a whole bunch of info saved on a guy who supercropped his Tomatoes and used a SCROG setup. the bases were knarly strong and knuckled. Looked mean and strong. Was impressive - and worked. Same as with other green plants - take stem, pinch and tiwst a little for a little crunch - it will rebuild itself, bigger, stronger.

Also - Air circulation. Lots of it. Get wind on those babies to slow growth a little and to strengthen them up! Though once you get to the screen you won't need them to support the weight - but might still be a good idea!

Awesome! looking forward to updates / pics!
 
it will work great. I use a mix of Warm / Cool for starting everything inside - and I know the light I use would bring everything to full maturity - i've had small tomatoes form on a couple plants that I left under as experimentation. The Scrog is a great idea and one that i always thought I'd employ if I did indoor tomatoes! Here - Check this - you may want to make a smaller version for your needs. You've already got all the light - you'd just need the bottom portion.

http://www.instructables.com/id/My-Indoor-DWC-Hydroponics-System/

---------------------

EDIT :

Since you know about Scrog - you may know about supercropping. Do some google searches - I used to have a whole bunch of info saved on a guy who supercropped his Tomatoes and used a SCROG setup. the bases were knarly strong and knuckled. Looked mean and strong. Was impressive - and worked. Same as with other green plants - take stem, pinch and tiwst a little for a little crunch - it will rebuild itself, bigger, stronger.

Also - Air circulation. Lots of it. Get wind on those babies to slow growth a little and to strengthen them up! Though once you get to the screen you won't need them to support the weight - but might still be a good idea!

Awesome! looking forward to updates / pics!

That looks like a nice hydro setup. I've thought about doing hydro for a while, but i just don't think im prepared to constantly have to monitor the PH and changing out the reservoirs weekly, etc. I like growing organically with some good potting soil and some organic fertilizer, that way i don't have to mess with it all the time. If I had some extra time I might try it in the future, but right now I don't think it would be a good idea.

About the supercropping, i'll definitely give it a try at some point, but every time i have a nice looking seedling I just want to leave it alone hah. Eventually i'll build up the courage to do it as long as I have some backups ready to take its place in case I fail.
 
I have that same fixture with all cool bulbs. They bleached the hell out of my broccoli, so I'm going to have to be careful when I put my peppers under it.

Good luck.
 
I have that same fixture with all cool bulbs. They bleached the hell out of my broccoli, so I'm going to have to be careful when I put my peppers under it.

Good luck.

It seems like broccoli would have a much lower tolerance than peppers since broccoli is a cool season plant. Accidentally getting your broccoli bleached is a good sign though overall. That means this light fixture provides more than enough lumens to get the job done. Just gotta raise it up a few inches next time.
 
I've been waiting for my new order of seeds and they finally arrived today. I just planted a bunch of tomato, pepper, and herb seeds in plastic cups using Fox Farm Happy Frog soil. Once they germinate, i'll stick them in the closet under the floro light, and i'll take some new pics. I've always had great results using this potting soil for both germination and transplants, so i'm going to stick with it.

Once the seedlings grow a few inches tall i'll transplant them into the 5 gallon buckets which will be filled with Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil. It can be dangerous to plant seedlings in the Ocean Forest soil too early since it's a pretty "hot" mixture (lots of nutrients), but so far I haven't had any issues.
 
So as I think about it more, I'm thinking I may not do the scrog this time. It seems like i'd really be limiting the amount of usable space in this closet, and i wouldn't be able to grow as many peppers as I want. The tomatoes in the scrog would start to grow right over the tops of the peppers which wouldn't be good. The scrog will still be great if i decide to do indeterminate tomatoes later, but for this grow, i'll stick with all peppers and smaller varieties of tomatoes that should only grow 2-3 feet tall, to stay in line with the average height of the pepper plants.

Here's a pic of the layout I was thinking of using for the buckets:

1f7Vb.jpg


Two rows of buckets fit in there PERFECTLY, but just by a fraction of an inch. I can slide the closet doors shut without them hitting the buckets.

For the fan, I was thinking of mounting a large 16" fan to the wall above the light, turning it on high, and letting it circulate within the closet. I think this should still provide some nice air flow to all the plants even though the fan would be above the light.
 
Looking forward to this grow I'm trying to figure which. T5 fixture i want looking at the sun system new wave or the quantum... where do you shop?
 
I don't shop at any specific website. I normally just look around and buy from the site that has the lowest price after shipping.
 
i think you will find that 400watts of t5's will heat that space fairly quickly. so i assume you will keep that door open a bit?
you dont have to sleep in that room do you? :lol:
 
I'll open it as needed to help vent everything. I'll put a thermometer in there and I'll also hang a 16" fan on the wall above the light and point it down towards everything
 
i think you will find that 400watts of t5's will heat that space fairly quickly. so i assume you will keep that door open a bit?
you dont have to sleep in that room do you? :lol:

The ballasts get really hot, that's for sure. I'm kind of surprised that there's not at least one fan built in to the fixture.
 
It's taking quite a while for my peppers to germinate. All my tomatoes germinated over the past couple days though. During the summer they all germinated very fast. I think maybe I might need to buy a heat mat. It's 65 degrees in my house right now so i figured that would be fine, but maybe not :crazy:
 
I ordered my heat mat and it should be here tomorrow or saturday. My tomatoes and bell peppers have already germinated, but my hot peppers still have not yet germinated. I never tried germinating peppers in the middle of winter like this, so I just didn't think about the heat mat. Oh well, lesson learned :) More updates coming soon once everything is germinated and in the closet.
 
All peppers are now germinated :) Will be going into the buckets and under the floro light soon. I'll post pics once I get everything in there.
 
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