CXA3070s for Growing Indoor Fruit and Vegetables

[tick tack toe]

you should try and find strawberries to grow as well. They and tomatoes really benefit in sweetness with real sun and I would love to know if the sweetness is retained when growing with LED lights.

How much have you worked out is the cost of the veges you are growing with the LED lights? With the price of power in Germany I can't see how it would be cheaper to grow them indoors when compared to outdoors.

 

[CellarDweller]

Strawberries will be up next ....well....after the spinach I am about to grow!

The taste of the zucchini was unlike any other zucchini I have tasted, though I have never tasted home grown in the garden zucchini. They should be ready in 3 or 4 days and I'll report back.

The cost - it'll probably break even when you consider the cost of good quality organic tomatoes / zucchini out here. The price might be slightly higher, but the purpose of this was:

1) To prove I could grow vegetables that were as nutritionally sound and tasty as outdoor grown vegetables
2) That's about it

This whole thing has been an exercise in my bloody minded stubborn-ness....nothing more. I was challenged and decided it couldn't be that difficult. As it turns out, thanks to the bunch of loons on this forum, it hasn't been that difficult

I am just getting quotes on the lab work and then we'll see how my veg stacks up vs Alnatura and Aldi veg. Fingers crossed!

 

[ReeferDance]

Strawberries will be up next ....well....after the spinach I am about to grow!

My strawberries are absolutely loving my LED's. Tons of new growth and lots of flowers to pollinate.

Looking forward to seeing your results with the spinach, hoping to grow some inside soon.

 

[Tazbud]

Scrog might work well with LED tomato?

 

[mc130p]

The spinach I grew under some CXA's turned out pretty good, imho. I think you'll like it a lot. Big, full, tasty leaves in a very short time(I'm using 18on/6off light schedule). Then it got kinda hot around here and it bolted, but still...

 

[CellarDweller]

Well it's been an interesting week of getting the new evictees into the garden and planning the next build. Photos below show them (chillies, paprika, eggplant and another few tomato plants). Got some Hokkaido Pumpkin (25!!!) seedlings ready for there next stage and a whole bunch of beetroot too.

Next build is using pretty industrial shelving......I've been doing a lot of thought on how to minimise the cost basis of a build, maximise the load strength and also provide "multi-level" growing conditions to maximise the use of height in my room (4m ceilings). At €79 for a shelf that is 2400 x 900 x 600 (h/w/d) and some good quality diamond reflective foil glued to some thin board and then "attached" to the shelves.....this could be the world's cheapest grow tent....and also the strongest. Furthermore, the shelves (all MDF), can be used to house the Arctic Coolers/Drivers, eliminating the need for a special light structure.

If I can co-ordinate with bloody UPS I'll get this built next week (was hoping I'd have them this weekend) and then post the results.

 

[CellarDweller]

Considering buying a dildo to pollinate my plants with......seems more appropriate than an electric toothbrush! Might start a little poll on this

What are your thoughts? And what sort of dildo?

 

[CellarDweller]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Side by Side comparison has been made and we also have the "produce by weight" results so far. The garden is getting annihilated by the indoor garden. The indoor zucchini put on a spurt that saw 4 very good sized zucchini produced (one last one is yet to reach "harvest" size) and now I am waiting on the next growth to come through. On current production it works quite well......not to much but enough to feed us

The tomatoes outdoors are doing ok, but the tomatoes indoors....jesus! I have a variety of different pots until this point. Even the one in the seedling pot that I kept in there and have fed the same as the rest.....it's putting out about 6 tomatoes!!!! Insane. In a pot that is 10cmx 4cm x 4cm! The one in the 16litre smart pot (root pouch brand) has a trunk not a stem. Must be 2cm diameter. I have 2 blumats in that one and there is no need to water it at all. Just took the blumats out to see the root system and it's lovingly curled around the stem of the blumat.

Today I am in the workshop cutting up the boards that will be the shelves on my next build. I am also doing a test and will publish the results....a test that to date I haven't seen anyone do and I need the results from: What happens when you leave a CXA3070 5000k to run all day on an Arctic 11Plus cooler with no fan running. I'll take a series of readings during the day and then publish the findings (I also have a PAR meter with me, so we'll get ambient temps, PAR output, W draw and Tj temps). Quite excited to put some empirical evidence back into this fine forum.
Here are the results by weight so far:

Garden: Total Weight Produced : 133.8g
1) 62.3g
2) 71.5g

Indoor: Total Weight Produced : 573.1g

1) 189.9g
2) 127.9g
3) 169.9g
4) 85.4g

Taste comparison -

Garden tasted much better than store bought. Sweeter, less bitter and better looking flesh.
Indoor - quite simply the best zucchini I have ever eaten. Flesh was perfect. Almost sweet with no trace of acridity or bitterness that one normally associates with zucchini.

I am a chef by heart and so I apologise, but I also had to include the pictures of the first proper meal with the zucchini. Raw zucchini noodles with a putanesca sauce and a pan fried wedge of sashimi grade tuna .......I am still rolling my eyes at the taste now

Anyway - for you @Metacanna ....you wanted side by side - here you go.

The sorry looking fella on the right of the 3 zucchini picture is the one from the garden.
The tomatoes are variously - Roma, Andes Tomato (Cornue des Andes, Andenhorn), White Currant (the small round ones) and Aunt Ruby's German Green (the big bertha)

And finally - a rather pathetic attempt at an artistic shot with my "garden shears" (aka my wire clippers) and a chilli flower

 

[Metacanna]

So, to sum it up, in a 2 months period with 400W COBs (8 COBs 1.4A) you harvested 5 zucchini and have a few tomatoes yet to harvest.
Is the zucchini plant still flowering? Also, do you have any clue how many tomatoes are growing at this moment?

It would be cool if you could give a raw number of the production rate, I mean, once the plants are mature they will keep producing flowers/fruit for several weeks/months, so, with 400W COBs how many tomatoes/zucchini (by weight) per month can you harvest ?
This way we could better understand the production costs and judge the effectiveness of growing this kind of greens under lights.

In your first post you said your 300W set up costs you 1,2€ per day (now 400W I suppose). Assuming you run the lights 18h/day you pay 22cent/KW?

 

[tick tack toe]

how is the taste different?

 

[OneHitDone]

This is great and a lot more of us could actually produce a great deal of our produce indoor had governments and eco nuts not been allowed to impose all the bs that continues to drive our electricity prices higher and higher

 

[CellarDweller]

how is the taste different?

Totally different to store bought.

Garden grown has good firm flesh and only the merest hint of bitterness.

Indoor is just perfect even raw.

 

[CellarDweller]

This is great and a lot more of us could actually produce a great deal of our produce indoor had governments and eco nuts not been allowed to impose all the bs that continues to drive our electricity prices higher and higher

Actually I think once I complete my study I will show a good basis for argument that indoor trumps store bought in many levels.

 

[CellarDweller]

So, to sum it up, in a 2 months period with 400W COBs (8 COBs 1.4A) you harvested 5 zucchini and have a few tomatoes yet to harvest.
Is the zucchini plant still flowering? Also, do you have any clue how many tomatoes are growing at this moment?

It would be cool if you could give a raw number of the production rate, I mean, once the plants are mature they will keep producing flowers/fruit for several weeks/months, so, with 400W COBs how many tomatoes/zucchini (by weight) per month can you harvest ?
This way we could better understand the production costs and judge the effectiveness of growing this kind of greens under lights.

In your first post you said your 300W set up costs you 1,2€ per day (now 400W I suppose). Assuming you run the lights 18h/day you pay 22cent/KW?

Haha agreed that is the summary.....to date.....there is still a LONG way to go though...the tomatoes have probably 70 - 120 flowers all told, with 15 of them already dropped and growing tomatoes. The zucchini are blooming all the time, currently there are 4 female blooms beginning and the males are popping up at a rate of 2 or 3 per day. I would say weekly produce on zucchini would be 2 - 3 per week from 3 plants.

As they get bigger this will increase a lot and I would expect to be finishing at around 3 per week easy, plus kgs of tomatoes!

 

[Tazbud]

There'd be a sweet spot of how much light each plant species needs as optimal, your just going on giving everything a full sunny day?
Great work Cellar Dweller!
I see you mention 'shelves', guessing similar to that setup Metacanna posted earlier? (without fish)
Maybe you could have greens lower, cooler and just making the most of further away lighting, flowering plants on a shelf up higher.. ? Anyhow, yeah, it would be interesting over time Watts spend V numbers of vegies out (great quality can only be outdone by great quantity of quality )

 

[Metacanna]

Ideally I would like to have a set up where with the minimum light possibly I could get enough food for us (we are 2...) and be self-sufficient in zucchini, tomatoes and peppers, which are the most expensive and more often consumed around here.
So you already have an estimate regarding the production of zucchini, around 1 zucchini per plant per week. Now let's see how many tomatoes you get. If you get more than needed you could reduce the number of COBs or reduce the number of tomato plants and add a new crop like peppers.
I would be happy with a 400W set up that could produce half a kilo of tomatoes, peppers and zucchini per week. It would be economically feasible with the big plus of eating the freshest and healthiest possible. I'm a bit septic about the pesticides and herbicides applied in commercial scale grown crops, I wouldn't hesitate a second given the opportunity to grow my own. There's still no clear evidence concerning the long term effects of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and so on in our health, so I prefer to play safe.

When you say the zucchini you grew tastes different, I would say the main difference is the fact that it is fresher and that have an impact in the taste. Store bought veggies tend to travel big distances during some days in cool chambers and that reduces the general quality of the product (taste, texture, smell). Central and western European supermarkets are flooded with Spanish produce, that's 3000+km from farmer to consumer.

 

[Tazbud]

Some interesting results here from mh/hps, tomatos-400/600w-34lbs

http://www.atlantishydroponics.com/blog/category/gardening-tips/how-to-grow-indoors/page/4/

 

[OneHitDone]

There's still no clear evidence concerning the long term effects of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and so on in our health, so I prefer to play safe.

Then at some point the question will eventually be raised - "What are the long term health effects of eating produce grown under artificial lighting?"

 

[nogod_]

I know you prefer the cellar........

But if light quality is your concern (not space), why not throw a few light bars in a greenhouse outside and let em rip only when its cloudy?

The low profile of CoBs lends itself to sun supplementation without the massive sun-obscuring hoods required by HID fixtures. You could basically hide your fixtures where the greenhouse frame exists anyway.

 

[OneHitDone]

I know you prefer the cellar........

But if light quality is your concern (not space), why not throw a few light bars in a greenhouse outside and let em rip only when its cloudy?

The low profile of CoBs lends itself to sun supplementation without the massive sun-obscuring hoods required by HID fixtures. You could basically hide your fixtures where the greenhouse frame exists anyway.

I like that a lot but like where I am in winter it is just too cold and heating costs for a greenhouse would eat you up