Indoor Garden 2018-2019 Revisited

January 23rd, 2019


After work today I checked the temperature gauge and the tent maintained 78°F - 81°F in a 24 hour period, I'm going to start working on the humidity next.

And another little surprise I had was my Jimmy Nardello peppers were infested with white flies or something on the top leaves, the bottom of the leaves were loaded with aphids, so I hand washed each leaf and will continue to monitor the plants closely.

I'm liking this Rocky Top Blend a lot, days to mature is 45-50, I'm guessing this can be harvested @30-35 days.


I received my new pot trays and they are a tad too big, they take up too much room in the tent, I may use a couple but to be honest the 5 gallon home made saucers work better with a few caveats, first, it's hard to see the water level in the tray with the three gallon bags and second, sometimes when you add water the water runs out of the bag onto the floor missing the saucer.

However, next year I am limiting the tent to 9 plants.









January 24th, 2019


When I got home I headed right to the grow room and checked the plants, I removed all the Romaine and BSS Lettuce from the grow table and Grow tent and took them upstairs.




I also noticed something chewing on my Bok Choy and some droppings in my Romaine.
I hope it was from this guy, sorry buddy!


It was round 2 with the aphids, they were worse today after the purge yesterday. I removed everything from the grow tent and placed them on the table. I topped off all the pots with some potting mix, inspected every plant and trimmed some leaves and branches from the tomato plants.
I hand washed every leaf on the Jimmy Nardello peppers and some leaves on the tomatoes and eggplants with warm water, massaging the leaves between my fingers, for some reason the aphids are loving the pepper plants. I don't want to use insecticidal soap or anything just yet, as I am afraid to damage the plants.

I am really impressed with the growth of the tomato plants, the stems are very thick and stout.





This Abe Lincoln even has a few flower buds already, I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing?



Everything is placed back in the tent.



I ordered these pot saucers which are very nice but take up too much floor space so they were sent back.



I installed my Monkey fan but plan on keeping both fans in the tent.



My original goal of having the garage between 65°F - 70°F and the tent between 72°F - 82°F, is going to be a lot harder than I thought.
I am having a hell of a time controlling the temperature in the tent and the garage, it's not so bad when it is cold outside but the temp swing outside is just unbelievable, it was 9°F a few days ago then today it was 61°F



I have a digital temperature controller that I made a few years ago for my Sous Vide machine, I'm going to give that a shot, but to be honest I don't think it will help when the outside temps are warmer.

With all the Grow Lights running at 100% it gets pretty hot in the tent. The only other thing I can think of is pulling in more air from outside which should work just as long as it stays cool (below 35°F) outside.
I also turned the "Red" settings on the grow lights to 50%. I'll bump them back up to 100% when I start getting flowers.



January 25th, 2019

When I got home I installed the temperature controller.





I'm still battling the aphids, I'm going to hand clean each plant a few more days before I start spraying. The pics below are 24 hours after the last cleaning.







They aren't damaging the plant yet but its getting harder to get these nasty guys out of the new leaves.





They're easy to maintain when they are under the leaves.



I turned the lights up to 100% and I'm also still battling the heat in the tent, 87°F seems about the highest it will get. If it gets any higher I need to figure out a better exhaust and intake.


Two of my tomato plants have put on flower buds, the Jet Star and the Abe Lincoln.





Decided to harvest most of the Bok Choy for dinner.







January 27th, 2019


Once the tomato plant flowered, I fertilized the Jet Star with a Jobes 2-7-4 and will see how that does before fertilizing the Abe Lincoln which has also flowered. I hit the flower with an electric toothbrush.




Here is a quick Grow Room Tour

January 28th, 2019

I sprayed the Jimmy Nardello pepper with my "Aphid X" (1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper - Teaspoon Dish Soap - 1qt. water)

Here is my Robotic Bee!



January 29th, 2019


I really don't get this temp swing, I can't see how it can get to 67°F when I have the temperature controller set to 72°F, anyhow I adjusted the Temperature controller to 75°F. So the low (oil heater) is set for 75°F and the high (vent fan) is set for 80°F



I have three tomato plants with flowers, time to pollinate with my robotic bee! Everything is doing pretty good except my one pot of Jimmy Nardello peppers, the plants seem to be at a standstill.

I found where the Aphids were congregating, seems they love the cilantro. I sprayed the cilantro real good then washed the entire plant under tepid water.





January 31st, 2019

Still enduring an ongoing battle with aphids, mostly on my cilantro.

Yay! I finally got the temperature to settle down a bit, I guess with the temperature being 6°F outside helps with the cooling a bit. I think when the lights kick off and the temp in the tent drops it takes a while for the Oil Heater to come up to operating temperature from a cold start.





The plants are all doing real well, except for my Bunching Onions... I think I over watered them and one pot of Jimmy Nardellos is still a bit stunted. I have a few backups that are doing real well under the led bulbs, they're about 6" tall and already have little flower buds in the center, good, bad? who knows I'm just going to let everything do its thing with as little intervention as possible.

Most of the tomato plant have flowered and are growing extremely bushy with very thick stems, I pollinate with the electric tooth brush every day or every other day.


The tomato plant that I fertilized with the Jobes doesn't seem any different than the rest of the plants, so I will fertilize the rest of the plants this weekend.



The color of these pictures are actually a lot more purple looking than they actually are. I'll have to take some photos with the lights off.

My little tree!



I love when I'm in the tent and get that tomato plant smell, it really is a tease when its 6°F outside!



I really need to stay on top of the watering, the tomato plants are drinking up tons of water.





These Black Beauty Eggplant Plants are doing well. I also have a Listada di Gandia Eggplant Plant in a pot that has my trial potting mix in that is not doing as well, not sure if its the mix or because its a different variety. All the other plants in the Trial potting mix seem to be doing just as good as the original potting mix, no worse, no better.

I may separate the two Black Beauties and abort the Listada di Gandia and replace with one of these.




February 1st - 3rd, 2019


Aphids are out of control on the Cilantro, finally decided to cut down the cilantro and toss the cuttings, I then resprayed the cilantro and will keep an eye on it.

The Aphids are still appearing on the pepper plants but not as bad, haven't seen any on the basil, tomato, eggplants, or parsley yet.

All the tomato plants are loaded with flowers and buds, but no signs of a tomato yet, plants are like small trees, the growth is pretty incredible. Fertilized everything in the tent with some Jobes.

I called it quits on the Greens table for the season, between slow growth and battling a mouse that loves lettuce I decided to clean up the area and bait it, I'll be starting my seedlings in a few weeks anyhow.

My brother stopped over so I gave him a few Abe Lincoln Tomato Plants, some basil, cilantro and split my parsley in half, I was impressed with the roots on this guy.

February 4th - 5th, 2019

I wasn't real happy with the growth of the greens under the Roleadro Galaxyhydro led's compared to the Viparspectra led's, so I ordered a Viparspectra 450 and have another on the way. I think the wavelength of the Galaxyhydro were too much of the "Red" side (700 nanometers+). They are great for starting seedlings but "vegetative" growth is much better under the Viparspectras, plus I can control the wavelengths. For my starts I'll drop the red side down to 20% and bump the white and blue to about 80%.



I moved the lettuces to the Fluorescent Led's because of the mice problem, after these perk up a bit, they'll be harvested and I 'll be done with the greens for the season



Hopefully I can get this mice problem under control before I start my seedlings.


I'm pretty sure my parsley will recover from the division the other day, but it looks pathetic.



Topped off my basil, yeah I know, I could have done a better job.




The Black Beauties are doing well. I'm not sure if I'm going to cull one or transplant, I really don't have the room.



My Trial Potting Mix seems to be doing fine.



Chives are doing well, I divided these from my garden and I 'm growing them out for my brother.





The cilantro bounced back after a few day.



These peppers have me a bit puzzled, the peppers on the right have been in the grow room since they sprouted, the ones on the left have been on the grow table with the Galaxyhydro Led's then moved to the fluorescent Led's.
The ones on the right are starting to come back but I am curious as to what happened, could it be the Aphids? Could it be the potting mix? or could it be the lighting, temperature? Who knows but I may replace these with the stockier ones.



Looks like we have a little Jimmy Nardello



I'm wondering how long I can go before I need to start trimming the tomato plants. I am going to try and time it to when I can start cloning.



I did move the lights up about 4" the other day.


WHAT!! What is that!!?















I watered the plants this morning and used the "Robotic Bee" on all the flowers. The Abe Lincoln Tomato actually had noticeable growth after only 14 hours.
The entire garage was pretty warm this morning, I had to open the door from the garage to the utility room, high temp in the tent was 88°F.

SQWIB wrote:I tried Bloomsdale spinach under lights 2016 and it bolted immediately, from what I have read they are day light sensitive plants, I think its called photoperiodism or something like that, so basically their bolting has nothing to do with heat, it's the prolonged period of light.

As predicted, my spinach all bolted to seed and is no more.  Had one good salad out of it before it bolted to seed and quit developing leaves.  The Black Seeded Simpson lettuce is doing great, though, and is continuing to provide lots of fresh winter salads.

OhioGardener wrote:

SQWIB wrote:I tried Bloomsdale spinach under lights 2016 and it bolted immediately, from what I have read they are day light sensitive plants, I think its called photoperiodism or something like that, so basically their bolting has nothing to do with heat, it's the prolonged period of light.

As predicted, my spinach all bolted to seed and is no more.  Had one good salad out of it before it bolted to seed and quit developing leaves.  The Black Seeded Simpson lettuce is doing great, though, and is continuing to provide lots of fresh winter salads.

Yeah spinach is tough, I may try it on my greens table next year under 8 hours of light.
I like the black seeded simpson.

February 11th-12th, 2019


Getting a bit of leaf curl, not sure if this is a problem or not, it may be related to the BER issue. The plants seem very healthy otherwise.



I am getting a lot of fruit set but still have some signs of BER





Peppers and Eggplants are growing slowly.



Topped Jetstar plants after three days.

February 14th-17th, 2019


Took all of the tomato plants out of the tent, fertilized with Jobes Organics Vegetable and Tomato 2 - 7 - 4, added some lime slurry, topped with potting soil, trimmed, placed back in the tent and watered real well.





The tomato plants are all loaded with fruit and the plants look very healthy.








I inspected the plants and BER is still a problem, I am leaving the fruit on the plants to see what happens. A lot of the newer fruit doesn't have what I would call typical BER but there is something going on, there looks like little tiny bruises forming on the fruit. Everything seems to be pointing to a calcium deficiency, curling leaves, BER.





My first thought would be stink bugs or some pest, but I don't see any insects, even the Aphids have seem to have dissipated.





Some of the earlier fruits I'm leaving on the plant.





Leaf curl on some of the larger leaves





The topped Jet Star tomato plants have really come back.



The tomato plants have to be watered heavily every single day or they will dry out.


Cleaned up my Parsley and chives





My Indoor Salad garden is doing real well.







Planted some Waltham Broccoli, Sun King Broccoli and Baby Bok Choy. This is my last attempt at growing Broccoli, this is actually the start of my 2019 gardening year.

Awesome thread!  Sqwib. So, how did it go for this season?

I have been watching some you tube videos on container growing that I think would work for you in doors with the tomatoes especially. I am going to put one outside with a tomato this spring. I'd like to find the large tubs he uses. I have started re doing my oldest 4x8 and see so many tree roots. This will be my last time to do it I am sure. Going forward I want to get off the ground and hopefully grow a few things indoors in winter. Looking at the kratky method for that. Would love to see 2x2 tubs designed for this wicking method for sale.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oSl8s4hyVZY

Virginia