Grace and Oliver's latest pictures

[Oliver]

Grace took some pictures of our current growing areas so I thought I would post a few of them.

The first three are from the greenhouse interior and the last four were taken in the grow room.

Both greenhouse and grow room are the about the same size.

These are large pictures so if you click on them they should expand.

[attachment=4:239k3aht]greenhouse-full-shot.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

[attachment=3:239k3aht]Four Zucchini and the Queens #1.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

[attachment=2:239k3aht]Four Zucchini and the Queens #2.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

[attachment=1:239k3aht]Zucchini on the Plate.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

[attachment=5:239k3aht]Oliver Growroom #5 1-2013.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

[attachment=6:239k3aht]Oliver Growroom #6 1-2013.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

[attachment=0:239k3aht]Growroom wall of basil with lettuce.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

[attachment=7:239k3aht]Oliver Growroom #7 1-2013.jpg[/attachment:239k3aht]

Oliver

[JCO]

They look great Oliver...what time is lunch?

[davidstcldfl]

Wow, looks really nice...

[Roger L.]

One day I hope my grow bed will be so full. I think I need more light.

[Aloha Don]

Where did you get the fish feeder?
I likes....

[eddiemigue]

Looks great Oliver. How wide are your beds? I am stunned by the amount of lighting that you have (8 bulb T5 fixtures?). I knew that my system had insufficient lighting, but looking at yours, it really highlights how defficient my lighting is.

[JCO]

I bet the electric bill isn't deficient

[dead_sled]

The fried zuc looks amazing. That definitely made me hungry.

[Oliver]

The lighting is a little large for the grow bed. The planting area is 40" X 40" in each bed and a little more for the growing area when you consider a little overhang of the plants. The 8 tube T5s lights are 22" X 44" of lighted area but have outside dimensions of 25.5" X 49". Due to their outside width, 2 side by side lights pushes them well beyond the grow bed edges. We have discovered that indoor grow bed lighting needs to extend beyond the growing area a little or the plants on the edge don't do as well as the ones in the middle.

The lights draw 400 Watts each from the wall for a total of 800 Watts per grow bed. That works out to 72 watts per square foot. 50 Watts per square foot would be a better ratio for economic reasons, as that is what is needed. It would also be better if the lights were closer to the plants, but due to their overall width we needed to raise them up to keep visitors from bumping their heads on the light corners as the walkways are only about 22 inches wide.

We are redesigning that room to have a single row of lights with a narrower growing area so we can lower the lights. We are hoping there will be enough height in the room to have two levels of grow beds, one on the bottom and one on the top, each with their own lights. This will require using three rows of 4 foot Duffy Ducts under each light with 7 inches of center to center separation instead of large media filled grow beds; and will, therefore, require an external bio-filter. Pictures coming when complete.

As to the cost of electricity, we just received the first summer season monthly electric bill for over $700 and it is now really hot here with the heat wave we are having in the west. It is supposed to reach 108 for the next two days and the swamp cooler is running 24 hours a day. We have 6 KW of solar panels setting in the garage and workers are slowly (due to the heat) installing the wiring and hopefully putting the panels up on the roof next week. That should cut our electric bill considerably.

Oliver

[JCO]

Whoa Dude, now I know how poor I really am...your electric bill is more than my house payment. Obama...help....I'm broke and I can't get up or something like that