This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we’re on a field trip.
We’re actually at a subscriber’s house, I’m actually travelling here in Las Vegas,
got an inquiry the other day or a couple of weeks ago from somebody in Las Vegas about
building raised beds and I answered some questions and I thought, “Hey I’m going out to Vegas
for convention, let’s check out and see if we could visit this subscriber of my YouTube
videos and check out what they’ve built, what they’re doing and how they’re growing
your food so you guys out there could see what each of you guys are doing.
And may be if I’m in your city, I’ll be stopping by real soon.
So I flew out here to Las Vegas, and I brought one of my prized plants with me, and these
are some tree collards and this was actually in my suitcase on the carry-on, and definitely
it’s cooking here in the Vegas heat, it’s not looking optimal, but you know what, it’s
still alive and hopefully, with any luck he can get this back and grow tree collards here
in Las Vegas.
So, it’s a nice desert landscaping here in Las Vegas, interesting place to grow some
foods, let’s go inside and see what he’s got growing on.
So now we’re in the kitchen, and he’s growing in all the different spaces of his
house and right in his kitchen, his kitchen sink and stove and everything, and he has
a herb bed, herb garden right in his kitchen, all in these little planters with these fluorescent
tube lights that are really bright.
Looks like a full spectrum, he’s got all kinds of things growing, chives, basil, rosemary,
dill, parsley, thyme, Greek oregano, cilantro, and he’s placed magazines and other boxes
so some plants will get closer or more far away from the light depending on how tall
they are.
So Jason you want to tell us about what you’re doing over here?
Yeah, basically we just wanted a nice way to just be able to grab our herbs real quick,
my girlfriend’s actually a chef.
So she likes to use this stuff all the time.
We’re still going to have hour herb garden, our herb bed outside also, but this was just
another fun way to do it just to compare indoors and outdoors and see what happens.
This is actually the first thing we set up here before we even thought about putting
beds outside.
So, this was the beginning of it all right here, and that’s pretty much it, I have
to raise and lower the lights here every once in a while depending on how high things grow,
I have to switch the orders around a little bit, but it’s pretty fun, and we can cut
them and dry them, I have some organic liquid fertilizer that I’ve been experimenting
with, so, yeah that’s pretty much it.
Cool, looks good.
So did you try to grow this without the light and how would it do, or did it not work too
well, or did you really think you just needed the light or could you put it by a window,
I mean this is in the middle of your house, so it’s not getting too much ambient light
as it is.
Yeah it’s, I didn’t even try to grow it without the light, because unless we have
all the lights on it’s naturally pretty dark in here.
So, I think if I tried to grow something by that window, during summer it gets so hot
it might just get fried, so I figured this would be the most efficient area to do it
right here with the light, and this light is actually a two-bulb T5 set-up here, and
I think I got it from cyclegardeners.com, but it wasn’t that expensive, and it’s
working really well so far.
Yeah the fluorescent bulbs, next to LED bulbs are the most efficient, so you’re doing
it the right way and those are T5s, so they don’t use too much power.
Now do you leave these on all the time or are they on a timer system where they go on
eight hours a day and turn off or?
They’re actually on a timer just like the ones upstairs are on a timer, these are also
on a timer, it’s on the other side, goes behind the couch, so they’re on for 16 hours
a day, and then it turns off automatically at night, and then when I wake up in the morning
it’s already on again, so.
Alright, so we’re going to go upstairs because Jason is growing in every area of his house
from his kitchen to upstairs and let’s check this out, his hallway upstairs.
Man and check out those cool lights, I don’t know how well this is going to show up on
the video, but man, those are some LED lights.
LED lights are the most efficient lighting, and those are called glow panels.
I’ve actually never seen them in use, they look really cool, look at all those colors,
and he has all these plants, so he’s going to tell us more about what he’s doing over
here.
Alright Jason.
Alright so, basically this is something I just set up, I’m doing a few different experiments
here.
This is [inaudible] matting, it’s sitting on this water-proof film which the matting
came with, and then I made platforms for it here.
This is just some green Styrofoam that you can get at any type of craft store, and then
under that it’s sitting on just these cake pans, they’re 50 cents at the grocery store,
and then I use those as a reservoir, so the capillary mat just lays in the reservoir there
and soaks up the water, and then it brings it up here, and this is moist, if there’s
something that causes pressure it will stay moist like this, you can feel the moisture
there.
Oh wow, so right there where the plant was it’s really moist and you go over to here,
and it’s dry.
That’s pretty amazing I never heard of this stuff.
So you pressed your finger along there and then all the water comes up.
So basically what want to…
Wow, look at that you can draw your name.
Yep.
You see I don’t know if they can see that on the video, but I’m just pressing it and
you can see where the water, and otherwise it’s dry.
That’s amazing.
So my idea was, this is a three-inch ABS pipe, I actually bought ten-foot lengths of this
and cut them into four inch tall segments.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to put them on here and fill them with soil,
put my seedlings, these are just pea pellets, I put the seedlings in here and I fill it
with soil, and then just let them sit here on the capillary mat, and then they’re just
going to stay just perfectly moist all the time, and then all I have to do once in a
while is just lift this up and fill the reservoir under there.
And then, so it goes from the pea pellets it goes into here, and it’ll just sit there
for six to eight weeks.
And the benefit of this is that when I take this out to the garden, I can dig the hole,
set this in there, and just push it right through, and it comes out the bottom I don’t
have to disturb the roots or anything, just pull this out.
Right.
Wow that’s cool.
So these plants in here look like they’re really purple, now they’re not really purple
or anything, it’s just because the lights make it look like a funny color right?
Because these LEDs are like, I don’t know if you can see this on the video, but they’re
blue and red.
And the idea for that is blue and red are the primary spectrums that the plants use
during different stages of the growth.
During the seedling stage it’s mostly blue, and then as they get older and closer to flowering,
it uses more red.
So that’s why they’re so efficient, because it’s just the perfect spectrums all the
time.
Each of these panels I believe is only 28 watts of power.
Wow.
So this whole thing is like a little over 200 watts, where if you got just a HPS lamp
or something, those will take up to 1000 watts of power.
So I figured if I was going to have this whole setup here, this would be the best way to
do it to save the most electricity.
And you can see it’s pretty efficient, I mean look at this, this is grown from seed
under these lights, and it’s getting pretty big now, it’s about ready to go outside.
Yeah that’s really cool.
So I see you lined this with some foam stuff or just for some paneling, is that to reflect
the light or to just make sure your walls don’t get splashed or…
Yeah well it’s dual purpose, it’s to help protect the walls from splashing, but also,
I made sure it was flat white because flat white will reflect the full spectrum light
back into the plants, it’ll do a much better job than the brown paint.
How about putting tin foil or something to reflect the light?
You think that would have worked or a mirror?
I actually thought about using Mylar, which I have down there I’ll show you.
It’s the same thing, the same type of film that I’ll be using for mulch on top of my
beds.
It can reflect light but I figured for this, not really necessary because I’m growing
plants to full fruit here I’m just starting the seeds.
I see.
So I figured that would be efficient enough.
Cool.
Yeah the ambience of your lights, they’re definitely really cool but how much did one
of those set you back if you don’t mind me asking?
Each one, I got them from Amazon, each one’s about a hundred, they change in price a little
bit so it’s about anywhere between 114 to 120 or so.
Yeah so I mean…
Wow.
Yeah $100 light man.
But definitely they’re going to pretty much last forever, the LEDs really don’t burn
out, really long life expectancy and they’ll save you money in the long run.
Really cool, I’m going to have to maybe pick up one of those to play with.
Alright great, thank you Jason.
So I hope you enjoyed part one, seeing what Jason is growing inside in containers in his
house underneath fluorescent and LED lighting.
It’s really cool, I really enjoyed checking that out.
Stay tuned for part two in an upcoming episode where we’re going to go outside in his backyard
to check out his raised beds, and to see what Jason is growing in containers.
So you can do it too, it’s very easy.
So once again this is John Kohler growingyourgreens.com, keep on growing.