Phytotoma rara
Active Member
Hi everyone,
I'm a chilean newbie attempting to build a tiny growbox (really tiny), mainly because I live with my parents and I've got to keep this as a secret (so no odors nor noises either).This is my first everything here. First post, first plant, first growbox. I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks and my project is now on the go, so I wanna let you know what I've done and what I've planned for the future in order to get the proper advises, let me start with what I've done:
I came home a few weeks ago and found myself procastinating my duties (i'm an agronomy student), so I found myself a better activity and came out with what's now my growbox:
This is a very small car cooler I won at McDonald's for buying a BigMac. Stripped everything apart from it (conserved some electrical connections and the stock fan), found a small wooden box that would serve as my soil container and drilled holes across them to let the water drain easily.
In such small growbox I really had to care about the lights size, so after looking for some cheap (cost is also an issue for me) CFLs, I concluded that 3x12W was the best possible option. I found 2 of these in my house (one 2700k, one 4100k) and bought one more at the store (6500k). I did a 3 socket parallel connection and got it right (I used the same wire entries that came with the cooler). For ventilation, I took the stock fan that came with the cooler and placed it as an extractor with no need of making any additional holes since it fitted perfectly with the one that came with the cooler, for intake I just took a piece off from the top and I'm letting the air come in that way (it also helps to keep the lights colder). To keep it silent, i connected the fan to a potentiometer I had in some old PC speakers, I also used the same wire connections available in the original cooler (you can see the connections and the fan dimmer in the ugly picture below).
Those white ropes you can see in the picture I thought them as a way to tie the plant, now I figured out that LST is much easier with metal cables, so they're not gonna be used by now. For reflection I just used common aluminium paper. For the odors, I'll be using a tiny carbon filter I found (it's a replacement for an odor-free WC) for US$10, which I'll install when smell becomes an issue. I also bought a timer at the local store for obvious reasons.
Now, that's my setup. Total cost was around US$20 for the growbox (i recycled many things), let's get to the other part:
I bought some seeds from Delicious Seeds I found in a store here in Santiago (they're kinda hard to get in Chile). The strain is called La Bella Afrodita (they were 3xUS$32):
For the soil, I bought a 1:1:1 mix of perlite, humus and peat for US$3 (2.5Kg). This was really one of the hard parts: space is so limited i also had to limit my soil volume, so I placed a half cup over the soilmix in order to give the plant a better depth for its roots (otherwise it was gonna get vertically rootbound too early). I'd say total soil volume in my growbox is around 1L.
Last week I started germinating the seed and I moved it into soil yesterday with only the "bluer" (4100K and 6500K) CFLs on. It's getting 24 hours daylight and I think it's doing well, here I've got some pictures from yesterday and today (day 2).
Day 1 (seedling didn't want to open the cotyledons)
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Now, the main purpose was to have a very low-profile growbox that works. So far so good, it's really unnoticable as I've placed it next to my PC and noise is no issue (nor light), gotta wait for the smell to come. My growbox is located to the right of the computer case, behind the drawers:
Well, hope you like it and that you could help me out with some advise. And also apologize me if my english is not so good (haven't written in a long time).
I'm a chilean newbie attempting to build a tiny growbox (really tiny), mainly because I live with my parents and I've got to keep this as a secret (so no odors nor noises either).This is my first everything here. First post, first plant, first growbox. I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks and my project is now on the go, so I wanna let you know what I've done and what I've planned for the future in order to get the proper advises, let me start with what I've done:
I came home a few weeks ago and found myself procastinating my duties (i'm an agronomy student), so I found myself a better activity and came out with what's now my growbox:
This is a very small car cooler I won at McDonald's for buying a BigMac. Stripped everything apart from it (conserved some electrical connections and the stock fan), found a small wooden box that would serve as my soil container and drilled holes across them to let the water drain easily.
In such small growbox I really had to care about the lights size, so after looking for some cheap (cost is also an issue for me) CFLs, I concluded that 3x12W was the best possible option. I found 2 of these in my house (one 2700k, one 4100k) and bought one more at the store (6500k). I did a 3 socket parallel connection and got it right (I used the same wire entries that came with the cooler). For ventilation, I took the stock fan that came with the cooler and placed it as an extractor with no need of making any additional holes since it fitted perfectly with the one that came with the cooler, for intake I just took a piece off from the top and I'm letting the air come in that way (it also helps to keep the lights colder). To keep it silent, i connected the fan to a potentiometer I had in some old PC speakers, I also used the same wire connections available in the original cooler (you can see the connections and the fan dimmer in the ugly picture below).
Those white ropes you can see in the picture I thought them as a way to tie the plant, now I figured out that LST is much easier with metal cables, so they're not gonna be used by now. For reflection I just used common aluminium paper. For the odors, I'll be using a tiny carbon filter I found (it's a replacement for an odor-free WC) for US$10, which I'll install when smell becomes an issue. I also bought a timer at the local store for obvious reasons.
Now, that's my setup. Total cost was around US$20 for the growbox (i recycled many things), let's get to the other part:
I bought some seeds from Delicious Seeds I found in a store here in Santiago (they're kinda hard to get in Chile). The strain is called La Bella Afrodita (they were 3xUS$32):
For the soil, I bought a 1:1:1 mix of perlite, humus and peat for US$3 (2.5Kg). This was really one of the hard parts: space is so limited i also had to limit my soil volume, so I placed a half cup over the soilmix in order to give the plant a better depth for its roots (otherwise it was gonna get vertically rootbound too early). I'd say total soil volume in my growbox is around 1L.
Last week I started germinating the seed and I moved it into soil yesterday with only the "bluer" (4100K and 6500K) CFLs on. It's getting 24 hours daylight and I think it's doing well, here I've got some pictures from yesterday and today (day 2).
Day 1 (seedling didn't want to open the cotyledons)
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Now, the main purpose was to have a very low-profile growbox that works. So far so good, it's really unnoticable as I've placed it next to my PC and noise is no issue (nor light), gotta wait for the smell to come. My growbox is located to the right of the computer case, behind the drawers:
Well, hope you like it and that you could help me out with some advise. And also apologize me if my english is not so good (haven't written in a long time).
hope it works out mate!!
