Hello all,
I am about to become a gardener as well, but I am a blank slate. Since I live in an apartment in the city and without the possibility of using the garden (balcony is also not possible), I am toying with the idea of getting a decent and large indoor grow box.
However, the offer is quite large and quite confusing. Does anyone have experience with these things? Which are particularly recommended? The price does not matter for now. I’m willing to pay decent money for it to have something neat and durable.
Do you have any recommendations? What do I have to look out for?
It really depends on how many plants you want to grow. Once you know the size just choose whatever looks good for you
I would like to grow 3-6 plants. But I am not sure if I have enough space for so many. I have about 1.6m x 0.9m space, a few cm more if necessary. Is there much difference in volume, or power consumption?
In volume as a physical space, obviously. There are mamy rules of thumb on the internet regarding how much space each plant needs. It may seem like a lot but more air will help you in the beginning (less chance of mold).
In volume as in loudness there will be a difference too. You need to be able to exchange the air inside the growbox in unit time (again, rules of thumb from the internet). For small boxes this means less cfm at the fan and this means less volume. Three plants will also need more light, so count that in.
Generally my way of approaching problems like this is doing research online. See what others have done with similar space, read product recommendations and be ready to make mistakes. I dont have personal experience with this kind of a setup (one plant at a time here) so my suggestions are purposefully vague. Maybe someone who’s been down this road will chime in.
I got started with spacebuckets. It’s a community in Reddit, but also there’s a website with lots of tutorials on how to build the enclosure that fits your needs with the materials locally available (I opted for Euro boxes).
It’s not an already made kit, you would have to build it yourself, but it’s pretty simple.
Also a lot of tutorials have things like Arduino controllers to check the pH and whatnot. Mine just has a lamp, a fan and a timer. You don’t really need any of the fancy stuff, but you can add it later.
People say the Earthbox is super simple. Fill it with living soil and top dress with healthy vermicompost and maybe a mineral mix made for living soils. Then you keep the bottom filled with water and it does all the work for you.
