I am making a small grow box out of one of those plastic tubs(often used for kids toys) and I'm gonna put aluminum foil in in to act as a reflecent for the light,I'm gonna use a lava lamp 40 watt bulb to start out the plan growing and when they reach a few inches I'm gonna replace it with a 150 watt HPS light and I'll have one small fan in there and I'll cut a small hole on the side of it and put a dryer hose from the hole outside for the stale air to escape and I'll be using Mirecal gro moisture control soil and tap water for the food and nutrients... How good would this work and do you guys have any tips or alters you would make?
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Okay.... What your gonna build here is a Death Oven. So I'll try to help some.
For one... if you dont need the box, then dont use it. Im not sure why people like putting their plants in boxes so much. So if you dont have to conceal the plant, then ditch the box. You plant would much rather be in the comfort of the room your in and not in some homemade oven that your going to build.
As far as the tin foil. Tin foil creates hot spots that can harm your plant. If you can get it up without wrinkling the tin foil, then it will do, but once you put all those wrinkles in it, thats when you get the hot spots. So to avoid that, you should buy Mylar, like someone else said above. Thats the best stuff and has some of the highest reflectivity around. If you cant get that, then use the tin foil with as little wrinkles as possible and put the dull looking side facing your plants. Not the shiny side.
Lava Lamp... I've never even heard of anyone using a lava lamp before. Get a Compact Florescent Light (CFL), with a blue specturm and another with a yellowish spectrum. Surround your plants in as many bulbs as you can. Put them on the sides, the tops and any where else you can get them around your plants. And place them all about 4-6 inches from the plants. Make sure to get yourself a cheap timer to plug these lights into. Do not try and turn the lights on and off by hand. You'll end up screwing things up. So buy a cheap $5 timer and plug those lights into it. DO NOT try and stick a 150 HPS inside of a little plastic box. You'll probably end up setting your damn house on fire.
If you still insist on using a box, then skip the dry hose. That is 100% unnecessary. Find a hole in the wall computer store and go in there and ask for a computer fan. You can probably get one for under $20. Now instal that computer fan in the bottom corner of your box and mount it so its blowing air out of the box. Then make yourself a little hole on the opposite end of the box, as your intake hole. When the exhaust fan is on, it will create negative pressure in your box and suck fresh air in through your intake hole. Now if you skip the box in the first plant... you dont have to worry about this step. But make sure you have a small oscilating fan blowing on your plants at all times. But make sure not to put the fan too close to your plants. If you do then the leaves on your plants will get what I refer to as "wind chapped" and it will look like a nutrient deficiency. So make sure your fan isnt right up on your plants. If it is.. put it on its slowest setting.
Miriacle Grow with moisture control is a bad way to go. First off, the moisture control is for plants around the house that people forget to water. So they do this moisture control thing to keep your soil wet for longer, reducing the chances of you killing your plants. Soil that hold moisture longer, means less oxygen to your roots. Less oxygen to your roots means slower growth and lower yields. So I would go back and buy something with no moisture control, no time release nutrients and preferably something organic.
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