Winter Growing Inside

(TOC)


  When lettuce is grown inside with poor lighting, like in the first picture below, it can become leggy as it stretches for the light. Although most herbs, due to their small leaves, can grow just about anywhere in the house where there is at least a little ambient light coming through a window, lettuce doesn't do so well. The lettuce in the first pic and the ones below are of the same type.

Lettuce can be grown just about as well indoors under lights as in my grow room, with the only real difference being me adding supplemental CO2 in the grow room. The main thing that makes the grow room do so well, which can be duplicated indoors, is having the plants either in "total dark" or "total light."

The pictures further down show a 4' wide cubby-hole in one of my walls in a loft area. I've hung 4' T5 lighting, controlled by a timer. Using the amount of time the lights are on, and keeping it completely dark when they're off I can control the rate of growth without them becoming stretched and leggy. If I keep the lights on for only 4 hours, they will remain sort of in a "suspended" state of growth. That can be very useful when I already have plenty of maturing lettuce in the grow room that's ready to pick. I can let the "controlled growth rate" lettuce stay a certain size until the other that I'm currently using begins to run out. Then I can move some of them in the grow room and allow them to grow to full size. I could just as easily leave the lights on longer (for example 8-12 hours) within the cubb-hole to speed up the growth where they're at.

The lights are hung by chains on hooks so they can be adjusted up or down to accommodate the lettuce height as it grows.

The last picture shows a large piece of cardboard being used to completely seal the opening to keep the plants in total darkness while the lights are off. It could be removed when the lights are on but does no harm just to leave it in place with the small vent hole at the top to allow excess heat to escape while allowing very minimal ambient light in.

lettuce grown with poor lighting


zoom


4' T5 lights over lettuce


zoom
 
a closer look


zoom


showing lights on


zoom
 
covered up


zoom