timetravel_0
Mame
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I've set up a little indoor grow area in my guest bathroom, mainly as a little experiment- and to give me something more to do in the winter.
I chose the bathroom as it gets a 2x daily dose of humidity (from the shower), and I can keep the door shut to preserve humidity and temperature.
So far, I've split a simple cheap $4 pot of dwarf Schefflera (PV9995) into 12 4" pots. 5 of the plants have larger stalks and developed root systems, and I've potted them into pure lava. The other 7 are cuttings and are in Perlite. The whole system is sitting in an old seed starter tray that I've perforated for drainage. Illumination is handled by a 12 watt LED grow lamp that puts 50k lumens/m2 to the closer plants and 10k lumens/m2 to the distant cuttings.
Anyways, I've found that I can keep the temperature at a steady 85 degrees with the door shut. However, what is more interesting are the variances in humidity. Showers in the morning and night will supply a steady 30% humidity in the room. Immediately after steaming up the small bathroom, it only reaches 50% humidity in the room. The real interesting point is the humidity in and amongst the plants. With the pots sitting inside the tray that supports 1/4" of water at all times (the pots are up and out of this layer of water), the plants maintain a steady microclimate of 50% humidity.
My take home message from this little experiment: placing the pots above a tray of water does increase the humidity available to the plant... But my "humidity tray" is much larger proportionally than those typically seen for Bonsai use.
I chose the bathroom as it gets a 2x daily dose of humidity (from the shower), and I can keep the door shut to preserve humidity and temperature.
So far, I've split a simple cheap $4 pot of dwarf Schefflera (PV9995) into 12 4" pots. 5 of the plants have larger stalks and developed root systems, and I've potted them into pure lava. The other 7 are cuttings and are in Perlite. The whole system is sitting in an old seed starter tray that I've perforated for drainage. Illumination is handled by a 12 watt LED grow lamp that puts 50k lumens/m2 to the closer plants and 10k lumens/m2 to the distant cuttings.
Anyways, I've found that I can keep the temperature at a steady 85 degrees with the door shut. However, what is more interesting are the variances in humidity. Showers in the morning and night will supply a steady 30% humidity in the room. Immediately after steaming up the small bathroom, it only reaches 50% humidity in the room. The real interesting point is the humidity in and amongst the plants. With the pots sitting inside the tray that supports 1/4" of water at all times (the pots are up and out of this layer of water), the plants maintain a steady microclimate of 50% humidity.
My take home message from this little experiment: placing the pots above a tray of water does increase the humidity available to the plant... But my "humidity tray" is much larger proportionally than those typically seen for Bonsai use.
