It arrived!!! My brand new 90w LED UFO light!!! Check out my setup...

My 90w LED UFO hooked up to a cheap coat rack I bought at Canadian Tier

 My plants from one of my grow closets now in their new spot under the 90W LED UFO

OK guys I can hardly contain my excitment!...but I'll try my best, lol. Today the new light arrived by mail! A nice guy from the post office delivered it right to my door. I couldnt wait to plug it in and move some of my plants from my grow closet under it. But I had to go and buy the coat rack before I could hang it because I didn't want to put holes in the ceiling. I made a few calls to some stores in my area and the closest and cheapest place I could find that had coat racks was Canadian Tier. So off I went and got the coat rack. It cost me 19.99 + tax. I got home and put the coat rack together and finaly the moment was at hand...the hanging of the new light! I had a few chains left over from hanging the CFLs in the grow closets so I used one of them and in no time the light was hung! I then moved the plants from one of the grow closets under the light (as seen in the picture). I kept the partial shade plants including the carrots a bit further from the light and put the "summertime" lemon directy under it. I also put two avocado seeds in the vacinity of the light (they dont like full sun at this stage). The other two smaller lemon seedlings will stay under the 125w CFL for now untill they get too big for the light. I will be getting my strawberry seeds in the mail soon. I ordered them from ebay a couple of days ago. The strawberry plants will fit in the empty spaces under the light around the summertime lemon seedling. I will also be putting some new plants in the now empty grow closet. so i will keep you posted.

check out my "guerilla" grow spot!

Me infront of my intended grow area

Some bushes that will be lush with leaves in the spring/summer and serve as "cover" for my garden

 A big tree in the area near my "guerilla" site

The forested area behind my grow spot (great "cover")

Well there you have it... my grow area for my guerilla garden. I will be planting strawberries and lettuce for sure and perhaps tomatoes as well, Im thinking about planting some partial shade plants closer to the tree but I haven't made up my mind about that yet. I intend to plant some tobacco plants around my garden as I have heard they are good insect repellents. I've ordered the strawberry seeds (mainly for my indoor garden right now, but also so I will have them ready for the spring), I will order the tobacco seeds in February and the lettuce and tomatoes I will buy as seedlings from my local plant store when spring comes around. There are a few things that worry me about my guerilla garden location...One is it's sort of close to the road (but there is nothing I can do about that its the best spot I could find). Another is that there are a few young ever green trees about 3 feet tall that were planted by the city in that area last year. Im hoping they won't come and check up on them, but if they do I hope they don't tear out my plants. But what can I say it's worth a shot, right?

These things are great!!!!...

This is my 125w CFL grow light! I have been using it for about 2 months now and i have had the best results ever! I had previously atempted to grow a big indoor vegitable garden with a 1000w HPS grow light (1000w is much more powerful and covers much much more growing space) but with no success. The bulb was so hot that my plants were deformed and burning under the light. It was very very hot. So I did some research on what I could do to fix the problem. The fix to the problem was to buy a "cool tube" that fits around the grow light and run vent fans connected to the cool tube to take the heat away from the light. Well at the time I didn't have the money to purchase the cool tube so I just left it for a while and just grew plants out side in my back yard garden. A couple months passed and I decided to move to a new apartment with out a garden so I got back into indoor grow light gardening. But the 1000w was too big for my bachelor apartment. It covers a space of 5'x5' and I didnt think that was the right size for my apartment. So I sold the 1000w HPS and bought the two 125w CFLs... and boy! am I ever glad!!! They run very cool (not very much heat from them) so I can get away with a fan blowing on them to keep the seedlings safe from the heat, and one of them does'nt even have a fan. I just keep it a bit farther away from the seedling, and it is very happy! This time around my atempt to grow trees and plants has been perfect. The trees and plants are healthy as can be. They are showing amazingly fast growth, and color-wise they are looking very vibrant and bright! I have no complaints about the CFLs. The only thing about the CFLs is that they are meant for a maximum of one or two plants or small trees (I'd say after the plant or tree reaches a height of 1.5 to 2 feet its time to put it under a more powerful light). This is due to the fact that with the CFLs the "full sun" plants or trees need to be very close to the bulb to have any effect. Im experimenting with the carrots to see if it is possible to increase the grow area by placing partial shade or shade plants/trees around the CFL. We'll see if that theory works with the CFLs. I'll be sure to keep you updated about that experiment in future posts.

as promised a look at the growth of lemon seedling #1...

                                                          lemon seedling #1 at 3 days old

lemon seedling #1 at 8 days old

seedling #1 at 16 days old

seedling #1 at 23 days old

and last but not least 29 days old

seedling #1 at 29 days old - first branch

So there you guys have it...the growth of lemon seedling #1 from "birth" till 29 days old. In the upcoming posts I'll show you the amazing growth of the lemon I started in the summer on my balcony, or as i call it "the summertime lemon".



great avocados start from the planting of a single seed....

Today I was sitting at home and I was getting to be very bored and a bit stir crazy so I decided to go to the supermarket to see what kinds of fruits and vegetables they had there in order to plant something.... anything! So I  looked around and decided on what i wanted to start. i went home all excited and got to work... I started an avocado seed! I didnt have enough money to buy the toothpicks to keep the avocado seed hanging in the cup (I know I know your probably like "its only 2 bucks for toothpicks!" but time are tough and i couldnt aford it) so I used two forks instead, and guess what, they work fine. Avocados are very healthy fruits they have vitamin B6, vitamin C, and avocados can help regulate blood pressure and may lower cholesterol. This little guy can grow to be a very big tree so incorperating the bonsai methods i have talked about in earlyer posts is necissary to ceep it as an ornamental tree inside. This avocado seed will fist crack after 4 weeks then after another four weeks it will have its first root growing. I cant wait to plant this guy in soil. Not every avocado seed will germinate so no promesses with this one but we can hope for the best.

My plans to expand the indoor garden...

LED grow light over a plant

Well the holiday season is here again...and its cold out side, and winter is just around the corner. It's the perfect time to expand my indoor garden! And my mother (god bless her soul) offered to buy me a present and asked what it was i wanted for the holidays. So I got all excited and asked her if an LED grow light was OK. We looked online and found a 90watt UFO LED grow light for around $250 including the shipping and taxes, and she agreed to purchase it for me! So I will be expanding my indoor garden in about 2-3 weeks when my new LED light arives. Im not 100% sure what I'm going to grow under it yet but I'm leaning towards strawberries.
The reason I chose a 90w over any other one was a) because of the price (the higher watt ones were more expensive) b) because I had seen videos on youtube that show an experiment growing with 90w LED UFO light and they proved that they are good grow lights (even out performing the conventional HPS grow lights) and c) because the LED grow lights dont put out any heat what so ever so I wouldn't need to buy a fan or a "cool tube" or any kind of cooling system as I would for the HPS and MH grow lights.

 PS: The 90w UFO LED grow lights are equivalent to between 400w - 600w HPS or MH, so they are much more powerful than the 125w CFLs I have now and cover a bigger growing area.

How I intend to control my lemon trees' growth by using bonsai methods...

By cutting off  the bottom 2/3 of the roots...

and careful pruning....

a bonsai tree is born!...and thats exactly what im going to do to my lemon trees! (When they reach a height of 3.5 - 4 feet, that is). I am still in the stages of learning this my self so it will be a neat experiment, but to tell you the truth I'm a little nervous about it. It could go terribly wrong and my tree might not recover from the stress of the pruning and root cutting, but its something I have to do if I want a manageable ornamental tree and not a 30 foot monster in my apt. So its all or nothing here!

I have 3 lemon seedlings all together check 'em out...

Lemon seedling #1 at 29 days old

Leomn seedling #2 at 27 days old

Lemon seedling # 3 at 3 months partial shade on balcony (with not much growth)

and 5 weeks 5 days under CFL (lots of growth, nearly doubled in size)

Now that we've seen my lemons and carrots in my next post I will explain how I'm going to contain the lemon trees' growth and how I do grafting. In later posts I will show the growth of the lemons from day one (except for the biggest one that I started on the balcony in the summer, because I didnt have the camera yet)

My carrot seedlings (3 days/6days/12days old)...

  3 days old

6 days old

12 days old

What im growing now in my indoor garden...

In the first stages of my blog I will be growing....you guessed it by the pictures...lemons and carrots!
Lemon trees grow to be big trees (as seen in the picture below) and I live in a bachelor apt. in the city, (namely Toronto, Canada) so having 30 foot trees in my apt. is not an option, and planting them out side is out of the question aswell, due to the freezing temps. However I will be able to keep the trees at a consistent height of 3.5 - 4 feet and they will be the perfect size for an ornamental and fruit bearing tree in my apt. and I'll fill you in on how I will do that in a later post. Later on I will have to get some stronger grow lights for the trees because once they grow to be 3-4 feet tall the 125w CFL lights will have little effect on them. As for the fruit, it takes between 5-10 years for the tree to be mature enough to produce fruit.....unless....you graft the tree early on...which I will be doing and ofcourse documenting. By grafting the young lemon tree you speed up the process of fruit production by alot. Instead of 5-10 years the wait is reduced to 2-3 years, and I will explain all about grafting in another post.

Now moving on to the carrots...carrots are root vegetables like potatoes and onions, they take about 60-80 days from germination to be ready to harvest, although there are some strains that take up to 100 days. Carrots have lots of good vitamins and some protein aswell and are good for your eyes. My carrots are now 12 days from germination and I have taken photos of them through out the 12 days to show you their growth. I will be uploading the photos in the coming posts. Carrots like temperatures of around 18*C but I'm sure they will do just fine in my apt. which is a consistant temp. of 20-22*C. I like to eat my carrots raw as a healthy snack. I eat them the same way bugs bunny eats them, lol.

My indoor garden setup....

Here is my indoor garden setup. It is in the two coat closets in my bachelor apt. It consists of  two - 125 watt compact fluorescent grow lights (CFL) and 2 - reflectors, acouple of bake pans to catch the water run off and of course plants!, lol, Also there is one timer for each grow closet to turn off and on the lights at a certain time so I dont have to :) For one of the grow closets I have a fan blowing on the CFL to blow the heat away from it, allowing me to put it closer to the plants and tree seedlings. In the other closet I dont have a fan because...well... Ive been too lazy to go on craigs list and buy one (it is almost winter here in Canada and they dont sell them this time of year in most of the stores).