So, where to start? Reading, a lot about growing under LED learned me that plants need certain wavelengths of light to grow and to flower and fruit. Seems that they particularly like red and blue light. Blue for vegative growth and red for flowers and fruit. I first had a look if there are pre-made kits available. And there are. But they are rather expensive, and they give me less control over the ratio of blue and red LED’s that I want to use. So, just ordered 64 red and 64 blue 10mm bright LED’s. My plan was to make a panel of 8*8 LED’s and, with my order I could make a completely red, completely blue or something in between panel. I wanted to make the panel variable, so I could change ratio blue/red without taking the whole panel apart again.

So, I made a design to put the LED’s in little blocks of polystyrene foam which I could then exchange. Then you end up in having something like this:

Then I made a compartment to put the plants in

So, why LED? They have a low power consumption. I’m not interested in the question if it is possible to grow chili inside, because I know it is possible. But using artificial lighting with a power consumption of 600 watts or more, meaning I could go on a holiday from my electricity bill at the end of the year, made me decide to stick with LED.

When I was in Australia, I got a bit addicted to eating chili. At my internship we had these small cute chilies which were prrrretty hot. I liked them a lot and decided to take some seeds home. Now I’m already back quite a while from Australia and I actually didn’t grow that much chili over the years. Probably also because the weather in The Netherlands is normally not that optimal for growing chilies, especially not outside. Normally I start 1 plant somewhere around March, which is then, when I’m lucky big enough around summertime to give me some fruit.

So, a couple of months ago, I started reading about growing under LED light. After reading a lot about wavelengths , photosynthesis, mcd’s etc etc. I decided that I want to start an experiment to test if I can grow the plants, and get fruit, from solely having them under LED light.

Last time when I was in Winterthur again, I only took my 50mm prime plastic fantastic Canon. It gives such great sharp pics! Look at this nice pink tulip which I found in the front garden of Christine.

I made some more pics, have a look at them by clicking the thumbs below!