The indoor farm is a project to try to make a sustainable indoor farm as a simple solution to a difficult problem that is the production of food in industrialized countries.
Due to the problems of urban sprawl which restricts the surface for producing food, the difficulties that local farmers face to maintain competitivity with other producers, the lack of ressources and many other reasons, local food production is becoming very hard.
One of the main solution to those problems is to produce the food in vertical indoor farms in urban areas.
These farms can produce food in a controlled environment using renewable energy and new technology to boost the production.
Those tests will be performed on raddish and lettuce plants and the generated results will then be used for optimisation.
Tests to evaluate the faisability of an indoor vegetable production using LEDs as the source of radiation.
Those tests will be applied to raddish and lettuce samples during several months to test the optimal light condidions.
After testing the light, various substrates will be used and compared.
After selecting the substrate, various water supplement will be used to further increase the samples quality and quantity.
Because of their adaptability to various environment and the short time between sowing and maturity 1
21.01.2018 - Plantation of pink radish with 5 LEDs (3 660nm, 2 450 nm) under constant light
23.01.2018 - Sprouting of the first seeds observed
24.01.2018 - All of the seeds have sprouted. Some sprouts are already some centimeters long. A white fluff is observed but is not a fungi. It's part of the natural way a radish seed sprouts.
25.01.2018 - Sprouts are still growning and look healty. Water was added in the morning.
29.01.2018 - Sprouts are now several cm long. Out of the 10, 4 that were longer than 7cm were planted in a larger container of normal dirt substrate and were placed under the same light wavelength as the seed (2 LEDs of 660nm, 2 LEDs of 450nm). The remaining seeds are left in the seedling pots.
03.02.2018 - Sprouts that were not yet transfered have been planted inside an argile beads pot. Some sprouts from other seeds that were present in the dirt container have showed up. The environment feels like it has too much humidity.
A temperature and humidity sensor has been set up in the pot.
Seeds of lettuce were planted in the pot.
There's now 6 LEDs lights, 3 blue, 3 red.
18.02.2018 - Seeds of lettuce and radishes have been planted in separate seeding pots and a new light system using 1W resistance (instead of 1/4 of watt resistance) has been set up for the seeds.
22.02.2018 16 new lettuce have been planted in cardboard seedling pots and placed under the light system.
10.10.2018 A small setup has been created with 4 LEDs for basil wintering. Results after this winter :)
http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/36/2/380.full.pdf+html http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00103627109366338