Sweet set up Fruitnut, how much did those lights cost you and is that Emerald?

For the two fixtures, 864 watts, about $560. An expensive toy more for my own amusement than any real fruit production. The sunroom by itself would probably do the job.

The plant in the picture is a Jewel. It has slightly smaller fruit than Emerald but both set a huge crop. I have a small Emerald and Sweetcrisp starting to bloom and a medium size Star, all under the lights. Then two figs.

I'm hoping for ripe figs in January and ripe blueberries in February.

Any idea what is causing the leaf curl?

bamboo:

No I don't. The plant looks ugly both with the curl and some leaf chlorosis on late season growth. But I'm not as fussy as I used to be about appearances and am happy with adequate function. I think the plants will make good fruit. They'll probably look better after the next leafing cycle.

My main concern right now is watering. The light setup is in a carpeted room so have to avoid water stains. I've found that the green fig fruits are very firm when they have adequate water but are soft when too dry. I've no such marker for the blueberries. Can you tell visually when your blueberries are short on water?

Fruitnut,

Do you think the plants will releaf at the normal time? They are in full bloom now so should be releafing now.

Sure I can tell visually when my BB are short on water.....about two weeks after the fact when the leaf tips get burned. In real time no. If the water is acidic I would probably tend to keep them on the wet side. The reason I asked about the leaf curl is only time I have seen that is when the plants had a root rot problem. Are all the BB like that or just the ones under the lights?

The leaf color looks great, very vibrant. Far as rough looking leaves it is the norm this time of the year.

bamboo:

Don't know if they will push new leaves. The Scintilla, Star, and Jewel got very little chilling before I brought them into the warm environment. Will be interesting to see. I do think they have enough old leaves to make a good quality crop. After that I'd still like new leaves for the next crop.

The Sweetcrisp and Emerald got 250-300 hrs chilling before I moved them inside. So they should leaf strongly. I'm going to move another Star and a Bluecrisp in soon. They will have 400+ hrs. So I'll see how the leafing goes.

I have seen potted blueberry so dry the berries shriveled. It didn't damage the foliage any and the berries still matured after getting water back in order.

Jewel is the only plant with curling leaves and it uses the most water. So I don't think it has a root problem. The curl could be aphid or thrips??

Fruitnut,

I will be interested to see how and when they decide to bring the new leaves out. I have no experience with aphids or thrips on the BB. I get a ton of aphids on the new citrus growth on many of the trees but never have seen a single one on the BB's.

The only time Ive seen aphids on my BB plants were right after planting last Feb/March. I think they came with the plants but maybe not. Hard to tell? After my plants took off I didnt see another aphid on them. Thrips are a different story. I had different symptoms on different plants from thrips. The one common symptom was the scared stem tissue on tender new growth. I did also have some leaf crinkling on Powder Blue from them. Also much shorter distance between leaf nodes where the scared stem tissue was chewed on. They are nasty little bugs and hard to get rid of. I had pretty good success with Spinosad spray. It knocked them back pretty good but didnt total get rid of them. I think it might be a on going problem here.

Looks like I'll have ripe figs before January, my earlier estimate. We have had a few days of cloudy cold weather so the new light setup has been getting a workout. Last winter was very warm and sunny. So far this winter has been much colder and more clouds. And I got my rain barrels filled up!!

This is Vista fig tonight under the lights.

{{gwi:126366}}

Neat looking setup FN! Has the power company reported you to the authorities for suspicious power consumption yet :) ? I joke because when I moved to this tiny little own years ago I innocently put my 4' tall False Aralia plant in the south window with a shop light above it. wouldn't you know, within a few days the Sheriff was at my door inquiring about the plant. I told the Sheriff what the plant was and showed it and the aloe plant to him. Good god, talk about nosy neighbors.

Michael:

The sheriff car was parked nearby this morning. So I'm thinking, well come on over I need someone to talk to. But after a while he moved on.

The power consumption isn't that great, maybe 5 kwh a day, about 50 cents a day. If they pick up on that they need more to do. I do have a reflective shield 6ft tall completely around the lights. But there is a halo of sorts hovering about on the ceiling.

Yeah, those are some darned suspicious looking figs you got there my fellow American ;) Maybe just call the Sheriff's office and tell them what you are up to so they can come by, take a look and get back to work.

Fruitnut, I've read that blueberry roots shouldn't be dry, ever. I've killed a few in containers by not watering enough, and the only sign I remember was the leaves turning brown. Actually, I remember now that last year I caught a blueberry (in 15 gal container) with the leaves ends starting to go brown...which got me to check and find out it really needed water. That one survived, but many of the leaves fell off.

I have a light setup like yours, 2 4-bulb T5HO. Have you measured the light intensity (foot candles, etc...) at the tops of your blueberries. I'd like to know what it takes to keep fruit trees/bushes productive. I'm using mine above a table, trying to keep papaya alive, and for starting vegetables. Also experimenting with growing some plants (tomatoes) at ground level next to the table. But most of the time I only have 2 of the four bulbs on(about 6 inches above the plant tops), and that seems to be working fairly well. Yours must be very bright.

jb:

I've never lost leaves on a blueberry from being too dry. I've also not killed one by overwatering. Did have a breakdown of the media in one that reduced growth. A simple repotting would have cured that.

To me even with 16 54W T5 the light doesn't seem that bright. My cheapo light meter says 500-1,000 (footcandles?) right below the fixture. That falls to less than 100 at the top of the pot. Outdoors right now early in the day with dense fog near zero-100. But it doesn't take much sun to hit full scale, greater than 2,000, inside my greenhouse. Full sun outdoors is, I think, 10,000 footcandles. So my thinking is that 500-1,000 isn't that high.

Leaves of broadleaf plants are light saturated at ~30% of full sun, 3,000 footcandles, I think.

Do blueberries not need a period of 'rest' in the winter? I ask as when I bought mine I made the mistake of keeping them inside while I decided what to do with them (they went outside in feb/apr). They started to flower mid-winter which I thought seemed to stunt them until we hit a cool period this last summer/autumn where they grew like mad.

Are yours already established plants?

Regards
Nick

Nick:

The northern highbush need a real rest period. They lose their leaves in winter. The low chill end of the southern highbush still need some chilling, but very little, to leaf out properly in spring. In between these extremes there is a full range of cultivars to fit all niches.

I'm not sure if the ones I'm pushing hard indoors now will leaf here soon. They have enough leaves now to make a good size crop. And while they may not leaf strongly now I think they will resume growth at some point this next year even with no more chilling.

With a little sun this morning, my sunroom shot past 2,000 ft candles, well above the T5 bulbs.

These figs are ripening a lot faster than I expected. Also noticed a few blueberries turning blue this morning. I guess being relatively warm at night really speeds up ripening. My greenhouse by contrast doesn't warm into the 50s at night until May. So this stuff is ripening faster than I'm used to on the early spring fruit.

The fig is still setting a few new fruit.

{{gwi:67503}}

Wow, being from California this is the first time I've seen a setup like this without marijuana growing under it (for medicinal purposes only, of course, just like Granny's rheumatism medicine on Beverly Hillbillies). We also have lots of amazingly well-stocked hydroponics stores catering to people who want to spend $25,000 to grow cherry tomatoes inside their garage for some reason, hmmm...

That's got to be an interesting challenge Fruitnut. Between the plants you decide to grow and their individual requirements for supplemental irradiation there are lots of variables. I say supplemental irradiation because that allows me to point out photoperiod, quality and intensity. When I was in school we measured PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) when doing crop research as opposed to light levels. PAR is what matters to a plant. As I'm sure you know, different lamps can put out much different qualities (wavelengths) of light and radiation, that quality can and does illicit specific plant responses. Generally speaking, wavelengths towards the red illicit a flowering response, those towards the blue end of the visual spectrum a vegetative growth response. Man I hope I didn't just get that backwards (been a long time;)

Lots of variables to say the least, I wish you the best with your endeavor and suggest you keep records of exactly what you did in every respect, if something works you'll no doubt want to be able to repeat it.

The figs look awesome........

Fruitnut, you are living up to your username! A fruit nut!

I live in the state of Washington and like Applenut mentioned there are lots and lots of "disabled" people in need of herbal therapies........if you know what I mean. I'm sure at night this state glows a bit brighter than most!

if you figure out what's causing the leaf curl let me know. I spent months last year writing various experts and none could tell me anything more than its a sign of stress. I have noticed that a a few of my plants have curled leaves and others growing right next to them do not.

Good luck!

RM

Amazing the difference a year makes. Last year we hardly had a cloud all winter and zero rain. This winter, the last 4 wks anyway, have been cold and cloudy. So my lights are getting a workout. I've still been able to put the plants in the sunroom more days than not. Then about 6 hrs supplemental light.

No weed growing on this operation. I've never even smelled the stuff and don't care to. I suppose it would grow under T5 bulbs but I've heard more about high intensity lights for pot.

One thing about the T5 is the heat is more diffuse. I've burnt a few leaves actually touching the bulbs but not 2 inches away.

My estimate is that it's 10-15F warmer under the lights than room temperature. Right now it's 26F and very dense fog outside. The sunroom is 34F, plant room 65F, which would make it 75-80F under the lights. The extra, waste, heat helps warm the house.

Just a followup on fruit quality produced in the sunroom/T5 setup. The figs were only fair to good. I may have withheld water too much. The fruits were on the dry side. A few were pretty good.

Jewel blueberries are better than those produced last spring. Some have been quite sweet, about 16 brix. I think the fruit quality benefited from lots of heat, low 90s nearly everyday.

My only disappointment was that the first two Sweetcrisp weren't in fact Sweetcrisp. I now have three plants under the lights that I'm sure are Sweetcrisp. All I'm doing with these is advancing maturity so that they don't all ripen at the same time in the greenhouse. I'll be moving everything to the greenhouse as soon as the sweet cherries finish setting fruit. Then I can warm it up in there to produce sweet fruit.

My cherries haven't even started to bloom. You've created a different little world in that greenhouse.