This week our hardware has arrived - and we will start building the farm.
Step 1: Germinating area. The guide posted on germinating indoors is a good help and we will look to follow that. One big question mark is adapting the seeds sent by Element 14 to climate in Delhi. We will have to look for a stronger HVAC system to maintain temperatures around 20 deg cel.
Germinating area consists of a steel rack with two shelves with florescent tubelights fitted in. We will be using seeding trays for first transplant after germinating the seeds as posted in the guide
Once the plant reaches a certain height, it will be shifted to main grow area
Step 2: Grow area: We have to start preparing for grow area. This will require of a lot of lighting. We are thinking of a combination of HID and Florescent due to low availability and high costs of LEDs. We are researching what are the optimum lumens per unit of area to plan lighting
Step 3: Reservoir and plumbing: We have decided not to automate nutrient mixing in this stage. The pumping process will be automated.
Hope to post some photos in the next couple of weeks.
Cheers,
Ajit