Even a good quality hydroponic system like the AirFarm won't give you good results unless your plants are put in a proper environment. A good environemnt means proper heat, light, air circulation, and humudity.

If you are growing plants inside your home, the one factor that usually needs the most improvement is light. In simple terms terms, you can look at it this way, the more light you give your plants, the better they will grow.

The problem is, supplemental, artificial light can be very hard on the eyes, both physically and asthetically. A powerful grow lamp may yield great looking plants, but it can make an ordinary room look like a scene from the Fox Television's "Alien Autoposy."

In the MicroFarm Plant Cabinet, we provide the plants plenty of light by installing 3 florecent bulbs, each designed to screw into a standard incandescent-type fixture. You've probably seen these kinds of bulbs in your local hardware store. While they fit regular fixtures, they give out many times as much light (or "lumens") using considerably less electiricty.

In our system, we used three 25 watt bulbs, manufactured by Lights of America. This provided us with about 4,000 lumens. Since the inside area of our cabinet was about 2 sqaure feet of space - we had approximately as much light per sqaure foot as we would have received from professional metal halide grow lamps.

The true test came when we grew a tomato plant. Tomatoes require intense light to be healthy and produce fruit. Within 8 weeks of its seedling stage, we had dozens of (cherry) tomatoes, proving we had sufficient light for almost any crop.

In addition to the bulbs, alluminum foil was placed on the sides of the cabinet so that all light was reflected toward the plant. Many hydroponics books warn you against the use of tin foil, since it tends to wrinkle (which it did) and the wrinkles create hot spots that can burn the plant leaves. This proved to be true, however the burning was minimal, causing only small white spots to appear on some of the leaves.

Besides growing tomato plants, we also had fantastic success with Basil and Cilantro.

In the next issue we'll go into more detail on how the system was created. Stay Tuned to MicroFarm...

David McCormick MicroFarm Founder

Please visit our Web store at: www.buyitonline.com/microfarm

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A totato plant takes over the inside of the cabinet. [Inset] Same cabinet with doors close