I’ve recently been toying with the idea of setting up a small grow rack inside my apartment to grow some herbs etc. (mostly inspired by this guy’s YouTube videos). I’m talking here about a couple of hopefully humongous basil/holy basil plants and maybe some mint and microgreens and stuff, just for cooking - nothing that’s going to get an article written about me by the K-man.
The background to this is that I’ve been growing some stuff on the balcony and windowsill the last few months but I’ve become impatient with how long that’s been taking (not enough direct sunlight, I guess), and I doubt that’s going to improve over the coming months when it gets colder. Also just as a small hobby, to learn something new.
So I’m wondering - does anyone have experience with this/suggestions? In particular:
I’m thinking of a pretty simple setup - a rack with three or so shelves, one or two cheapish LED lights (depending on the number of shelves in use - would probably start with just one), and a timer. In terms of the lights, I’ve seen a few options on Shopee, like this, this, and this (I need to do more research though - I still find the wattages/light outputs here a bit confusing). I’d prefer not to spend more than say around NT$2–2.5k on this (for a cheap metal rack and the LED grow lights), at least initially. (I know how short my attention span is with new hobbies, and I’m not sure how long we’ll stay in this apartment.)
Are there any legal issues I’m missing with possibly doing this? Again, I’m talking about a pretty small setup, but I realize that there does exist the possibility of a nosy neighbor reporting to the police that there’s red-blue light coming from the foreigner’s apartment for 12–14 hours every day. So, if the police did ultimately show up at my door one morning, would I be fine growing plants as long as I’m not growing anything illegal? (That might sound like a silly/paranoid question, but I do remember reading about some vegetable-growing foreigner who this happened to very recently, either here or on Facebook.) I did notice that most of the sellers of grow lights on Shopee are shipping from China with few local options, but I’m not sure whether I should take that to mean that there’s a problem with buying them here/importing them.
I suppose there could also be some issue with doing this in a residential apartment (e.g., a fire safety risk for bigger/non-LED setups, but I am pretty much at home all day every day so wouldn’t be leaving it on unsupervised very often and would tend toward turning it off if I’m going to be out).
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Only marginally about that - just want to make sure I’m not missing anything. I’d also be interested to hear if anyone has done something similar and has any recommendations for where to buy lights, what lights to buy, any tips, etc. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
I’m building my own growlights and power supplies. The LEDs are Luxeon Sunplus Horticultural White (L1SP-PNK10028). Obviously, you’re not going to be doing this, but you might find a commercial product that uses them. They’re fairly low-cost and very efficient.
The light output is white, not (as you might expect) that weird pink colour you associate with dodgy hydroponics outfits. So none of the neighbors will see anything odd. Assuming you’re not growing an entire roomful of stuff, you won’t have a weird power-consumption profile either (which is the usual cause of 3am knocks-at-the-door). My measured power consumption is about 60W/m2 - that gives me an adequate PPFD for growing salad leaves.
I’m going to install a similar setup in our shaded greenhouse as auxiliary lighting; that’ll be for tomatoes (and I mean actual tomatoes, not “tomatoes”) and other light-demanding plants.
Incidentally … I’ve noticed many of the Chinese growlight suppliers make up outrageous specs for their products. It’s impossible to figure out exactly what their light output is. This was a big factor in my decision to just build my own lights - it was just too damn complicated to sift the nonsense from the truth on Shopee.
I’m not sure how to link the post but there’s a story from someone on the FB forum “foreigners society in Taiwan” that had his house and office raided after buying a tent and lights to grow tomatoes!
