Basic Ebb & Flow, looking for advice on vertical farming.

[Tesseract]

Good to know. Can I use something like a feature duster to pollinate the flowers? And just keep using the same duster to continue to pollinate the cucumbers as I go?

The current setup thinking is a 3-wall setup:
~4x4 grow tent
- Three walls have cucumber vines growing from 1ft from the top down with support trusses.
- same three walls have pepper plants growing from the bottom up.
- after the first batch of plants I'll determine if I can put in a middle layer on each wall, but I want to avoid overcrowding.

For even and good lighting, how many lumens per sq ft is recommended?

[GpsFrontier]

Hello Tesseract,
Sorry about the delayed reply, but Ive been real busy lately. You can try letting the cucumbers grow from the top down, but I think they would do better having them grow upwards like normal. The foliage will likely be able to get better lighting that way. I know you want to use a grow tent to reflect light, but it can cause problems and I don't think you will see much benefit in the the enclosure. Rather just cause heat build up, humidity build up, and air circulation problems that can lead to nutrient uptake and fungal disease problems. Not to mention height restrictions.

Pepper plants grow as a bush, not vine unless your growing indeterminate varieties. You'll have a hard time trying to take a 3 dimensional plant and train it to grow 2 dimensionally. You will have to do a lot of trimming and pruning trying to keep three pepper plants small enough to fit in a 4x4 tent. If you look up pictures of some, you can see how big they can get.

Yes, you can hand pollinate the cucumbers. You can use a small artiest paint brush, or a better way is by plucking off the male flowers and using the flower directly on the female flowers. Here are a few links on how to pollinate cucumbers:

Pollination of Vegetable Crops
How to Pollinate Cucumber Plants
pollinating cucumbers videos

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

Hello Tesseract,
Sorry about the delayed reply, but Ive been real busy lately. You can try letting the cucumbers grow from the top down, but I think they would do better having them grow upwards like normal. The foliage will likely be able to get better lighting that way. I know you want to use a grow tent to reflect light, but it can cause problems and I don't think you will see much benefit in the the enclosure. Rather just cause heat build up, humidity build up, and air circulation problems that can lead to nutrient uptake and fungal disease problems. Not to mention height restrictions.

Pepper plants grow as a bush, not vine unless your growing indeterminate varieties. You'll have a hard time trying to take a 3 dimensional plant and train it to grow 2 dimensionally. You will have to do a lot of trimming and pruning trying to keep three pepper plants small enough to fit in a 4x4 tent. If you look up pictures of some, you can see how big they can get.

Yes, you can hand pollinate the cucumbers. You can use a small artiest paint brush, or a better way is by plucking off the male flowers and using the flower directly on the female flowers. Here are a few links on how to pollinate cucumbers:

Understood, I'll set up a vine wall (plastic netting) on one side for the cucumbers and peas. I'll pollinate my hand (brush as suggested) to ensure everything is pollinated.

I'll also start growing the peppers on the floor, I'm purposely chosen pepper varieties that produce small plants and small fruit and orange not have a huge height problem.

I'll then leave the other two walls for small plants (lettuce etc) which has been shown to be okay growing horizontally.

Also talked to quite a few people and they suggest rather than led to go T5HO instead, that I would be happier and have quite a bit more money left in my pockets.