Want to know about growing figs in colder locations with shorter growing seasons? How to do a headstart so you can taste all the varieties? Read on, fig friends!
1. It's an impressive effort. Congratulations on your results.
2. Where do you get your pots? The dark color obviously works for you, but I worry about the pot temperatures facing west in the summer afternoons.
3. Check my math: You have 2000 watts of lights running maybe 12 hours a day for 3 months, which is 4380 kWh, which is not quite half of what the average house in Pennsylvania uses annually. The average rate in Philadelphia is perhaps 18 cents/kWh, which is $788.
About 50% of this gets converted to heat, so it does lower your natural gas use. The 50% going to heat is 2190 kWh or about 75 therms of energy. At $1.40/therm that's about $105 in natural gas savings if it's 100% useful heat, but some is absorbed and lost by the basement walls, so the net cost is probably $700.
Hi Mike! Dean does not have a Substack account, so he asked me to post his response to your questions. From Dean:
1. Thanks, Mike!
2. I bought the 8-gal square Gro Pro pots I use for all my figs from Horticultural Source for ~$5 each including shipping. Unfortunately their shipping is exhorbitantly expensive right now, so I recommend Greenhouse Megastore - which has them for $5.76 + free shipping at the moment if you order over 30 of them. Here is the link:
In 6B I want all the heat I can get. But if you are in hot climate, white square pots in the same size are available on Amazon, but at least right now they are more expensive:
3. Hmmm... I think you might be off by about a factor of two. By my calculations:
2kW * 12h/day * 90 days = 2160 kWh, which costs ~$398 at 18 cents/kW, or $350 if you subtract off savings on heating.
This year I'm only giving my fig trees a 2 month head start. In addition, the first couple weeks I only have a couple hundred watts of lights on while the trees are waking up. So that means about 6 weeks of intensive electricity usage. But to make up for the shorter pre-season this year, I'm leaving the lights on 24/7 (the trees love it). That amounts to:
2kW * 24h/day * 42 days = 2116 kWh.
So my cost is going to be about the same this year as last year - about $350. Nobody said successfully growing late-ripening figs in a cold climate was cheap or easy!
1. It's an impressive effort. Congratulations on your results.
2. Where do you get your pots? The dark color obviously works for you, but I worry about the pot temperatures facing west in the summer afternoons.
3. Check my math: You have 2000 watts of lights running maybe 12 hours a day for 3 months, which is 4380 kWh, which is not quite half of what the average house in Pennsylvania uses annually. The average rate in Philadelphia is perhaps 18 cents/kWh, which is $788.
About 50% of this gets converted to heat, so it does lower your natural gas use. The 50% going to heat is 2190 kWh or about 75 therms of energy. At $1.40/therm that's about $105 in natural gas savings if it's 100% useful heat, but some is absorbed and lost by the basement walls, so the net cost is probably $700.
Hi Mike! Dean does not have a Substack account, so he asked me to post his response to your questions. From Dean:
1. Thanks, Mike!
2. I bought the 8-gal square Gro Pro pots I use for all my figs from Horticultural Source for ~$5 each including shipping. Unfortunately their shipping is exhorbitantly expensive right now, so I recommend Greenhouse Megastore - which has them for $5.76 + free shipping at the moment if you order over 30 of them. Here is the link:
https://www.greenhousemegastore.com/products/gro-pro-pattern-design-square-plastic-pot?variant=44464507125959
In 6B I want all the heat I can get. But if you are in hot climate, white square pots in the same size are available on Amazon, but at least right now they are more expensive:
https://a.co/d/9aoA48S
3. Hmmm... I think you might be off by about a factor of two. By my calculations:
2kW * 12h/day * 90 days = 2160 kWh, which costs ~$398 at 18 cents/kW, or $350 if you subtract off savings on heating.
This year I'm only giving my fig trees a 2 month head start. In addition, the first couple weeks I only have a couple hundred watts of lights on while the trees are waking up. So that means about 6 weeks of intensive electricity usage. But to make up for the shorter pre-season this year, I'm leaving the lights on 24/7 (the trees love it). That amounts to:
2kW * 24h/day * 42 days = 2116 kWh.
So my cost is going to be about the same this year as last year - about $350. Nobody said successfully growing late-ripening figs in a cold climate was cheap or easy!
I think I miscalculated the days in 3 months and used 180 instead of 90 for whatever reason.
I love the dedication to detail. It all is meticulous ,and inspirational in its design.