Farm XL?

Gosh darn it- I  didn't want to spend a lot on Christmas this year, but this one might get me. A lot of garden vegetables, even dwarf and container varieties. just don't quite fit under 24". Broccoli comes to mind as one I've tried to grow under a 24" hood and failed. Vining plants like cucumbers would also benefit as they need space to spread out. You don't have much horizontal space to give them, but they will be just as happy going vertical.

The bowls in the Farms are fairly large. My bigger plants in a Farm+ use maybe half of that if I'm being generous. There is no way you are going to fit 24 large plants in one, no matter what their marketing says. 1-2 per side won't require that big of a root base.

I think the biggest problem with large plants is how much space they take up horizontally. I have to fill the water on my AGs every couple days whether it is a deck full of mature lettuce or one cucumber vine. However, there is no way that multiple cucumber plants would do well with that little space. I also feed weekly instead of biweekly for many plants.

I'm late to this one, but my main interest in the XL is for growing hot peppers.

First off, I only really like to put a single plant into a regular 2' machine (Extra, Ultra, Bounty) and even then we get some pretty intense roots.  But aside from the selected AG pepper strains, and even with continuous pruning, a single pepper plant, particularly some of the stranger breed (Capsicum Pubescens, for instance) will easily dominate a 2' garden.  

At least in the case of the non-farms, I can always print an extension for the rod that the light hood mounts to, and order an appropriate extension cord off amazon.  With a Farm Plus, I'm really stuck.

Using other less convenient hydro systems (AG Eco Grower or Rainforest),  I have had some pretty generic capsicum annuums shoot up to 4' without even slowing.

So, the XL is a bit of a quandary for me.  On the one hand, I want it because I always seem to end up buying the new high end models, and after having had a couple tomato plants literally take over my dining room table, i could foresee the extra foot in the XL allowing me to make more of that growth vertical with proper trussing and guides.

But, for growing my beloved capsicum pubescens (aka "pubes") I'm looking at a plant that potentially wants to reach 5' in a 3' framework, and even if I put only one plant per side in that Farm XL, yes, being root bound is a real possibility, even though the grow tank in the Farm is nearly twice as big as that of one of the older tall gardens.  Then, we get back to spending... $600? for a planter that could hold 2, maybe 4 full sized pepper plants and I'm paying mainly for superior convenience.  At this point, it's cheaper to get my GH Rainforest out of storage.  It has a 13 gallon grow bowl, so becoming root bound is a lot less possible.  On the other hand, you don't know misery until you've had to flush 13 gallons of water/nutes every two weeks.

So, I'm back at the XL, and I can tell you from experience that pepper plants have absolutely no problem growing around the light hood of anything you plant them in, so I'm not really seeing the 3' as a hard limit, but I will need to find alternative light sources (already have them).  And because I can theoretically stack one on top of my existing Farm Plus (growing much less height-needy plants), i'm looking at much better space utilization.

Of course, all of this needs to wait until I move and i don't even know when that will be.

In the end, the best reason I can offer why I'd buy an XL is that I want one, and just leave it at that.