I went with the 3 foot lights from Home Depot, 3000 lumens for under $15 a stick. LED, no bulb no ballast. So, I am $30 in for each lit shelf.
Hopefully the last cool night time temps around here are happening this weekend....supposed to hit 26 overnight, and then into all above freezing temps as we go on into spring. The garden is ready for more plants. These little guys needs to get outside!
We're doing updates? Tomatoes are growing quite well... cilantro is still falling over but alive, the thyme is coming along nicely, and lettuce and beats are sprouting in the seed pods. Not shown are the basil and oregano, cat grass (oats), or the sunflowers.
@Improper your baby plants look PERFECT. Good job so far! Oh my, it's been busy over here. I planted cosmos and beebalm, purple cone flowers (these first three I started inside and also broadcasted seeds to see if one is significantly better than the other) (also I'm impatient), blue salvia and asian celosia in the garden as well as a Mexican bush sage that I bought a couple years ago. The candy striped zinnias are coming up, too. I have some big cuphea plants in pots that are ready to go in the ground. It's funny because I bought seeds for a fancy cuphea variety after purchasing a nursery plant. The type I bought at the local nursery 2 years ago can be overwintered and comes back nicely from semi-woody stems but the ones from seeds were done in a season and could not be babied along. I love finding something nice and semi-unique at the nursery and then taking cuttings so I have lots of them. Spoiler The polka dot plants are indeed coming up from the dried flowers I sprinkled in there. I have started more coleus in a jiffy seed starter. My second round of coleus is taking off, in another couple weeks they can go in the ground. My first round of coleus has some size on it now and I may take cuttings for my third and final batch. The area I am filling is quite large and all these plants have been used. All I need now are some white impatiens seeds to make the rainbow coleus really pop. Right now I have coleus, Utah sweetvetch, cuphea under my light. I have a ton of tiny peppers already set. I fertilized the everloving shit out of my peppers a few nights ago because I had issues in the past with fruit falling off last year and noticed one or two that already yellowed and fell off in the garden. I think I burned one of the plants pretty bad, time will tell if I killed it. I may start some new plants inside to fill the gap. Last year the peppers did well and I was able to make so many tasty and unique meals with them. I wanted to make some jalapeno poppers in December and it was like muscle memory to pull open the bottom drawer to pull out some peppers.....but the drawer was empty. Womp womp. Spoiler My tomatoes still aren't quite large enough to go in the ground. I planted them ridiculously deep in the past because it is so hot during our summers. My largest seedlings are about 7" tall and really healthy looking this time around. I may dig a trench and plant them sideways and gradually cover with dirt. I was envisioning a sun screen to help with the heat but there are a couple huge live oaks on the property and I picked a wise place for the patch--- there is shade from the trees in the afternoon. Perfect. This winter season has been a great learning experience to see what is worth my time to start as seeds. I like your lights Improper, they offer a lot more sunny space than my light. My biggest limiting factor this go around was space for seedlings. I would be farther along if I could start a lot more things at the same time but for now I have a constant cycle of plants being started and moved outside when they have enough size on them. Oh and BTW, cornmeal in a cup is a real slug catcher. I have several old pots and mason jars turned on their side in the garden with cornmeal inside and there are slugs in all of the bait traps when I go look and the plants don't look as shredded, so I think the newer growth has been left alone. I don't know how long it is supposed to take to kill a slug but I definitely have a lot of slugs out there. I have been sprinkling a little cornmeal around the base of my tomato plants too, to keep them from being tempted. The slugs really loved the coleus when they were small so I will have to protect the new ones. Spoiler What I lovingly refer to as my stump garden. There's a birdbath on top and once they get size on them, there will be more cascading flowers shoved into the top of the stump.
Spent some time wiring up my new lights and repotting some seedlings. Can’t wait until I can start moving some of this outside. Also seeded up 2 new trays of starters now that the system seems to be working out fairly well and shit is actually living this time around.
Hey Idiots, I have enjoyed this thread so much that I decided to chime in. I'm in Zone8A and got a really early start on seedlings. Perhaps too early. I think I seeded my tomatoes in late January. Gah! I had an early issue with yellowing leaves, that I initially attributed to over-watering, but am now thinking it was lack of warmth and light. But, once I "hardened off" the tomatoes and got them into bigger pots, we started rolling along nicely with the pleasant Spring here. Nett, and you other Canucks, keep your heads up, yeah. I ordered my seeds from Baker Creek; www.rareseeds.com. I don't know shit about this company except that they have a terrific-looking (free) catalog and are exclusively heirloom. I know it's likely late to order seeds, but these guys have my recommendation. Tomato varieties that I am growing this year: German Lunchbox Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry Large Barred Boar Creole Woodle Orange Purple BumbleBee Purple Cherokee Black Cherry Green Zebra Black Vernissage These were all varieties that checked out as doing well in hot and humid summers, @bewildered.
@binx bolling let's see those seedlings! My leaves are yellow with purple veins too, specifically the tomatoes. I think it is the light I'm using. I have moved the small plants outside to hopefully green up and get some size before they go in the ground. I started mine the same time as yours but killed the first by over fertilizing. I haven't heard of some of those varieties. Keep me updated with how they are doing! I have the purple Cherokee but that is our only overlap.
Well, another update. So far I've learned that those fancy blue/red LED strips for growing shit don't work for me. Further investigation has shown that different plants, and even sub-species of plants, have different requirements, so odds are you're not going to cover all the needs of all the different plants you're going do seed. Today Amazon delivered another 8 LED tubes so I ripped out the old LED lights and installed the new lights. The only thing I did to them was solder the 4 pairs of them all into a single plug/switch rather than having each pair have their own plug/switch. I also re-ran my wiring a bit, upgraded the power bar, and I can now read the displays on my 2 timers. The seedlings around the outside perimeter are all leaning in towards the previous lighting, so I tripled the light and spread it out so that they can all grow straight up. Also added my indoor bug zapper to the fan timer so that it goes on for 10 minutes every 30 minutes to help keep down the insects.
So... when do you all move your indoor seedlings to outside? I'm kind of assuming that I have to wait for the 1/2" of freezing rain that's on everything to melt first?
This is a nice resource. Who the hell knew that the "Old Farmer's Almanac" was still a thing? Just enter in your zip-code for last-frost dates, seed-starting times, etc. I assume it's Canuck friendly. https://www.almanac.com
At some point when my garage has space Im going to build a cart that I can wheel out all my plants once Ive potted up. Even better would just be to build a mini greenhouse that you could prop open on nice days. It is a pain in the dick moving them inside and outside each time the weather may dip with 30+ solo cups with plants on plastic trays.
You are probably going to want to harden off your plants instead of moving them out all at once and being done with it.
Solar radiation is just a wee bit more intense than manmade lighting. Also, the plants will have to adjust to wind and temp fluctuations.