grow lights?

[T]

Hi All,

I like to sprout in the garage, safely away from the earwigs. But not a lot of light comes through the Window. The sprouts bend over sideways trying to line up with the windows.

The fear is that I am exhausting the sprouts do to lack of light and not enough photosynthesis.

So I was looking at using a grow light.

Does this help or is it B.S.?

And, would there be any side effect of running it 24/7? The sooner they get big, the sooner I can plant them in the garden. (After about three inches, the earwigs leave them alone.)

Many thanks,

-T

[George Shirley]

That's a lot of money for growing seedlings T. I use a single tube fluorescent light, about two feet long, can buy at any big store like Lowe's. I mounted it above one of the shelves in my garage and have raised seedlings for over twenty years and still use the same light. It only gets used until the seedlings are about three or four inches tall and then into the garden. Much cheaper than that fancy light you posted.

George

[hubops]

Here are a few others - link below - you'll feel better about spending 60 bucks on Amazon ..

John T.

[songbird]

no idea, but it seems expensive vs a LED shop light (which is much longer at 4ft) and uses less energy (42watts) for about $35 or less at the big box hardware stores (home depot, lowes, etc.).

for the lumens they're great.

give them a few hours of dark each night. a small oscillating fan will give the stems some strength, but you have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't dry out.

songbird

[George Shirley]

Wow! That's a lot of dough for grow lights. I'll stick to my old rig.

When we lived on the ten acre farm some years ago, we just planted every thing straight into the ground and hoped the deer, rabbits, and armadillo's didn't rip it all out. A very large dog pretty much controlled all that.

Now we live in town and have a small garden above ground due to the "soil" here is nothing but two inches of sand on top of five feet of gumbo clay. Of course we're a whole lot older than back then too.

We're in our late seventies and, I guess, we will go out of this world with dirt on our hands. Go gardeners.

George

[Terry Coombs]

Or a little less at Walmart ...

When I got my 4' unit , I bought a standard 2-tube fixture and the T12 Growlux bulbs separately . IIRC I've got about 40 bucks in it .

--

Snag

[George Shirley]

I hear that one Snag, cheaper the equipment the tastier the grub. I'm slowly turning all the light fixtures in this house to fluorescent or halogen. Lots of hanging light fixtures in rooms so they're going halogen as the standard bulbs and/or fluorescent go out. I've one halogen in my office that has been working five years now.

George

[T]

Hi All,

It is the red and the blue spectrum and not wasting watts on all the rest that I was interested in. Plus LED is more efficient than florescent, meaning cheaper to run. And no glass to worry about breaking.

And, I will use a timer.

Thank you all for the help!

-T