droughttolerant said:Ok, I typed flour because that's what I saw in my head after reading. If being backwards is a side-effect of visiting ATG, okay that's me with. SCButtercup, you reminded me of times when our kids were little. First came Maria, then Dianna, then Joshua. When Josh was two he ran around the house looking for his sisters, yelling, "Diiiiiiiiiiii Riiiiiaaaaaaaa". That made his sisters bust out laughing, and he would look at them like they were crazy. That memory still makes me smile.

I use T8 fluorescent fixtures and bulbs, because they are a bit newer technology than T12s, and a bit more efficient. But LEDs are probably the future in lighting. Their price has been coming down steadily, but still cost more than T8s for an equivalent amount of lighting.

I am going to do some experimentation this winter with compact fluorescent. For my limited budget, I have been less than impressed with LEDs foir what I can afford.

WRT T-8 yeah. When my T-12s start giving up the ghost, I will probably replace them with T-8s.

Have you any experience using LEDs for growing?

I have all T-12's, but had to buy a new fixture and it will use either T-12 or T-8 bulbs; now all I have to do is replace the other 5 fixtures, and then replace all the bulbs with T-8's, and I'll be at least somewhat upgraded...

I don't think older T-12 fixtures will work with T-8 bulbs -- will they?

No. As you indicated, some of the newer ones do. For the very small increase in efficiency, I would not replace my T-12s til they die. But then, I am cheap. I am gonna get two new fixtures, but am toying with Compact fluorescents. Doing some research.

"I would not replace my T-12s til they die. But then, I am cheap"

Well, me too... I just don't see the point of replacing them until needed, I only use them for a relatively short time for seedlings. It would probably be a different story if I was growing flowers or mature plants under lights for whatever reason.

I'll be interested to hear how you do with the CFLs, David.

CFLs have several advantages:

No ballast needed.
Higher power in a small space
More efficient

I am thinking of making my own holder/fixture to save some money. If I do it, I will start a thread.

DavidLMO said:WRT T-8 yeah. When my T-12s start giving up the ghost, I will probably replace them with T-8s. Have you any experience using LEDs for growing?

No, I have not tried LEDs yet, because they cost more. There are available LED assemblies that are designed to replace T8 bulbs, and let you use the your same fixtures. But not cost effective unless you consider years of electrical usage expense. LEDs are more efficient, and I think they last longer, too.

I did see a TV program showing a whole room full of plants growing under just LED lights. It was bizarre. Plants need some red light and some blue light. But they don't need green light, which is why they reflect it and appear green. So this room was equipped with just Red LEDs and Blue LEDs. The result of that was an awful unworldly hot pink-lavender magenta lighting and the plants appeared nearly black in that light (no green light available to reject and reflect). That may be an efficient thing to do, but I like to see my plants in natural white light, looking green and having natural flower colors.

Incidentally, I do grow my indoor zinnias from seedlings to maturity and beyond. I am an amateur zinnia breeder and I usually get two generations of zinnias indoors in addition to my outdoor grow-out from Spring to Fall. That speeds up the breeding process immensely. I do get some odd looking zinnias.

I also get some more conventional looking zinnias.

My current indoor crop is just some small seedlings. I enjoy growing zinnias as a hobby.

ZM

ZenMan said:

Incidentally, I do grow my indoor zinnias from seedlings to maturity and beyond. I am an amateur zinnia breeder and I usually get two generations of zinnias indoors in addition to my outdoor grow-out from Spring to Fall. That speeds up the breeding process immensely. I do get some odd looking zinnias.

• Zinnia
• Uploaded by ZenMan

Now that is one wild one!!

Can you flesh out what you mean by " I usually get two generations of zinnias indoors "?

DavidLMO said:Can you flesh out what you mean by " I usually get two generations of zinnias indoors "?

Sure. The seedlings that are now growing indoors under fluorescent lights will be blooming indoors in early January. I will discard the ones that I don't like and self or cross-pollinate the ones that I do like, and I will have green seeds in February that contain fully developed embryos.

Rather than follow the usual route of waiting for the seedheads to die and turn brown, I will harvest those green seeds and plant them. They will come up in a few days and be blooming in early April. Those second generation zinnias will provide green seeds that I can plant outside in late April and early May.

Thus the progeny from my second generation indoor zinnias will become the first generation of of my 2016 outdoor zinnias. Their first blooms will be appearing in June, in time to create a second outdoor generation.

I joke that maybe someday I will breed a carnivorous zinnia, but actually I sort of already did. This zinnia bloom had petals that were tubular and they did catch rain water and hold it for over a week. Zinnias, like most plants, can be foliar fed, by spraying soluble nutrients on them. Plants can absorb soluble nutrients through their leaves, and also through the petals on their blooms. Some small insects (they looked a bit like winged aphids) did drown in the water in those petal-cups and decay, and small amounts of nutrients most probably were absorbed by the petal cups. So that zinnia most probably did derive some nutrition from trapped insects, albeit a small amount, and technically could be considered carnivorous (insectivorous).

The petals on that zinnia reminded me a bit of a Pitcher Plant. I have had many zinnias that had tubular petals, and I tend to encourage that. Tubular petals can be rather attractive.

And I suppose that a lot of the tubular petaled zinnias have the potential to be insectivorous if the conditions are right. Some tubular petaled zinnias have rather small openings in their petals, and may not catch any rainwater.

I anticipate seeing some new zinnia flower forms indoors this Winter.

ZM

Zenman. That was more like providing an encyclopedia, than fleshing out. I surmised some of that, but you really clued me in. Thanks!!

Those are interesting pics. Would never have guessed Zinnia.

I also did not know that you could plant Green Zinnia seeds. Fascinating.

I do have some interest in Zinnias and sow a bed 3 x 12 feet each year - the taller varieties.

BTW - we are apparently fairly close - I am in St. Joe MO.

thanks again
david

DavidLMO said:
I also did not know that you could plant Green Zinnia seeds. Fascinating.

Not to be confused with seeds for green zinnias...

Incidentally, I make many of my T8 fluorescent fixtures about twice as bright by overdriving them. I learned about overdriving fluorescent fixtures many years ago by reading a message thread in Garden Web, started by a user named Zink. The original thread seems to be lost, but a continuation of it occurs here:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/di...

The basic idea behind overdriving is to modify the fixture to concentrate the ballast power usually supplied to two bulbs onto a single bulb. That means you add a second ballast to a two bulb fixture, so that each bulb gets all the power from a two-bulb ballast. That just about doubles the brightness of the bulb. The bulb burns noticeably warmer, but not super hot, and that probably shortens the bulb life. But fluorescent bulbs usually last for years anyway, so the bulb life has not been a problem for me. There are some expensive ballasts that get roughly the same result from a single ballast, but those are not standard in readily available fluorescent fixtures. And they are brighter, but not as much as you get from overdriving.

A new thing that I started doing a couple of years ago is to install a four-bulb ballast in a two-bulb fixture. The four wires go to two bulbs, nicely overdriving them very brightly. And another advantage of that is weight. A four-bulb ballast weighs somewhat more than a two-bulb ballast, but not twice as much, so that you get a lighter fixture using a single four-bulb ballast versus two two-bulb ballasts. The wiring scheme on some ballasts does prevent them from being used in overdriving. But many ballasts can be connected for overdriving.

Overdriving isn't for everybody, because you do purchase and install additional ballasts. But it does make your bulbs burn way brighter. My zinnias really respond to overdriven T8 bulbs. I learned to overdrive from Zink's original message thread, so I have been doing it for about 9 years, and learning more as I go. (Do not stick your tongue on a cold pipe or refrigerator cooling coil, and do not stick your tongue on a hot wire.)

If you have the ballast go bad in a fluorescent fixture, it is much more economical to replace the ballast than to replace the fixture. And that could give you the opportunity to buy two two-bulb ballasts or one four-bulb ballast for a standard two-bulb fixture and enjoy the extra bright light of an overdriven fixture.

ZM

I simply use T-5HO fixtures, which put out a tremendous amount of light compared to T-5 and certainly T-8 fixtures. Doubling up the ballasts would be the way to go using less intensive fixtures though. How much does this added wattage affect the life-span of the tubes? T-8 and even T-5 tubes stay cool. Does the doubling of the ballasts cause them to heat?

Ken - what is the HO difference?

I need a couple more fixtures and was considering either T-5 or CFLs. The latter, I have no experience with, but research shows they may be worth a looksee.

(BTW - you guys win this weekend?)

We won 51-50 and blocked a last-second (gimme) field-goal to win the game.

I think HO stands for "high-output", and these T-5 HO fixtures are so doggone bright I had to raise them so that they were a minimum of 2' from my orchids. They were "sun burning" some of the leaves. Even then, some of my more light-sensitive orchids have to be 3' away. When using T-5 and T-8 fixtures, I could position the fixtures within 3-6" without problems. You can easily touch T-12, T-8, and T-5 tubes, but you sure wouldn't want to do the same with the HO tubes. You'll get a nasty burn.

drdawg said:Does the doubling of the ballasts cause them to heat?

The bulbs are noticeably warmer, but not what I would call hot. However, a zinnia that grows into direct contact with an overdriven bulb gets fried in the contact area. But they sort of do that with direct contact to regular T8 bulbs.

The overdriven ballasts actually run significantly cooler. That is because they are connected to significantly less load in a single bulb as compared to the load of two bulbs. If anything, the overdriving ballasts last longer, besides running significantly cooler.

You make T-5HO fixtures and bulbs sound quite attractive. If I were just starting out with indoor gardening, I would definitely consider using them. But I now have several dozen T8 shoplights, and they were quite economical to procure (back in the early 2003 - 2004 time frame, Home Depot was selling 2-bulb T8 shoplights for $4 each (without bulbs).) I think that was a loss leader to introduce their Chinese-made shoplights.

The irony of that was that their SunPark SL15 electronic ballasts were selling for more than that. So, in the "early days", I would buy 8 T8 shoplights, and cannibalize 4 of them for ballasts to overdrive the other 4.

In later years the shoplight prices went to $6 and then $8 and higher, so it wasn't economical to cannibalize them. I would then buy ballasts to bring those "empty" fixtures into service.

When I "started out", T5 fluorescents were more expensive and Home Depot didn't even stock them, so the bargain T8 shoplights were a natural. And Home Depot was selling boxes of 10 T8 tubes for $18, which was significantly cheaper than those same boxes go for today. Of course, I guess inflation has something to do with that.

ZM

Yep, back then T-5's were not well known and what few that could be found were expensive. There was no such thing as T-5 HO (also called HE).

I wasn't referring to the ballast heat, but to the tube heat. I would think the extra wattage would increase the heat and probably/possibly shorten the life of the tubes. That's nothing more than a guess since I have never increased ballast wattage to any of my fluorescent fixtures.

I have HO T5s too.

Karen

We two are in the top of our class, Karen.