RobLaffin said:David, those are the exact fixtures I use with T8 daylight bulbs. They're inexpensive and have worked great - going on fifth year now. I tossed the S hooks and chains, though - with adjusting the height, it was too easy for the fixtures to fall on the plants, so I made my own out of wire that are fully fastened to the fixture and also wrap all the way around the ropes I hang them with so I can raise or lower without any chance of fixture falling.

Yeppers. I use a heavy string/very light rope and run it thru eye hooks on shelves or rafter above. Very easy and much better than chains. I am now up to 6 T-8 and 4 T-12s that still work fine.

My biggest concern with LEDs is the comparable cost as well as few here at ATP have used them. They very well might be the way to go.

For my set-up I would need to spend a fortune.

I use fluorescent grow lights purchased from Walmart. I have 2, 4 ft shelves in my office. Each shelf holds 36, 3" foam cups planted with daylily seedlings.

I also have a light stand in the livingroom with 2 ft lights and grow lights. In my office I tacked aluminum foil on the wall for light to bounce back to the plants as reflectors.

Although the light fixtures are adjustable, I trim back the leaves when they begin to reach the light bulbs. It sends energy to the roots instead of leaves.

In my office


In my livingroom

My kind of person Pippi. The only place in my houes with no plants is a basement bedroom and my wife's bedroom. Every where else is plants, plants, plants and seedlings.

Do you grow for a farmer's market or something?

Nice setup in the "office".

cybersix said:Hi, me again with my supid questions
These are the first four seedlings, they are outside in a cold frame.

The temps are around -1°C at night and 2 by day.
They were planted in pots in october.
I still have 4 seeds of one of the cross that didn't germinate yet, but if everything will be fine by the end of january they will be planted as well.
The growth is poor and slow, the sun doesn't hit the garden until spring.
So I thought of bring them inside again, placing them in the garage under the house (about 15°C there) and use grow lights like these

They aren't expensive and they use very few W/h so having them on for some hours per day should not cost much.
I wanted to speed up growth.
It's something you would do? Is it a stupid and useless idea?
Many thanks!

Your questions are definitely not stupid, they're good questions. I honestly can't help too much yet because I've still to complete my own foray into growing plants indoors under lights. I did wonder, though....I think I read online that the red/blue lights are used to promote flowering, which makes me wonder if doing that in the winter impacts their flowering habits when they are later placed outdoors. I wonder if its better to use white light and if that promotes more foliage growth which might help the plant strengthen and gain nutrients before it flowers. This is all coming from a new-to-indoor-growing person, so it's all speculation on my part.

...Is there anyone else who might know the answer or have a more educated guess?

Red - flowering
Blue - vegetative growth

For those interested in light colors, impacts, etc this search gives a lot of good leads:

bit.ly/1S5mr3m

DogsNDaylilies said:
I wonder if its better to use white light and if that promotes more foliage growth which might help the plant strengthen and gain nutrients before it flowers. This is all coming from a new-to-indoor-growing person, so it's all speculation on my part.

...Is there anyone else who might know the answer or have a more educated guess?

Plants use visible light for photosynthesis roughly between 400 and 700 nanometers, but they use red and blue light more than they use of the other colours of the spectrum. They also use red light to measure the daylength (photoperiod) which is why incandescent bulbs are often used for daylength manipulation. ( Daylength is a bit of a misnomer really since plants actually are measuring the hours of darkness).

Anyway, from what I recall red light alone would make for plants that are tall and soft whereas blue light alone produces shorter "hard" plants. Commercial growers may manipulate the ratio of red to blue in order to control the growth of the plants.

Fluorescent lamps other than grow lamps emit mostly blue light but the cool white and warm white "regular" tubes are still fine for growing seedlings as long as they are emitting enough light intensity (this can tail off with age of the tubes and affect the plants making them "stretch" towards the light before our eyes can see the drop).

LEDs are appealing because of their low electricity use, whereas some other forms of plant lights are much more costly to operate. I've never used them personally though.

Tomorrow the lights will be here, I'm going in the basement to clean up a bit and find a nice spot for plants and lights. Then the experiment will begin.
David, maybe you'd need a lot of lights but the bigger one I saw on ebay have a reasonable price for the square meters they cover, or at least to my novice eye they seem not so expensive. I read always good reviews on the effects of these kind of lights, the problem are most related to the quality of leds (some say some led quits to function almost immediately) or shipping.

The cheaper the LED unit, the shorter its life. I have a friend who simply will not buy an LED unit made in China. Only US or EU countries. Which really limits availability and really drives up the price.

At this point I have no experience - either in my house (where I refuse to pay the exorbinant prices regardless of outrageous claimed bulb lives) or for growing plants. At some point, I may get a small unit to experiment.

I do hope yours work well for your application.

FWIW - I priced out systems and for me to replace all my current lighting with LED systems for the same area would be well North of a Thousand dollars. My current lights work fine.

I've not been online for a couple of days, and it seems I missed a lot of interesting posts !

I have put my seedlings in a growtent in my (unheated) garage.
(Not that it anywhere near freezing outside... It is still around 45F during the day! )

@admmad : how long should I keep my lighting on to prevent grow rest? (that ís something I want to prevent, right??)

I have 4 armatures with 2 lamps each and at the moment I only use blue light.
@sooby: should I replace some of the blue lamps with red lamps for the best result?

I made some photo's while setting up the tent





I will take some more photo's tomorrow

Outside the tent (in the garage) temps vary between 40F and 45F at the moment.
Inside however temps go up to 70F when the lamps are on and 58F when the lamps are of.
That is ok, right?

Humidity inside the tent is VERY high: condensationwater is really running down the walls...
Could that be a problem? My seedlings have been in there now for 2 weeks and they seem to be doing ok




Mayo

Mayo62 said:

I have 4 armatures with 2 lamps each and at the moment I only use blue light.
@sooby: should I replace some of the blue lamps with red lamps for the best result?

Outside the tent (in the garage) temps vary between 40F and 45F at the moment.
Inside however temps go up to 70F when the lamps are on and 58F when the lamps are of.
That is ok, right?

Humidity inside the tent is VERY high: condensationwater is really running down the walls...
Could that be a problem?

The blue light is from fluorescent tubes? It looks like there is no natural light?

High humidity isn't the best thing, can you ventilate a little more? Are the lights at their final height over the plants?

I think the temperatures are fine. Not to steal Maurice's question but I would personally have the lights on 14-16 hours

Sorry I'm asking more questions than I'm answering but the answers depend on the answers

@Mayo62

how long should I keep my lighting on to prevent grow rest? (that ís something I want to prevent, right??)

Sue is correct; I would also suggest leaving the lights on for 14-24 hours each day. You would want the plants to grow as much as possible. Some will take a rest even if the lights are on for a long day-short night (16 hours on 8 hours off). However, they will start to grow again without any change in conditions when they are ready.

admmad said:@Mayo62

Sue is correct; I would also suggest leaving the lights on for 14-26 hours each day. You would want the plants to grow as much as possible. Some will take a rest even if the lights are on for a long day-short night (16 hours on 8 hours off). However, they will start to grow again without any change in conditions when they are ready.

14-26 hours each day????? I was wondering how you can manage to squeeze an extra 2 hours in a day since 24 hours is the norm.

Mayo - That looks like a really neat set up. I am envious. :-)

The condensation may be a problem. Are you running a fan in there?

Regardless, you might want to consider opening the tent for an hour or so and try to get the humidity down a bit.

It sounds like probably 100 % or near so and that could lead to fungal problems.

Does pic # 2 represent all that is in there now? If so - the light is way too high.

I use 4ft 2 lamp T-5 fixtures for inside growing, each fixture is rated at 10000 lumens, and consumes 110 watts.

Here are 8-10 week old seedlings under 6400K temperature lamps. The seedlings in tray "9" are 6 weeks old.

Peter.

T-5s. Relly cool. I am just moving to T-8s for new or replacements.

Very good looking seedlings Peter

Wow, those seedlings look great! What size of cells do you use for the tray? They look large. Is it the size of 32 cells to a tray? Do you transplant them to the larger cells when the seedlings grow big?

Your seedlings do look great. My 8-10 week old seedling don't look that good. My light set up is similar. I would like to know what you use for growing mix. I think I need to find the right potting mix. I have tried so many different mixes. I often get good roots but the plants don't take off and grow until I get them planted outside in the garden.