You can build yourself a simple wood frame and mount the fixtures on it with chains and S-hooks. See photo. I use cool white lamps. They work fine. I've tried grow lights in the past and didn't notice any difference, except in the price. I set this up in a corner of the kitchen. It's easy to clean the floor if it gets wet. Also, all the waste heat from the lights goes into heating the house. So I get 100% energy efficiency.

For germinating seeds and establishing transplants, I use transparent propagation domes. They work great.

The pieces of white insulating foam reflect light back towards the plants. This helps the plants to grow straight upright, instead of leaning towards the lights.

The inexpensive shop lights - just like in the pic above - are used by lots of us. We even use them in the greenhouse.

You can find all sorts of info about this on both the Growing from Seed forum and the Growing Under Lights forum here.

Dave

I use a mix of the more high power ones and the shop lights. I also made some homemade lights by getting cheapy strip lights and using half an aluminum vent pipe as a reflector.

home depot does sell grow lights online... I bought 2 of these and been happy with them.

www.homedepot.com/p/ViaVolt-4-ft-4-Bulb-T5-High-Output-Copper-Fluorescent-Grow-Light-Fixture-V44/203012866#.UfGc-pPD_mI

Ed

I use basic shop lights, as well. One alternative to hanging them from the ceiling is to mount them on an open shelving unit. I repurposed a set of 3' wide sturdy plastic shelves that I'd originally used to store kid toys by setting a 4' piece of 2x4 across the top and attaching hooks to the bottom of the 2x4. The 4' shop lights hang on a very short chain from the hooks so that the top surface of the lights is just under the top shelf. (Think of a sandwich - wood on top, top shelf in the middle, lights below. The shelves are an open weave so there is plenty of air-flow.)

With this set-up, I don't adjust the lights up and down as the plants grow -- I adjust the seedling trays up or down by stacking books, shoe boxes, etc., under them. As the seedlings grow, I remove a book from the stack to keep them a couple inches below the lights.

This isn't a high-volume operation; it's easy to run out of space in late spring when everything is getting big. But it's quite space-efficient. The shelves fit easily in a corner of my dining room. Add a small fan and a timer and it's pretty low maintenance.

Incidentally, you can buy smaller all-in-one set-ups like you describe online and they look very cool. But they are very expensive and you can't fit very many plants at one time. For comparison, mine was less than $50 -- a basic shop light fixture, one cool & one warm bulb (not fancy grow lights), a couple strong hooks, and a timer, plus scrap wood from my garage and existing shelves.

This post was edited by kathyb912_IN on Thu, Jul 25, 13 at 18:10

Nice little setup lilydude.

Uscjusto: I do it sort of like kathyb. I have some book shelves in an insulated room in the garage(not too cold or hot ambient temps). I bought a cheap fluoro unit and a couple "daylight" bulbs from Home depot for $30 or so. Attached the chains to the bottom of one shelf and I do the book "roulette" thing like kathyb does on another shelf below the top one. It's easier to do the book thing since not all veggies grow at the same height and rate.

Kevin