How fun, starting yous first plants from seed! Overall I think you are doing really well.

To help with the leggy-ness, I would get the lights closer. My plants usually are touching the bulbs in my T8 fixtures. Can you get your room colder by ceiling off the heat vents?

T8s can keep your plants plenty happy for a few months. I have started seeds recently that will live there until May 15-ish. I use 4, 2-bulb T8 4' fixtures per 4 flats on a shelf with the bulbs barely touching to no more then 1" away. This keeps them nice and stocky. Remember that you cant transplant all of your seedlings deeper (bury them deeper then when they germinated). A good rule of thumb is if it has one main stem, it can be buried deeper (peppers, tomatoes, zinnias ect). But if it branches out at the soil line you can not plant it deeper (petunia, broccoli, parsley ect).

I hope that helps! Have fun!

FYI- your HP Sodium lights have a lot of red in their spectrum which has been shown to cause leggy-ness in plants. You may want to swap it back out for your T8 tubes altering warm and cool bulbs about 1" or less away from the seedlings. I would recommend at least 2-2 bulb fixtures per flat

Keriann~

Thank you very much for the reply.

When I had the T8s in there, I had them close to the plants (not as close as yours though) but with the 250w HPS setup, even with the air-cooled hood, the radiant heat gets a bit much so I have to keep it further away. I was told this is ok with an HPS since the light penetrates and travels better than fluorescent�. But I have also heard the same thing you mentioned about HPS having a lot of red and causing leggyness. Maybe I�d do better to go back to the T8�s. The only issue for me is that I already have this HPS setup, and my T8 fixture is only 3 bulbs which is a far cry from your 8 bulb setup. I�m growing four trays worth of plants so it sounds like I�m just under-lit with the T8s? It would just be quite costly to get a setup with 8 T8 bulbs and fixtures. A 2xT8 by 48" fixture runs about $25 so four of thus plus bulbs would add up to $125 or so. But maybe that is the right thing to do? Or I could swap out the parts of my HPS for a metal halide (same color temp as cool white T8) and get a bulb, all for about $50.

Quick question for you though on the T8s. You mention you have the plants almost touching the bulbs. How do you handle that with various height plants? For example, my Nasturtiums are already four inches tall while my Oregano is only still right on top of the soil, and my marigolds are only an inch tall at best.

That�s good info on transplanting the seedlings deeper if they only have one stem. I knew you could do that to some but didn�t know the one-stem rule; very good information, thank you!

I�ve closed the heating vent to the room as you suggested, and shut the door. This morning the room temp was 66 degrees which is great (right?). When you are starting cool weather crops like broc/cauliflower and cabbage, what are your room temps during the day and night?

Thanks again for the info! This is great forum!

Hi,

Yes, you are correct, you can keep your HPS lights farther away. If you could switch it over to a MH for $50, I would for sure go for it. Or maybe do 1/2 your plants under the T8s and the other 1/2 under your HPS and switch them around every other day of so?

I start so many seedlings that I can usually have a whole shelf dedicated to one plant height. But have no fear there is an easy way to do it. Start with your tallest plant and set your lights. Then add books, containers or whatever under your not-so-tall seedlings to lift them up to your light. I hope that makes sense.

66 degrees is great! I try to keep mine around 55-60 but high 60's is fine too. A small fan will sturdy up the stems too.

I start my cool crops outside and keep them about 45-50* in a cold frame (made out of an old window- Cheap!). I think they will be okay starting them in your set-up. I would get them out earlier then the others and just cover them if you get a frost at night. I think 2-3 weeks before your last frost date would be ideal.. just cover for frost.

Oh, if you build a cold frame outside. You will be surprised on how hot it gets in the sun and how fast it drops off at night. I would jot down temps through out the day both inside and outside of the 'greenhouse' so you can correlate 20* outside and sunny = 50* inside (just an example).

HS,

You might want to consider overdriving your T8s. This subject was also covered at length in two old message threads here in the GardenWeb Growing Under Lights forum. Unfortunately the original message thread started by the user Zink was apparently lost by GardenWeb and parts of the follow-up thread were also lost, but a lot of information remains in I have found the BEST cheap flourescent ballast/fixture - cont'd..

Overdriving your T8 fixtures can nearly double their light output. But before you overdrive, you should crowd as many of your T8 bulbs over your plants as you. Overdriving is what you resort to when you can't get any more T8 bulbs over your plants. I overdrive a lot of my fixtures to get the most that I can out of my T8s.

ZM

HS,

I meant to say,

"But before you overdrive, you should crowd as many of your T8 bulbs over your plants as you can."

Somehow I left off that last word, "can". It is inconvenient that we can't edit our messages here to correct errors. But I understand that there are good reasons for not letting us do that. Otherwise, we could re-write "history" and destroy the basis for follow-up messages.

ZM

Hi HS,

My guess as to why the plants got leggy in the first place is because they simply were not getting enough light; they had to reach for more light. Most folks leave their fluorescent lights on at least 16 hours a day and probably more often 18 hours a day. The distance of the lights (3 to 4 inches above the seedlings) was probably okay, but a little closer (2 to 3 inches) may have been better. I just don't think 12 hours of light was enough.

Regarding your thoughts about trying to "simulate the same daylight they will get when moved outdoors in April", you really can't compare artificial lighting to the amount of sunlight they'll get when you put them outside. When moved outside, it's true the amount of time they will receive light will be reduced (from say 18 hours to 12). However, the amount of light will be increased. The sun will supply more light in 12 hours than your lights can do in 18 hours.

Blooming and fruiting, of course, will be influenced by whether the plants are short-day or long-day plants, but I'd leave that to the plants once they're outside. They know exactly what they're doing :-)

My suggestion is to increase the length of time you leave your lights on. But whatever you end up doing, I wish you the best of luck with starting your seeds indoors for the first time. Sounds like you're off to a good start!

Art

Thank you both for the replies. I could fit a lot of T8s in there, definitely 8 rows of bulbs as Keriann suggested, it's just more of an expense thing. I'm trying to do this without breaking the bank. My only concern about going with the Metal Halide would be the heat (because they get hot like the HPS).

I checked out that overdrive thread and wow have things changed since 2003 when it was written. In 2003 you could buy that fixture for two 48" T8 bulbs complete with digital ballast from home depot for $6 and change. WOW. Today the cheapest are $25 from Lowes and HD! Four times more expensive. I wonder why the prices went up so much?

On raising the plants to reach the light�. That�s a great suggestion. One of those why didn�t I think of that kind of things haha.

So as it turns out, my T8 fixture is 4 bulb not 3 so buying another bay of 4 will be reasonable way to get me up to 8 total. Off to the hardware store!

awesome! It is always fun to save a few bucks! I would get cool and warm bulbs :)

Have fun!

Keriann~

I would recommend cool white 6500K T8 bulbs only. You should be able to get a box of 10 of them for about $25. A few years ago, when my seedlings got a choice between cool and warm fluorescent bulbs, they grew straight toward the 6500K bulbs, ignoring the 5000K and 3500K bulbs completely. I have bought only 6500K bulbs since.

Some people say the warmer light is needed for flowering and fruiting, but mostly what your seedlings will be doing before being set into the garden is vegetative growth. And I have hand-hybridized zinnias in bloom now under 6500K bulbs, proving that they can do without the warmer color balance.

ZM

Thanks for the tip ZM! I will try a shelf of all cool white and see how it goes.

Your zinnias are quite spectacular!

Keriann~

Thanks again for the tips. I have half 6500k and half 5000k (got them before reading the latest replies).

The temp in my room was 60 degrees this morning, perfect!

Keriann, any tips on cold frames? I'm now leaning more that direction instead of a PVC greenhouse. I don't need the size the greenhouse will provide. A big cold frame would work fine. I don't have any old windows laying around and don't know where I could find them so I would either have to buy glass, or use plexiglass. Do you know if plexiglass would work?

No harm in cool and warm bulbs :) Just different preferences. Awesome about the temps! and you will save a few bucks on heating as well.

I have a cold frame like the link below. Plexiglass would work. Most people to glass because it wont crack like plexiglass will over time. They are pretty simple to construct and you can make them to suit your needs. One year, I dug a rectangle about 8" down and about 3' x 5' and just set an old window over it. So I used the soil as sides and a bottom. It wasn't the easiest way to control the temps but I got a great cool weather crop. Bare in mind by soil is like concrete so I didn't worry about it all running in when we got rain. If you wanted to go really easy, you could do plastic tarps over hoops... I think you were leaning that way. You can just plant right in the ground and hoop houses are less finky.. much harder to kill the plants via extreme temps in my experience.

Keriann~

Here is a link that might be useful: Cold frame

'It is always fun to save a few bucks!'

I realise you are enjoying this project for its own sake and maybe relish working out the technical aspects of lighting etc., but all of your 'companion' plants are hardy and would grow perfectly well if sown outdoors. No bucks at all. Sledgehammers and nuts come to mind. ;)

Flora UK, yes I do have a tendency to really geek out on the engineering aspects, but right now it is getting down into the 20's at night so I don't knwo if those companions would survive, and with the plague of pests I had last year, I want to be sure these things are ready to help from the moment my veggies sprout outside.