A New Growing Season

Unlike the Italian boat captain, I unintentionally abandoned my garden blog.  Blogging is harder than I expected.  As the 2012 spring planting season approaches I return to the garden blog with renewed purpose.

My first blog of this year will be my garden lamp solution for plants started from seeds.  Many of the growing kits with the overhead flourescent lamp offered on the web are totally sweet but unless you order in advance of starting the seeds, who wants to wait for delivery right?  Secondly, who wants to pay $150+?  And if you're like me, you always start more seedlings than you actually have space for so the grow kit isn't big enough anyway.  If we had the space, we'd just build a greenhouse right?

My initial plan was to head to the local box store and purchase some Schedule 40 PVC pipe and attachments and rig up a frame with an overhead flourescent plant lamp.  In my estimation this can probably be completed for less than $50 and an hour of your time.  After chatting with the employee in the store lamp section, he suggested rather than purchasing the 4' T12 flourescent plant bulb and light kit that I purchase a flood light plant bulb and an 8.5" clamp light.

I have the clamp light attached to a metal shelf in my garage just above the seed tray.  I am going to add a 24 hour plug in timer to get the seedlings synced with the outdoor daylight cycle.  I have no idea if this will make hardening off any easier.

The cost for the materials was $8 for the Philips Agro-Lite BR40 120w plant light and $8.50 for the 8.5" clamp light.  I will keep the blog updated on the success of this method.