May 2008

Cool High Tech Grow Lights... for a price...

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I'd been looking at alternative lighting for awhile now. Many available specially built lights that only shine in the red and blue spectrum to enhance chlorophyll and plant growth have been on the market for years, and quite expensive. Prices have come down some, and some industrious people have come up with their own (see my other site http://www.dabblings.net for DIY projects I've built, as well as homegrownlights.com and a host of others from instructables.com.)
I'm now investigating a set of lights that are a direct replacement for the T8 48" fluorescent lights I've been successfully using. They're from a company called SolCool. They've arrived, but I have to do a little rewiring to remove the ballast from the fixture they're going into, so I'll be posting that shortly as well as some side by side pics of the actual light that comes out of them. Fluorescent lights need a ballast to function properly, where incandescent and LED lights do not. "A ballast is required for use with gas discharge lamps such a fluorescent, to provide them with the necessary starting and operating electrical conditions. Once the arc has been struck and the fluorescent lamp is lit up, electrical resistance becomes negligible and the principal function of the ballast is to limit current to the lamp while it is operating." from answers.yahoo.com. A ballast would blast a high voltage spike through the expensive LED arrays, rendering them useless. While this would be an interesting video to post on metacafe, I don't really care to sbject my newly aquired bulbs to that.

So - with the tomatoes overcrowding the current lights, the melons straining to get to them as well, and the other starts that should have been put in a week ago, I've got my work cut out for me on many fronts. In the garden, though, I'm happy to say the snow peas are fending for themselves, the grapes are starting to show leaves, the asparagus is delicious, the first set of "king harry" potatoes are doing well, a second set will be ready in a week, and a couple of beds have actually been completely planted. In the Lasagna Garden vs Square Foot Garden arena, the onion sets are planted (was able to find some locally that were very reasonably priced), and an observation: the lasagna garden plot has a lot of worms crawling throughout it - actually hard to miss them, while the square foot garden mix is - well, lifeless. Hmmm. It's still early yet, but I'd have to lean toward the lasagna garden at this point if I were to hedge my bets.