new light fixture purchased, new greenhouse structure assembled -- ready for transplanting

Today I purchased a new light fixture for the new greenhouse structure.  I decided on the 4' Quantum T5 Bad Boy with four bulbs.  There are four models of the Quantum T5 Bad Boy holding four, six, eight, or twelve T5 bulbs.  I was having trouble deciding how many bulbs I really needed in the fixture, and so I asked the sales clerk and he said that a general rule of thumb is 20W per square foot that you're trying to illuminate.  Since I'm hoping for the maximum illumination space in the new greenhouse to be 3'x5' = 15 sq ft, I figured I'd need a maximum of 300W, and probably much less, considering I wanted to have areas around the edges of the greenhouse that could count as partial shade.  This helped me to decide on the four-bulb fixture which supposedly supplies 216W, for $172.  The fixture did not come with bulbs, so for an additional $10 a piece, I purchased two grow and two bloom bulbs to try to provide the plants with something resembling full spectrum light. 

The bulbs are triphosphor coated and supposed to be higher output than typical T5 bulbs.  As you can read on the Harvest Moon website for the product (try to forgive them their typos), the Quantum Bad Boy supposedly drives its bulbs much harder than typical T5 fixtures, resulting in higher outputs.  I'm really more concerned with the efficiency of the bulb in terms of how well it lights the plants compared to how much it increases my electric bill, but maybe if it really is a higher output fixture then I won't have to have the lights on as long each day.

I also purchased and assembled another storage structure for the new greenhouse. 

As you can tell from the pictures, the new structure really dwarfs the old one.  It's large enough to house both the germinating trays on a single shelf and have a shelf for the larger plants as well.  It's 4' x 2' x 6', and I have divided the vertical space up into three shelves: one for storage and the electric heater, one for germinating, and one for the taller plants, measuring 11", 17" and 31", respectively.  Ultimately, I may put in some nice firm plastic for the walls, but for right now, I'm going to stick with the plastic sheeting.  I am however, planning on installing some fans for ventilation.  I'm assuming that the larger plants are going to need more air circulation than me blowing on them several times a day.  Tomorrow, the transplanting!   

new books / light fixture, lots of pictures soon

Almost all of the seedlings have now put out their primary leaves. I'm still trying to catch up on pictures taken by my guest gardeners and photographers over the break, but should be able to upload pictures soon. Meanwhile...

I had quite the greenhouse Christmas ranging from books to gardening supplies to monetary donations for greenhouse upgrades. My gardening book collection now includes the American Horticultural Society's Northeast SmartGarden Regional Guide, Greenhouse Gardener's Companion by Shane Smith, and two books by Eliot Coleman: The Winter Harvest Handbook and Four-Season Harvest. I've already started the earlier of Coleman's two books, Four-Season Harvest, and am really enjoying it. I find it to be informative and well-written. It's clear that Coleman and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, are passionate about organic gardening and fresh nutritious vegetables. They make the distinction early in the book that their gardening techniques are not about extending the growing season (as I am doing with heat and light), but rather extending the harvest season through succession planting and crop protection. I think that their information on harvest-season extension and cold-hardy crops should prove beneficial regardless.

While traveling, I finished reading Fresh Food from Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal. This is a good book about container gardening, and has several thorough sections on building a range of indoor gardening supplies such as self-watering containers, trellises, mushroom colonies, chicken coops, etc. He's also quite the sprout advocate, describing not only how fast-growing and nutritious sprouts are, but also providing numerous sprout recipes and juicing options. It was a pretty informative book, but at times had a bit too much "this will be useful in the coming Armageddon" for my taste.

With the help of some monetary donations from my family, I have bought a new light fixture for the greenhouse. It was becoming apparent that the one 2' T5 bulb per shelf set-up was insufficient to light the seedling trays. The plants along the rim of the trays were growing diagonally (called phototropism) to try to reach the light that was primarily illuminating the middle of the tray. To fix this, I bought a 2-bulb 2' Ultragrow T5 fixture from Harvest Moon Hydroponics for $92.95 (price includes two bulbs). I would've purchased the slightly cheaper Sun Blaze 22 system from ACF Greenhouse, but because of the holidays, they weren't shipping any new orders until the week of Jan. 5th, and I didn't want to wait that long. I installed the new fixture on the top shelf and combined the two 2' T5 single fixtures on the second shelf.

Top shelf:
Second shelf:


I had two choices of T5 bulb for the fixture: grow and bloom, with color temperatures of 6500K and 3000K, respectively. I don't have a good conceptual understanding of color temperature yet, but I'm looking into it. I do know, though, that the grow light emits primarily in the blue spectrum, while the bloom light is primarily red spectrum light. I originally installed one grow and one bloom light in the fixture, but after some reading, it's seeming like the top shelf should probably have two blue spectrum grow bulbs, since it receives very little natural light from the window. Also, the Greenhouse Gardener's Companion says that unless I'm trying to trigger a plant to flower (by lighting it for less time), that I should be lighting the greenhouse for 18 hours a day, so I modified the timer settings for the fluorescent lights to 6 AM - 12 AM instead of 7 AM - 10 PM. It seems like this book is just what I've been needing.

fluorescent light arrived and new seeds ordered!

My fluorescent light arrived on Friday. There were supposed to be two 2' T5 bulbs with two fixtures, but there was only one set in the box. The packing slip seems to indicate that ACF Greenhouse thinks they put them both in the same box, but alas, there was but one. I tried calling them yesterday to discuss the situation but they aren't open on the weekends. Hopefully, I'll be able to resolve the issue tomorrow. I have, however, installed the bulb and fixture that they sent me, and am quite pleased with it thus far (I really only need one right now, anyway).
I decided to mount the fixture by attaching two chains to the metal clasps that were included with the Jump Start T5 Light Fixture and Bulb. At Lowe's today, I bought two 4' lengths of thin white chain that slipped easily into the metal clasps that attached to the back of the light fixture. I cut two holes in the top of the plastic sheet on either end of the top tier (which will serve nicely for future ventilation purposes) and fed each chain out and then zip-tied them together on the top tier. This light should be much more efficient than the two halogen grow bulbs I was using. A downside to its increased efficiency though, is that, of course, it won't be supplying supplementary heat to the greenhouse. On the up side, I think it's better lighting for the pictures...


I purchased some new seeds Saturday night from Renee's Garden. Even after the Herb Collection arrives and is planted, I was going to have an extra six slots in tray 2. B suggested trying to grow some peppers, and after some searching, I succeeded in finding a distributor for Pimientos de Padrón, the tasty sweet (when green and unripe) peppers that we ate in northern Spain this past summer. They are typically sauteed in olive oil and served as a tapa (an appetizer served at bars that only serve appetizers, "tapaterias"). They are absolutely delicious, and we´ve had much difficulty finding a close substitute in the local grocery stores here, so I´m very excited about the possibility of growing them here in the greenhouse.
The minimum order at Renee´s Garden was three packets of seeds, so I also purchased some sunflowers for the yard. Last year, in addition to giant sunflowers, we bought an assorted sunflower seed pack that produced some really beautiful multi-color sunflowers with purple and red-streaked blooms. They were like Hydra with multiple heads for each stalk. The "Bright Bandolier" sunflower seemed the most like the Hydra from last summer, and so I purchased one packet of those and one packet of the "Lemon Queen" variety. Renee´s Garden promises to donate 10% of the proceeds from the sale of the Lemon Queen seeds to the Great Sunflower Project, which aims to help advance the understanding of the current plight of pollinating bees by studying and recording what types of bees in which areas are frequenting the Lemon Queen sunflowers. It sounds like a neat project. One of the coolest things about our sunflower canopy in the front yard last year was how it seemed to establish its own ecosystem complete with a host of birds, bees, and weird beetles I´d never seen before. Hopefully this year´s sunflower crop will be just as bountiful and we can help out with some bee studies at the same time.

supplies update, slideshow soon

The purple basil has really taken off, and the sweet basil is finally starting to sprout. I've been photographing them twice a day, and now I'm working on a slideshow of their respective pictures.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for the new seeds to arrive, and I finally ordered the fluorescent bulbs. The best price on a 2' single T5 fixture with bulb was $45 from ACF Greenhouse. This includes not only the bulb, but also a metallic reflector to help direct the light onto a smaller area. They have a really nice site that provides a lot of background on different lighting options and how to compare them to figure out exactly what your lighting needs are. Just as with the seeds, the bulbs are supposed to arrive in 4-10 business days. I hope they get here soon, now that the basil has sprouted, the greenhouse really needs more uniform and efficient lighting.
Also, I've found a local supplier for the heat mats for seed germination. They should provide a much more efficient source of heat for the seeds than the grow bulb. The product is made by HydroFarm Inc, but they only sell to retailers. I'm planning on purchasing two, and then my greenhouse supplies should be complete!

greenhouse begun

So I've begun my indoor greenhouse project and have already run into a few problems. The structure itself has come together quite nicely, but the lighting options have tripped me up. I was originally planning on two fluorescent lights positioned vertically on opposite sides and ends of the storage shelf structure, but then there were so many choices and limitations (the simultaneity of which was the real problem). There are lots of different types of fluorescent bulbs of different sizes, shapes, and efficiencies, and so the task was to find two efficient (T5 or T8) grow bulbs (plant or aquarium) around 2' or so in length hopefully with matching fixtures in an adjacent aisle. It proved difficult to satisfy these constraints at Lowe's, Home Depot, and PetCo. Although I think I had the option of buying expensive (>$100) versions in one or more of these locations.

My initial purchase was two 4' T12 bulbs + fixtures at Lowe's, but it wasn't until I got them home and started assembly that I realized that they were lacking power cables. Researching on the interweb about the power needs of the T12 bulbs got me thinking that I might want to switch instead to the T8's. When I returned to Lowe's to investigate my powering options, I was really disappointed at the mix and match availability of bulbs and fixtures (and they have moved all their gardening seeds to an undisclosed location until spring.....). Making the short drive to Home Despot yielded only slightly better results. They too have retired their seeds, but they were sporting the sexy T5 bulbs that I didn't even know existed. Thinner and more efficient than even the T8's, the T5 seems like the way to go for my indoor greenhouse, but they also didn't have the sizes and coatings that I needed.

I still don't really understand what the difference is between the plant/aquarium bulbs vs the "cool white", etc bulbs. What I've read so far suggests that plants really need visible light and that they respond differently to visible light that is narrowband and centered around different wavelengths, but I still don't have a good handle on what type of light my greenhouse will really need. Right now, I just have an incandescent grow lamp (that I purchased last year when our sunflower seedlings were suffering) pointed at my tray of germinating basil seeds. I think it's probably contributing mostly heat at this point, which according to what I've read about germination is the second most important thing after water.

I've been looking into the T5 bulbs more online and it looks like I can buy two 2' bulbs with metal reflector fixtures for $45 a piece. I don't want to buy from the first site I find, but still, it's encouraging. Probably going to place an order for something along those lines in the next few days. It's not really essential until the basil's sprouted.

So, tomorrow I return the unnecessary purchased items from Lowe's (two 4' aquarium bulbs + fixtures and a bulb starter kit) and go buy a zipper for the door. I tried today to get a heater pad for the seeds from PetCo, but all they had was one for a 50 gallon terrarium and I think that that would've roasted them for sure.

I've ordered some seeds (since they are apparently out of season locally...): two types of cherry tomato, one roma, four different "slicing tomato" types, and some herbs, all from Seeds of Change. If I end up planting even half the stuff I want to, I'm going to need to double the size of my greenhouse (fine by me).