When most people buy the shorter ones they soon realize, after starting to transplant, they're not long enough and have wasted their $.

Well I ended up buying some 4 foot shop lights with reflectors. They were "on sale" at Menard's for $19.99. Normally they were like $35, I remember because I looked at them before. I forget whatever they are called but they are somehow made to reflect more of the light cast by the fluorescent tubes.

I'm only using one at the moment and I have one Phillips natural daylight 6500K and one Philips plant and aquarium tube 2700k in it. However I'm wondering if I should just use the two 6500k lights, since I'm not trying to flower anything (yet)?

The oldest plants are only about 22 days old so far, but I DO intend on growing most of my plants indoors under lights. I've been reading through the forums archives, there is a lot of information here!

What you have is a good vegetative set up. Now for flowering switch most of the bulbs to 27k for flower. A 150w hps with good ventalation can grow 1 productive cherry tomato plant. They are indeterminent so the lighting can stay at 16 hours a day. Read up on what photoperiod is required for your plants.

Not all cherries are ind.

Not that it has been an exceedingly long time, but after about a week my plants are still growing thus I deem my setup a success. On Friday I'll be able to afford to get a bigger shelf (wire shelving), assuming I can get my husband to go with me to help lift the box. As it stands now I am unable to hang two of the shop lights together on one shelf [side by side], of the unit I already have, but it is one of those plastic-molded ones. I could just stagger the units, I suppose, but I'd rather not.

I also need to get some sort of bigger pots to transplant some of my "seedlings" as they seem to be at that stage.

Because the 6" or so at the end of each bulb is darker, at least for T12 fluorescents, you end up with a lot less good growing space under 2' bulbs. Also, the 2' and 4' bulbs and fixtures cost about the same, since you're paying for the electronics at the ends, not the empty space in the middle. So I think you're better off with 4' fixtures, unless you're severely cramped on space.

I can tell nygardener has never had a fixture open. The ballast (most expensive part) is toward the middle in most fixtures, if not all, not the ends.

I saw this thread when it first appeared but I'm usually too busy to comment much anymore. If you are a DIY type person who is handy with a tools, such as a DREMEL, you can usually open up a fixture and figure out how to shorten it 12". There are 3' bulbs available that will then fit the fixture. You can ONLY do this to fixtures with electronic ballasts, not the older magnetic ballasts. One benefit is it will almost always raise the BALLAST FACTOR (BF) since it is now driving shorter lamps. You may get as much as 10-15% more light than the bulb rating says.

I have done this and it works well.

Zink