These guys also have a USA site and what appear to be a branching off of sites. Plus who is manufacturing the bulbs? They only hint at some "research & development" factories using this bulb. This talk about their HPS bulb is incredible. Uncredible? http://www.nlites.co.uk/HPS.htm

If it sounds too goood then it probably is.

The CFL purple light do exist in europe.
The T5 blue exist from Giesemann they are actinic plus.

The purple T5 they claim to have is possible, it combines the Giesemann Blue actinic plus and the red from the Sylvania Gro lux (not the WS).

"Purple" fluorescent lights are available all over the place, check any "hydroponics" seller. I don't know if this specific brand is available in the US but they are offering nothing that you can't find elsewhere. Whether it is truly useful or not is still disputed by most controlled studies. The fact that NASA takes something into space means neither that it is the best possible solution (NASA performs experiments on different technologies and has an essentially unlimited budget), nor if it is the best solution in a spacecraft is it necessarily the best solution in your basement.

Some of the claims on the HPS page are just untrue, most of the rest simply describes the best modern technology in HPS lighting, nothing unique to their product. HPS lighting on an electronic ballast all achieves roughly 90% lumen maintenance at 8,000 hours (one year), and many products offer enhanced spectrum in the blue. As with many lamp sellers, they like to compare their product to something you would buy in Lowes thirty years ago to make it look really good, when actually it is no better than something you would buy in Lowes today at half the price ;)

>>"Purple" fluorescent lights are available all over the placeI believe in Europe they are but not in north america.

Shrubs do you know if some of those purple lights are available for T5?
I would love the Sylvania Gro lux (not the WS) in T5.

Yes I now know the purple/Gro lux type of lights are not better then any other cheap CFL but for the looks I think they are great.

I grow my plants in my home office and having a few 6500K lights is way too bright.

What I want is 1 Actinic plus blue light and 3 Grow Lux (not WS) T5.

Since I'm just a hobbyist I don't care how expensive they are since I will only buy a few.

Your office will change from a lighthouse to a bordello :)

Gro-Lux are certainly manufactured in T5 format, but I don't know if these are available in the US. Perhaps not, I couldn't find any internet sources. I don't know if the original non-WS Gro-Lux is even made any more.

Maybe GE has something in a T5 plant spectrum.

For the ultimate in lighting that won't strain your eyes but will help the plants, get some 670nm or 690nm LEDs. That wavelength is hardly visible to human eyes but is ideal for plants. You'll need to mix in a few blue ones, and it won't be cheap to setup. Check carefully before buying a commercial LED system since many of them emit their red light nearer to 620nm than 690nm (cost? or so they appear satisfyingly bright to human eyes?) and so are less effective than a Gro-Lux type fluorescent.

Nice, LED's? Would $300 buy me a nice setup? How many would I need to cover a 4' x 4' area? Both 670 and 690 nm are in the Red and Blue spectrum right? So that would be the best mix for growth and flowering? I am glad we have "seen the light"! ;)

I don't think your $300 will get you very far with LEDs unless you subscribe to the "6W of LEDs is better than 100W of fluorescents" school of thought ;)

What do you want to grow? Plan on 20W minimum (but probably more) of fluorescents per square foot of high light plants, maybe as little as 15W of LEDs (I know people who have cropped small vegetables under that level of LEDs). I'll let you price that out but it won't be pretty :)

Aha, the mention of LED's got me all excited and I even posted a little "flighty" challenge to build an inexpensive one here, but I can see it is not done without a lot of money or diverse resources. Scratch out that idea until yr. 2010! Thanks again. - Bhldr

NO not at all a hoax, I have these lamps, They work.
Sylvania have only 18w t5 55cm tubes. Island systems are 24w high ouput and they are great. Also there are 125W and 200W CFL types.
I cant vouch for their HPS lamps as I dont use them, but their CFL and Strips and very high quality, with guarentee. PLants really do love Purple.
Nlites will not be available in the US for a while yet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Thats me there ... any questions ?

the purple light is not a hoax plants use to spectrums everyone knows this .... blue for veg (6400k) and red for flowering(2700k) but the grow lights that made are not exsactly on those kelvins so there is wastage and a fair bit .. .the purple light (25000k)is a 100% PUR meaning in laymans terms there is no waistage .. i have tryed the purple light from nurturelite and it works better than a blue one

use blue for early veg (seeds/seedlings) then purple for veg and cloning ,a red one can be used for flowering but a cfl isnt the best thing to flower with it just doesnt beat a HPS .... they have to work on that lol...

there are alot of things in this world that seem strange but until you try them you wont every have a clue , next time you find something strange instead of ripping it up on the net why dont you try it and find out for your self : ) ...i do and knowlege is better than not knowing ...

peace

A series of people joining GardenWeb just to praise the purple lights? And spouting semi-gobbledy-gook straight from the marketing pages? Why do I smell a rat?

I'm having success growing under LEDS and haven't spent $300 dollars yet. Please do not listen to the so called lighting experts who are saying these are expensive and don't work because you know what...they haven't even tried it yet. LEDS are cheap and they work assuming you do not buy most of the 'official led grow lights'. I have a grow area of 3 x 2 feet. I have $90 dollars worth of blue LEDs that support this area. I have just found some at $15 dollars each that work just as good. My bloom area is 3 x 2 feet also. I have six second-hand traffic lights at 630 NM that are popping bell peppers out real nice. These bells are supposed to be tough under any lights. This light cost me total $120.00. The blue is a total of 30 watts (could be lowered to 9). The red is 90 watts. I'm not saying or claiming they are the best lights to use. I'm just saying they are not expensive and LEDs do work. Check out http://www.greenpinelane.com. I have photos and documentation of this there

Here is a link that might be useful: greenpinelane

I can't say whether they work or not as I've never seen them but http://advancedtechlighting.com/index.htm has purple in most bulb types

Here is a link that might be useful: greenpinelane

LEDaero,

"I have a grow area of 3 x 2 feet. I have $90 dollars worth of blue LEDs that support this area."

That works out to $15 per square foot. Three 2-bulb 48-inch shop lights will support an 18" x 48" shelf with lots of light. The shop lights cost $8 each at Home Depot and the Philips Cool White T8 bulbs are $2 each. That's $36 for 6 square feet, for a cost of $6 per square foot. That's less than half the cost of the LEDs.

I notice that some of the luxury autos are coming out with LED headlights now. The operable word there being "luxury".

MM

MM, the economics of LEDs are based on using less electricity (just as fluorescents are more expensive to buy than incandescent bulbs but you still choose the fluorescent for your plants). A couple of years ago LEDs reached the stage where you could run them for a little less than fluorescents (at equivalent lighting levels) but the startup cost was many many times greater. Now the startup cost is still greater but not many times greater, and the electricity savings continue to improve. A 40W fluorescent tube uses around $100 of electricity in its lifetime, its worth buying something at twice the price for just a few percent saving on that. Its a shame that commercial LED plant lights are still priced at silly levels that make them just a novelty.

For domestic and auto lighting, the efficiency of LEDs is so far ahead of all forms of incandescent lights, including halogen, xenon, and all the fancy variants, that the only issues preventing wide uptake are startup prices and the practicality of large numbers or high power LEDs, although some cheaper white LEDs have poor light quality compared to incandescents. As an example, LED direct replacements for low-voltage halogen bulbs are around $5 each and the economics are about where compact fluorescents were five years ago (meaning it makes economic sense to use them but the startup price is still putting people off). Efficiency isn't such a big issue in cars, but the opportunity to produce less heavy lighting systems at lower power with thinner wires and still get more light is too hard to resist. LEDs have been used for many years for the lower power and smaller lights such as brake lights.\

There is one area already where you would be a fool to buy an incandescent light instead of an LED, and that is flashlights. LEDs have longer battery life, brighter light, more impact resistance, better beam focussing, and a better range of colours, for just a dollar or two more.

SnB,

I have a headband style LED flashlight that is really handy, because it leaves both hands free.

"A 40W fluorescent tube uses around $100 of electricity in its lifetime..."

That's a shocking statistic. I'm using 32W T8 cool white tubes, but they are rated at 20,000 hours. So far I haven't put nearly that many hours on them.

MM

Yes, shocking. Its hard for people to base their purchasing decisions on this type of "hidden" cost spread over maybe 5 years and so they continue to buy cheap inefficient fluorescent lighting. I may well never run my tubes for 20,000 hours since I only run them a few months each year, but it can be helpful to calculate the monthly cost of running my lights and base my decisions around that.

Maineman - I know I'm spending a little more money up front for the LEDs then the Fluorescent shop light setup you list. First, I think I'm getting better performance from the LEDs on growing and blooming. My peppers and tomatoes produce much more fruit under the LEDs then fluorescents ever did. I used to use T5s. I never tried HID, so I don't make any comparisons one way or the other about HPS or MH.

Second - one of the big benefits of LEDs I enjoy is that they are pleasurable to be around in the same room. My garden setup is in my home office not tucked away in a closet or in the basement. I couldn't take the brightness of all them fluorescents, especially seeing how I'm a computer programmer and don't need all the glare on my monitors. Well worth the extra 15 - 60 bucks for me.

Now that I'm getting used to what the leds do (and I'm still learning), I believe I also have some light overkill and don't need as many. Also, I've recently found some Blue Bulbs that are better and cheaper ($13 each) than the blue ones I'm currently using and the cost has gone down to $39.00 for six square feet coverage and wattage down from 30 to 9 for the 6 square feet. I haven't bothered to replace the three 30 dollar lights as they are working and I already bought them so I continue to use them.

My purpose of my website was not to run a LED competition against other lights but to just experiment and have fun with it. If you notice on my site, I'm not making any claims that they are better or more efficient than any other lighting systems nor am I telling people to run out and buy them and get rid of their current systems. I'm not selling anything either nor advertising for anyone else to get a deal. I'm trying to keep to the facts only and show photos of successes and failures truthfully. Anyone interested in LEDs can make their own decisions and I hope that my site maybe helps out a little in this area, especially if I can prevent someone from buying some $1500 LED rig that doesn't work.

What does bother me and makes LEDs look bad is what's being sold out there as official 'LED GROW LIGHTS'. Way over-priced and from what I've learned so far from my experiments most of them can't possibly work!

So in summary my 6 sq ft area can be done for $45.00 now for 3 bulbs and $6 for sockets. This means I'm $9.00 above your Fluorescent rig, at 9 watts power with longer lasting bulbs...not too bad

ledaero,

I explored your website and found it most interesting. I was curious about how much light intensity you were getting from the LEDs and I think I found the answer, based on your light meter readings at various distances from different LED models. At 6 inches you were measuring 100 - 390 lux except for the 12-inch traffic light, which was much brighter at 791 lux.

I have an old Norwood Director light meter, which can be configured to read direct light or incident light. I usually use it with the white hemisphere installed for an integral average incident reading. In my 24" x 48" shelves lit by four overdriven T8 fixtures I read about 500 foot candles at about 8 inches from the T8 tubes, which is about typical for the foliage on my larger plants which are about 16 inches tall. Since the conversion is approximately 1 foot candle = 10.764 lux, my plants are receiving an average of about 5000 lux on their leaves, with higher figures near the top leaves and lower figures on their bottom leaves. Even though the overdriven T8 fixtures are dazzling to the eye, their light output is only about 10% of daylight, which ranges from about 5000 foot candles to as high as 8000 foot candles.

I have grown peppers with mature pick-able peppers under the lights, and have grown zinnias into full bloom, but the fluorescent T8 lights can't compete with sunlight, which is easily an order of magnitude brighter. For that reason, I plan to build a lean-to greenhouse in order to get much more light for my "indoor" grown plants.

However, I am now under the impression that the LEDs that you are using are an order of magnitude less bright than the overdriven fluorescent T8s, and two orders of magnitude less bright than daylight. I concede that there are complicating factors, like which parts of the spectrum are usable by the plants.

"...one of the big benefits of LEDs I enjoy is that they are pleasurable to be around in the same room. My garden setup is in my home office not tucked away in a closet or in the basement. I couldn't take the brightness of all them fluorescents, especially seeing how I'm a computer programmer and don't need all the glare on my monitors."

That 70's slogan, "Different strokes for different folks" comes to mind. I currently have three plant stands and one of them is in this back room office where I have my computer setup. I have the top shelf lights on right now, just for the enjoyable bright room light, even though I haven't started any seedlings yet. I plan to start a few in a week or so, but I have to pace myself because our safe no-frost date is about June 1st. I do have my LCD monitor angled so that I do not see a reflection of the plant stand. That's one important advantage of a perfectly flat screen.

Our Maine winters are long and cold with short days and some people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) when deprived of a good daily dose of daylight. A treatment for SAD is bright fluorescent lights. And I enjoy futzing with the plants. The extra humidity and oxygen are a plus.

I'll follow LED lighting development with interest, but at present they don't seem attractive to me as an alternative to overdriven cool white T8 fluorescents. You are entitled to your preferences, but I do like bright light. And so do my plants.

MM

Maineman,

I hear you on the SAD - I'm in Massachusetts (not as north as Maine of course) and it seems the sun never comes out here at all in the winter anymore! I've seen some theories that the blue spectrum helps with SAD...but don't really know anything about it. I think the work and building I'm putting into this helps too. I've always kept myself real busy with multitudes of projects in the winter.

Thanks for your light conversions and measurement analysis. Having more data is always nice and this is the first time anyone has ever sent me light readings on their system.

It's unfortunate that I don't have the equipment to break the spectrum down. When you compare your T8 Lux to my LED lux this is where it ends and the comparison is totally invalid without the ability to analyze your T8 spectrum output.

The number I would be interested in seeing is what your T8 system's LUX reading is in the 460-475NM and 620 -640 ranges ONLY.

The THEORY (and that's what it is for me right now) is I don't need to be at the same LUX as a full spectrum light type like a T8. I'm specifically targeted at 470NM right now on the grow and 630NM on the bloom. This is what most people miss when they read studies saying plants need X amount of LUX. Theoretically, your counting a lot of 'unusable' light and comparing it to my theoretical 'useable'

I can't prove it of course, but I bet my LEDs are much more powerful at 470 and 630 then your T8s. I wish you had the ability to take more readings with some kind of filter or meter that would give your T8's spectrum breakdown.

I agree with you that everyone is entitled to their own preferences. I do think I'm personally over sensitive to Fluorescent light for some reason. Even being in an office with fluorescents bothers me. When I had a T5 grow light going I started to get headaches nonstop.

But now the T5 and headaches are gone and I don't have to change the angle of my monitor in my office now to avoid glare!...just kidding

Thank you again for taking the time to send your light readings. I really appreciate it.

Here is a link that might be useful: greenpinelane

As I understand the LED light intensity readings, they are all taken at a distance of one foot from the lamp, and the three readings indicate the lux at the centre of the illuminated area, and at three inches and six inches away from the centre. So, a maximum of 3,000-odd lux (4,000-odd for one LED) at twelve inches from the light source.

The relative "usefulness" of different wavelengths of light to a plant is not the important factor. I don't know if it is always mentioned by light sellers because it sounds plausible to people buying their products or because they actually believe it. At worst, green photons may produce perhaps only half the level of photosynthesis as red or blue, but that is much less difference than the BIG difference between wavelengths ...

The BIG difference is the number of photons at a given lux level for red light, blue light, green light or white light. The number of photons is important because it is what determines the level of photosynthesis. One photon absorbed by a leaf, regardless of wavelength, produces the same amount of photosynthesis. However, one lux of 630nm (red) light contains nearly four times as many photons as one lux of 555nm (green) light. One lux of 460nm (blue) light contains over fifteen times as many photons as one lux of 555nm light. One lux of 670nm (far red) light contains over thirty times as many photons as one lux of 555nm light.

White light is obviously a mix of various wavelengths. When comparing white light sources intended for humans, the number of photons per lux is more or less the same for all fluorescents, metal halides, even pretty close for HPS, and so we can just compare lux (or lumens or foot-candles) and be pretty close. But a non-white light source can be radically different so it is important to actually calculate the photon flux to make any comparison.

ledaero,

"I can't prove it of course, but I bet my LEDs are much more powerful at 470 and 630 then your T8s."

I can't prove it one way or the other either. A discussion of the relative merits of one light source versus another always comes down to these spectrum considerations. A few years ago it was recommended by many people to use a mix of cool white tubes and warm white tubes, because the warm white bulbs would have more light in the red part of the spectrum. The warm whites at Home Depot cost about twice the $2 per bulb price of the cool whites, but I found a local electrical supply place that had the warm white T8s for a little over $3 per bulb, so I bought several.

As an experiment, I loaded one shoplight with warm whites and another shoplight with cool whites and hung the two shoplights over two 11" x 22" trays of emerging seedlings. The trays were lined up the long way on the 18" x 48" shelf with the 48-inch fixtures, so that half of each tray had cool whites directly over it and the other half had warm whites over it. All of the plants were under one fixture or the other. The objective of this experiment was to see if the plants grew faster under the cool whites or the warm whites or a mix of the two.

To my surprise, there wasn't a significant difference in growth rates, but the plants under the warm whites all leaned strongly toward the cool whites and the plants under the cool whites grew straight up with no attraction at all to the warm whites or a mixture. So I decided that if the plants preferred the cool whites so much, that I wouldn't spend any more money buying the more expensive warm whites.

I suppose, if you wanted to, you could make a similar setup to let the plants themselves choose between LEDs or T8 fluorescents.

MM

"To my surprise, there wasn't a significant difference in growth rates, but the plants under the warm whites all leaned strongly toward the cool whites and the plants under the cool whites grew straight up with no attraction at all to the warm whites or a mixture. "

Still doen't proof one way or the other until you measure to see if the cool white isn't much brighter.

dcarch

One thing came to my mind regarding light measurements:

In the old days, fluorescent lights had definite flicker problem. Now they have coating which has longer persistence which eliminates flickering.

I think that, depending on what powers LEDs, the LEDs can flicker a lot, even you don't see it with your eyes.

Depending on your light meter's response characteristic, I am not sure what you are actually measuring.

dcarch

dcarch,

"Still doesn't prove one way or the other until you measure to see if the cool white isn't much brighter."

The brightness, or lack thereof, of the more expensive warm white tubes isn't the issue. The plants showed a distinct preference for the cheaper cool whites, for whatever reason, which means to me that I was wasting my money buying the more expensive warm whites. So what if the warm whites weren't preferred because they were dim? Their dimness certainly wouldn't justify buying more of them. This was a Bulb A vs Bulb B issue, not a Theory A vs Theory B issue and not a Spectrum A vs Spectrum B issue.

"Depending on your light meter's response characteristic, I am not sure what you are actually measuring."

I was merely measuring the position of the needle on the foot-candle dial. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm being pragmatic here, and have no intention of getting caught up in trying to measure the photon fluxes at various wave lengths or unobservable flickering or whatever. I'm letting the performance of my plants be the arbiter in questions regarding them. This is not theory, it is practice.

MM

Shrubs n Bulbs - I understand what you are saying about photon energy at different NM, but the color ranges themselves seem to me to make a big difference on how the plant behaves. I know you very knowlegeable on this and would like your opinion on the below behavior I see. All lights I refer to are LED lights that you see on my site.

The plants I refer to on these tests are peppers and tomatoes.

I see the same leaning thing that Maineman describes.

I can make my plants lean toward a blue LED light in a matter of a couple of hours. If I move my blue light off center the plant will bend toward it pretty quickly. Almost sometimes in a full 90 degree bend.

They will not do this with a Red LED light.

If I put a red light over dead center and a blue light off to one side (no matter what the distance), the plant will lean toward the blue light fairly quickly.

If I remove the blue light and just go with a red one, the plant becomes real spindly, tall, with a crazy stretched out internodal length. Once I add blue again, the internodal length on new growth returns to normal.

If I use just a blue at a far distance away, I also get a real tall spindly plant.

When I have blue AND powerful red at the same time, it doesn't seem like I get a lot of growth as the other plants with just blue grow at a faster rate. The red will make the plant blossom after a while no matter how small the plant is.

When my plants are in bloom under Red, if I put strong blue on it, the plants will stop blossoming. Once I remove the blue, they start again.

As far as meter readings go, I don't really use them except to compare bulbs that are supposed to be the same NM range. This way the meter's sensitivity is the same for both.

As far as flicker on an LED, I don't know for sure, but seeing how they actually run on DC, I wouldn't think so, but I bet Shrubs will know.

On two tomato plants some months ago, I had only a 24" T5 Fluorescent with four 24 Watt bulbs. Two were 6500K and two were 3000K. When the plants got to be 4-6 inches tall they started to bloom. A friend of mine told me to remove the 3000K and just use 6500K. This I did and they stopped blooming. However, when they got to be about 10 inches tall, the lower leaves started dying off. I then tried all different mixes of 3000K and 6500K, did't work. In the meantime blossoms were happening but they were dropping.

This was when I decided to try LEDs and first got the Red Traffic lights. I put one of these on one of the plants along with the T5 and I got tomatoes to set. I added another one of these on the other plant and got a few more to set.

There's got to be something different about NM ranges to plants besides the energy in the photon...doesn't there?

Here is a link that might be useful: greenpinelane

ledaero,

"On two tomato plants some months ago, I had only a 24" T5 Fluorescent with four 24 Watt bulbs. Two were 6500K and two were 3000K. When the plants got to be 4-6 inches tall they started to bloom. A friend of mine told me to remove the 3000K and just use 6500K. This I did and they stopped blooming. However, when they got to be about 10 inches tall, the lower leaves started dying off. I then tried all different mixes of 3000K and 6500K, didn't work. In the meantime blossoms were happening but they were dropping. This was when I decided to try LEDs..."

In my opinion, you were too hasty to give up on fluorescent lights. Your dying lower leaves and dropping flowers could have been a nutritional deficiency. A lot of things affect the growth of tomatoes. On page 63 of Tomatoes By Ep. Heuvelink it says,

"No single environmental factor can be regarded as critical for the control of tomato flowering. Environmental factors such as light, temperature, carbon dioxide, nutrition, moisture and growth regulators directly or indirectly influence flower initiation."

I have grown many tomatoes to the flowering stage for setting out in our garden, using just overdriven Philips cool white (4100K) T8s. I have also grown peppers to fruiting stage, as in this picture (you have to look carefully to see the peppers--they are the long green kind):

The eggplant shown above was also grown using just the overdriven 4100K T8s. The containers are the bottom sections of 2-liter soft drink bottles.

MM

Maineman - The tomato story was summarized somewhat. I did try some supplements like Cal Mag plus and some other things like a foliant spray called spray and grow and different nutrient strengths, etc. I totally agree it could have been other things as there are so many factors, but as soon as I put the Red LED light on the one plant things started working. The other plant in the same exact hydro box a foot away didn't kick in until I applied a Red light to it once I saw success on the first one. When I started to add LED blue when I got some of those a couple weeks later, the tomatoes got bushier and greener and the leaves got better.

I also have some photos on my site if you go to the LED Lighting section and then look at the January 31 lights link. Then go down to where I have the red light photos. There are two pepper plants there. They are sweet mini chocolate bells that other folks have told me are really difficult to get to fruit set indoors. I have at least three dozen peppers on one of them and about a dozen on the other. They have been lab experiments under LEDs totally for three months. I have revegged these poor things three times by switching between Blue and Red. The big red light kicked them into high gear finally. I'm working on a 660NM red light as an earlier post from Shrubs_n_bulbs mentioned that the 660s I have may be better than the 630s.

I'm not saying your system doesn't work by any means. I'm curious though and do have a question. You say you've grown tomatoes to the flowering stage for outdoors. Have you ever got a good crop of tomatoes grown totally indoors with no real sunlight, only your fluorescents? Not that I'm an expert by any means, nor do I consider myself even good at this yet, but I have never been able to get a tomato blossom to set under a fluorescent-only setup.

Here is a link that might be useful: greenpinelane

Maineman - I noticed that you also use soda bottles.
Ledaero - All these are grown with 4000K 250w MH and overdriven 4000k fluorescent lights.

dcarch

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Nice! but you 'cheated' with an MH...just kidding. What kind of tomatoes do you have there?

BTW - how the heck do you upload a picture to this thing?

ledaero,

"You say you've grown tomatoes to the flowering stage for outdoors. Have you ever got a good crop of tomatoes grown totally indoors with no real sunlight, only your fluorescents?"

No I haven't, but I haven't tried to do that. I anticipate that I would have serious problems doing that with fluorescent lighting, because my tomatoes typically exceed 6 feet in height. I grow them in 5-foot cages made from concrete re-mesh wire, and the tomato vines tumble out the top of them.

My plant stands using overdriven fluorescent lighting are being used exclusively to grow plants to set out in the garden after our "safe" no-frost date of Memorial Day. Our growing season here in south central Maine is rather short, so it helps to have the plants as mature as possible when it comes time to set them out. Last year I decided to experiment with tomatilloes. Normally I wouldn't even try them because they have a 100-day to harvest rating.

Like many garden plants, including tomatoes, the days to harvest ratings are measured from the date of setting the seedling plant into the garden, and not from the date of planting the seed. The tomatilloes were about 18 inches tall and in bloom when I set them out and they did make a good crop.

However, I won't grow them again, because it turns out none of our family are big salsa fans and that's about all they are good for. My little grand daughter did enjoy "peeling" them out of their husks. Considering how many of them rotted on the ground (hundreds), they will probably be a weed this year. Like the tomatoes, they grew about six feet tall in 5-foot cages, so at 18 inches they were just "babies".

I might try growing tomatoes in our new greenhouse this next winter. But they take up too much space to grow indoors, even if I used appropriate lights like Metal Halide.

MM

ledaero,

"...I have never been able to get a tomato blossom to set under a fluorescent-only setup."

I have gotten them to set, but in the absence of insect pollinators you have to pollinate the blossoms yourself. Usually just "flicking" the blossom with your finger is sufficient to self pollinate it. Or, if you wanted to be more certain, you could transfer pollen with an artist's sable brush.

Incidentally, dcarch and I inserted pictures from existing web URLs using HTML of the <img src="... variety.

MM

dcarch,

That's some very creative variations on the soda bottle pots. I particularly like your "wine glass" variation. Ingenious. If you don't mind saying, what kinds of spray paint did you use? Those circular bases for the wine glass variation: what are they and what kind of glue did you use to attach the bottle caps with? And the other pots with the holes in the top -- I presume they could actually be used as little hanging baskets. Good stuff.

MM

MM,
There are many texturizing spray paint you buy in hardware store.
Yes, the holes are for hanging basket.
dcarch

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dcarch,

Thanks for the info and pictures.

MM

MM,
You are welcome.
BTW, the little holes can be made very easily with a hole punch. No need to drill.

dcarch

dcarch,

Thanks for the tip about the hole punch. I do use a drill to make drainage holes in the bottoms of my pop bottle pots.

MM

Cool home made pots and very creative. I've used the 'hammered look' plastic paint on a few of my grow boxes (the ones in my tomato grow) and was able to get the speckled 'granite' look that Darch has.

I had pretty good luck with the Tiny Tim tomato variety if you like cherry tomatoes. They were about an inch or so in diameter and very tasty. The Tims grew to be 18-24 inches tall. The seeds for these I got at victoryseeds.com I've had excellent luck with all of their seeds and their sampler packs are cheap. I'm growing one of these Tiny Tims and two other minis called Red Grape that I haven't tried yet. They are all 2-3 inches tall now and doing pretty good so far.

The best pollination luck I've had so far with those last tomatoes and now the bell peppers have come from the fans I installed. I put a couple of six inch fans in the chamber and have them going strong enough to shake the plants real good. Basically just under the speed before leaves and blossoms fly off. I have the fans on the same timer as the lights. I didn't seem to have too much luck with artist brushes and q-tips, etc, although I'll need to get back to this on my cucumbers some day as these will have separate male and female flowers to pollinate and I hear it'll a real challenge on the timing of this also.

I'll put some closeups of peppers on my pepper plants on my main page this weekend.

Here is a link that might be useful: greenpinelane

Check this out:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tomato/msg0722391626989.html

dcarch

Maineman posted:

"As an experiment, I loaded one shoplight with warm whites and another shoplight with cool whites and hung the two shoplights over two 11" x 22" trays of emerging seedlings. The trays were lined up the long way on the 18" x 48" shelf with the 48-inch fixtures, so that half of each tray had cool whites directly over it and the other half had warm whites over it. All of the plants were under one fixture or the other. The objective of this experiment was to see if the plants grew faster under the cool whites or the warm whites or a mix of the two.

To my surprise, there wasn't a significant difference in growth rates, but the plants under the warm whites all leaned strongly toward the cool whites and the plants under the cool whites grew straight up with no attraction at all to the warm whites or a mixture. So I decided that if the plants preferred the cool whites so much, that I wouldn't spend any more money buying the more expensive warm whites."

Ah, it's not that the plants PREFER the cool white light, as the plant hormones in the leaves orient themselves toward the sun solely via blue light.

You can grow plants under red light alone and get adequate growth. Red light is needed for growth.

But the plants will probably think they're growing in shade without a source of blue light.

The cool white lights have much more blue light, so the plants will actually turn away from the valuable source of red light in the warm white tubes to focus on the cool white tubes.

Now, you can grow plants only under blue light, as it has more energy per photon than red light does.

But the plants need red light too for flowering.

Another thing to remember is that when a plant doesn't get enough light it will usually grow faster in the attempt to get closer to the light source.

This causes spindly growth and weak stems. So faster growth isn't always better.

***********

Another interesting thing about sunlight: bright sunlight is way MORE light than plants can use.

Hard to believe?

Well, consider this. Plants germinate in low light conditions, in the Spring. And they do fine with shorter days and less intense sunlight.

And the plants flower and come to harvest AFTER the solar peak of the year, in late summer and Fall.

So photosynthesis is rigged to work well at LOW light levels.

When sunlight gets REALLY bright the chlorophyll platelets would be taking in so much energy they'd oxidize and break down.

So they have a trick to deal with the varying light levels.

The Chlorophyll platelets come in "stacks". These stacks spread out in low light so all of them are on-line and collecting sunlight.

But in bright light, they'd over-rev. So the stack retracts, and the platelets line up vertically.

Now only the top platelet is exposed to sunlight. The others are in the shade, protected and off-line.

Also, there's a chemical mechanism that helps off-load the excess energy during peak light conditions.

So we don't NEED to duplicate the June/July sunlight.

We only need to duplicate the sunlight in late March.

And then, the peak absorption spectra for chlorophyll is in the blue and red wavelengths, so if we focus all our light there, we can grow flowering plants in about 15 watts per square foot worth of LED's.

Ignore the yellow light, that the human eye is most sensitive too. Skip the green, that the plants can barely use anyway. It may look weak, but it should work.

I'm going to get one of those 168 LED blue/red lights for my windowsill. I have a Red Robin that's about three years old now, all together. It grew too fast in February and the supplemental light may solve the problem.

JKirk,

My Philips Cool White T8s are rated at 4100K, which is a rather "warm" cool white, since some cool whites are rated at a much bluer 6500°K. My zinnias seem to be doing OK under just the 4100° tubes.

I think as the technology matures that LEDs may supplant and even replace fluorescents, but, for the time being, the fluorescent tubes cost much less than LED illumination and cost is the most important factor for me.

Also, the blue + red lights add up to a garish purple, and I prefer to view my plants under something approximating white light rather than purple light.

What you say about the excessive intensity of sunlight is interesting. Zinnias are said to require "full sun", but now I do wonder exactly what that means. I have noted that zinnias don't do well in the shade, even when the foot candles of that shade might be comparable to the foot candles under my fluorescent lights.

I have also noticed that I have to "harden off" my zinnia seedlings before transplanting them into the "full sun" of the garden. Just moving them directly into full sun usually gives them a bleached out "sunburned" look.

MM

My seedling racks have overdriven florescents hanging above the racks on pulleys, and I raise and lower them with winches I bought at Harbor Freight.

My top rack has three 48" fixtures side by side. I plan to take out the middle fixture to make room for the LED glowpanels.

Then I'll use a sheet metal nibbler to cut off one reflector flange on each of the two remaining florescents.

That way the LED's will be on the same plane as the T-8's.

The idea is to be able to run the florescent fixtures and the LED's on separate timers.

LED only when I'm not there, and turn on the florescents when I'm there working.

The capital outlay is well worth it to save on electricity, especially considering the lifespan of LED's.

Later, who knows? I still have the daydream of making a grow booth to keep a First Lady or Fourth of July tomato plant alive year round.

Florescents just can't swing that, and I can't afford the electric for the big MH lights.

But fresh tomatoes in the winter? Priceless.

JKirk,

I'll bet a lot of us would be interested in pictures of that rig when you get it complete, or even before.

MM

!!

Pictures?

I should have thought of that sooner.

About the time you asked for them, I was recuperating from the Flu.

Just assembling the new light array about sent me back to bed !

I have had some issues, but not from the LED's.

Turns out the Mean Time Between Failures for the fluorescent ballasts is pretty predictable...

I no sooner had the combined fluorescent/LED array hung up when the electronic ballasts started failing like dominos, one after another.

I had to take everything back down and exchange several of the ballasts with lights from the bottom rack that were barely used.

So, the lifespan of these SP-15's turns out to be two seasons. Makes the LED's look better by comparison, at a projected fifteen YEARS.

So far, my impressions: with the overdriven T-8's off, the purple light from the LED's is ghostly.

The green of the foliage turns green-black-black and leathery in appearance, almost like bat wings.

From a physics viewpoint, that must mean that nearly ALL the light is being soaked up by the foliage rather than reflecting off, and of course there's no yellow or green light to bounce off in the first place.

The growth results were a little slow, until I realized: without the heat from the T-8's, the plants are too cold in the basement.

So I dug out a heating pad and bought a heated germination mat. The improvements were immediate.

One other issue: The LED's are so directional that distance above the plants doesn't matter much -- except that these panels are a mix of red/blue.

Oh.

So to give the light a chance to overlap, I had to raise the light array higher. If I buy another set of these panels I'll probably get solid red panels for seed starting and add blue light in between the panels.

I also rooted a cutting from my Red Robin tomato under the LED's. The foliage at the top of the cutting was a bit too close to the LED's, and the leaves stayed small, curled up and turned super-dark green.

After it rooted, I brought it upstairs and the foliage uncurled and seem to be growing now.

Okay, I finally worked out how to get a picture posted.

JKirk,

Another way to show a picture is to link it directly into your message. For example, if you type

<img src="http://www.members.aol.com/jkirk3279/LED-Array.jpg">;

you will get

{{gwi:1032009}}

You can even increase the size of a picture by using the HTML width and height parameters. Since your picture is 600 x 450 pixels, we could increase it by 50% in size by writing

<img src="http://www.members.aol.com/jkirk3279/LED-Array.jpg"; width="900" height="675">

which would result in

{{gwi:1032009}}

This forum permits the insertion of several HTML commands, which lets you control the appearance of your messages in several ways. Of course, you shouldn't insert really large pictures because it makes the message thread hard to read.

MM

JKirk,

Incidentally, I just now noticed your incorporation of a computer fan in the humidity dome. What a clever idea!

MM

dcarch;

Brilliant...finally, a use for all those dreadful AOL cds.

I have found a solder gun useful for melting/cutting cleanly such as you have on the wavy edges there.