It was a dark and gloomy garden...

So this evening I actually had some free time so I decided to check up on my garden and oh boy was I surprised. So those tomatoes that I planted last week are already sprouting much to my surprise and now I find myself without the lighting I need n order to make sure the stems strong and thick.

I also have to figure out how I am going to keep the egg carton planters from drying out because it seems no matter how much water I give them they are always bone dry by the time I get home.

While I was there I also went and fiddled with my plants in the planter from my dad. They are doing really well but I am regretting the plants I chose to grow in there a little because they are all turning out to be different heights. I have already had to remove the 2 tomato plants I seeded because they were burning themselves on the light bulb.

I actually moved those are last week but since then I have noticed that the basil and the thyme are also getting too large while all the other plants are still small. I decided to trim the tops off them in the hopes of making nice bushy plants. As a temporary solution I have tilted the lights so that are a little higher on the basil side (left side of the next picture).

I hope that between the 2 lamps that I have and the light box in the wood planter I will be able to keep the plants alive and healthy until I can get to a home depot. With luck that will be in 2 days.

Now I have to decide which lights to get. I am kind of restricted in the size of the lights as the shelf is only 91cm (36in) wide. I have been toying with the idea of getting a much of small ones and putting them perpendicular to the width of the shelf. That way I can have more heights as the plants grow, but that restricts me to bulbs that are around the 35cm (14in) length. Time to go stalk homedepot.ca and pull out my tablet for some sketching of the designs. I also have to drag Talia over to help me design because she likes to make sure everything is pretty.

Some things to keep in mind:

1) When I took that herb gardening seminar 2 weeks ago the speaker mentioned that she had 2 different types of bulbs in each of her grow lights. A low colour temperature bulb in the 3600 range and a high colour temperature bulb in the 5000+ range. This gives the plants more of the full spectrum of light.
2) the closer the bulb is to the plant the less the "leggy" the plant will be.

Be back in a bit :)

Edit: back with some ideas

So having thought about things I have come up with 2 different options

Side note: I decided to pull my tablet out so today is a garden as well as a drawing day :)

Option 1: I have seen several 36 in lights which would fit perfectly and probably be the cheapest option. The down side is that its a single light so I cant really have multiple plant heights the way I would like

Option 2: A 48 in light. This light is actually a little bit large for my shelf and would cause a 6 inch overhang on each side of the shelf which Talia may not like but on the other hand it may provide her with some extra light for her sewing area.

This option can actually be done in 2 ways. The easy way is to get a 48 in light but this has the same problem as option 1. The second way is to actually get two 24 in bulbs which would let me have 2 different plant heights.

Option 3: Probably the most expensive but also the most versatile as it gives me lots of different heights for the plants. In this option I would use 12 to 14 in lights and put the perpendicular to the shelf. The number of lights depends on the other dimension of the bulb. I figured I could probably fit 4 going across the shelf. The main disadvantage of this is the cost as it would require more lights. I am also not 100% certain I can find a 12 light. Home depot doesn't have any so I have sent an email to a hydroponics store in Toronto. If they don't have them or don't know where to get them then its probably a good bet that they don't exist :(



~(' ')~