Wow, so it has been a very long time since an update. What has been going on? Well, a lot of reading, planning, prepping, and looking after our little seedlings!
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| Old shelving + sale lights = cheap seed starter! |
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After a couple of abandoned ideas, we finally got the design down for our little seed-growing setup. I found some shop lights on sale at Canadian Tire (1/2 price!!), and then we did our research to make sure that we got the right bulbs for growing plants. Let me tell you though, when you go looking and talking to people about trying to set up some grow lights, you get a lot of funny looks! I think some people didn't believe me when I told them it was for a container vegetable garden; "sure, for 'just' vegetables." Using some old, cheap Ikea shelving (lucky I didn't throw them out!), we assembled a shelving unit to hold the seeds and lights.
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| Getting the timer and lights all ready to go. |
The next step was getting the lights going on a timer and finding out when and how long to have the lights on. Looking for a timer was surprisingly tough. Finding a timer that had two grounded outlets proved to be a bit of a challenge! Crazy! So, got the timer, plugged the lights in, and bingo, automatic light! We've got them running about 14 hours a day right now; from 6:00am until 8:00pm. And with the fact that they are fluorescent lights, you'd be surprised how little energy they use up! It's amazing that they run all day like that, and at the end of the day, you can touch them, and they're barely hot! Good stuff!
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| The finished product. |
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