My LED grow panel is cool but it's just not possible to effectively bend the light around my indoor tomato plant such that the plant can get the light it needs to, that is to say I can have it shine from the top, or any side, but there's always a significant leaf area not really getting light. So I bought a second light to help with that and also so I can focus a bit more light on my seed starts, so far my Big Beef tomato starts are growing like someone fed them meth, holy shit I think it's been 3 weeks since I put the seeds in the starter cells and they're 5" tall.
https://smile . amazon . com/HIGROW-6-Band-Spectrum-Lights-Plants/dp/B01N48PJIF this is the light in case anyone was wondering. Link mutilated because puttitout hates amazon :(
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[–] Dkeere ago (edited ago)
Nice lights. Well out of my price range for the amount of shelf space I need to cover though, and my shop lights work well enough for that. edit, did the calculation on price. That would cost me almost $700 to cover my 24 square feet of seed starting area, vs about $150 for what I'm using now.
[–] 12124812? [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
Damn you need to cover that much shelf space? I've started everything that's supposed to be started inside and then some things that are supposed to be direct sowed because I had so much bright light area left lol
To be fair, if you buy a single $80 300w (130w or so actual) LED panel on Amazon, that should cover at least half of your area. I mean in theory it would cover all of it but it's one of those things where you can't really bend the light to spread it out so you kind of have to deal with lots of unnecessarily bright areas reducing total coverage.
[–] Dkeere ago
I actually need about five times that, but I've gotta work with my limited budget due to home repairs. Keep in mind though that I'm trying to start a nursery and am growing well beyond the capacity of the typical garden. I've got about 100 individual types of plants started, with 200 needing to be sown in two weeks, and another 250 or so before spring. That's just individual types though, not individual plants. I'll probably have about 5000 individual plants going inside before spring. I'm also growing them for nursery size vs garden size, so many of the plants are being started month earlier than you normally would. Lots of juggling plants around, but eventually I'm going to have to break down and put together a cheap temporary greenhouse.