[Anke]

Has anyone got experience using growing lightbulb? I have been looking at the Fluorescent systems, seems to be costing up to 50 pounds for the basic one, but have so far not bought anything.

What do people use them for - I was thinking my peppers/chillies (just coming through in the propagator), then tomatoes and squashes/pumpkins/courgettes.

Anyone recommend a make/supplier? Or are they just hype? Any normal lightbulbs (energy saving ones) can be used for this too? - I do understand the science behind using the specific ones, but was wondering if a normal light does the trick too, after all it would only be supplementary lighting anyway...

[Bert]

What do people use them for -

Cannabis 
I have looked into them ( not of the reason above ). You are right they are expensive. I went for a heated propagator  instead.
Sorry I haven't been any help.

[Fleecewife]

The point of using a grow light is to provide enough light at the correct wavelength to grow healthy plants at this time of year, when natural light levels are low and daylength is short.  With no extra light at all then your plants will be spindly and weak and will never really come right.  With an ordinary lightbulb you get some small benefit but the wavelengths are wrong, so your plants will still be pale and attenuated.  Just having a heated propagator will encourage them to grow upwards but not to be bushy and deep green as they will still be searching upwards for the light.  If you have plenty of windowsill space and live somewhere warm and sunny then you can make an aluminium foil reflector which will help to increase the light available, but I have never found it to be enough until about the beginning of May.
You can get daylight bulbs for reading and needlework or for those with SADS, but they are expensive too and cover only a very small area.
As you've done your research you will know that the growlights provide light at a different wavelength.  There are two types, one of which is more expensive than the other - but I can't remember off the top of my head which is which.
Because I often start my tomatoes and cucumbers very early, say late Jan-Feb, in a heated propagator, I do need extra light - light and heat are not interchangeable, plants need them both.  The propagator is 6' long and on my bedroom windowsill in front of a south facing window, but without a growlight the plants would be easily 6' tall before the frosts were over.  Even with a single growlight they are a bit spindly, so these days I sow them a bit later so the plants are not so advanced but will be bushy and raring to go.   Ideally for that length of propagator I should have at least two lights, so I tend to huddle the more important crops right under it and leave the others, often flowers, at the edges.
I have a pulley system so the light can be raised as the plants grow, but of course the lower growth gets no benefit. 
You could easily make your own reflector to fit your propagator, and buy just a bulb, which is still expensive but cheaper than the whole bulb plus reflector set-up.

If I didn't use growlights then my crops would possibly not have time to mature before the first frosts, so the range I could grow would be smaller.   I do think it's worth forking out the cash and the bulbs last for ages.  I bought a spare several years ago and it's still sitting waiting to be needed.

[Anke]

Yes I was aware of the Cannabis link, but hopefully I will not be on some list of "growers-to-be-raided" if/when I buy one of these bulbs... the websites seem to be legit from what I can see.

Thanks Fleecewife for your detailed comments, as I am in the Borders too I have suffered from late tomatoes (and usually green peppers, but no red ones). My aubergines normally blossom in August but never ripen beyond a plum-sized one... Will discuss with the other half of how to proceed, I just wasn't sure if a normal light bulb would do enough of the trick. We would have to rig up a system just next to the south facing window, I find normally once the plants are germinated properly I can take them out of the propagator and the warmth of the rooms is enough, but yes light in February is definitely not strong enough.

[pgkevet]

There are the aspects of daylight length, light intensity and wavelength plus ay filtering effect of lught through normal glass if grwoing on a windowsill.

One of the simplest approaches may be to use refglectig foil/mirros to enhance the amount of light you do have.

I'm mid-wales and start most of my stuff off in the conservatory then try to move what can take it to a cold greenhouse since the final problem is balancing the amount of light with ambient temperature and  the conservatory temps encourage stuff to grow faster than the light levels warrant

[cloddopper]

Anke I grow under LED full plant spectrum lights and also use a heated sand bed covered & encased in & covred in some pond liner to hold any spills of water .
 

The set up is in a dark cool wooden log cabin that does not get any sunlight inn it .
 It has worked well  .
I've made my own bottomless seed growing tubes from old and new kitchen sink waste water pipe of 44mm dia x 75 mm tall . the bottom is stuffed with a small square of open cell semi rigid packing foam and then I fill the rest of the tubes with my own special high quality formulated soil less potting compost ( known as Mel's Mix aka MM )

 I  lightly tamp the compost down and then use a pencil point to make an indent in the compost . Fill the indent with a pinch of fine grade vermiculite granules till it is three seed thickness from the top and place the individual seed on it and then cover with a bit more vermiculite .

Now I very carefully use an extremely fine rose'd  small hand house plant watering can to wet/ water  the filled tubes  .( sometimes I stand the filled seeded tubes in an inch ( 25 mm ) of water over night to really soak things before putting them under the lights in 2 inch( 50 mm  deep trays with 5 mm drain holes drilled in the floors
 
 the water  around the seed stays fairly constant due to the MM and so long as you use a clean household trigger spray to keep the tops damp ever 2 to 3 days  it won't be long till the plants break out.

 growing with the light I have big 300 mm aluminium reflector shades for the LED bulbs. I have it set up so I can raise or lower the lamps .. to get the pants braking out I tend to suspend the fittings so the bottom edge is 4 inches 9 100 mm ) above the top of the tubes . once the plants appear I raise it up every other day or so to keep that 100 mm distance .

 Most of my plants have been used as grown for planting out in the garden  , however I've successfully run two trays of and come again salad leaf over winter , cutting any leaf that reached 100 mm long  , once the plants got to 100mm and the light above it was just a case of using a bit of tomato feed in the watering spray .

 The under bed heater is set at 20 oC and is thermostatically controlled .
 When the LED grown plantout's got to 50 mm tall or so  I put them in the single candle flame heated glasshouse to normalise them & healthily grow them on .

When  big enough to plant out,  planted them out in the correct weather/ temperatures for the season .

 At present I've not got anything to take pictures of to show you as I'm stripping the greenhouse out to get it re levelled.

look for posts In the site name  "PLANTOID" I put up numerous pictures before My computer became terminally ill & died .
 If they are missing for reasons such as removed from Photo bucket let me know & I'll PM you my Photobucket access to the current account .. there are a few in there , in a day or so I'll hopefully be able to add some more.

[Padge]

Clodhopper....I'm currently( ) looking at growlight options and took the liberty of looking through previous posts and it seem majority have indeed gone....except the raised bed ones I wonder if you could repost/send pics of your set up  im getting a bit confused with all the info out there and differing opinions on what is best for what

[cloddopper]

Ok no probs I'll nip out to office and green house  in between bad weather periods and take a pile of pictures.

[cloddopper]

As promised the picture and some titles .
 If you right click on the picture it should take you into my Photobucket.

In the drop down menu on the right side click " open link " and then use the left or right arrows on the picture to view the rest ....sometimes it works sometimes it does not .

Any questions or ideas put them on the thread & I'll try to answer them .

Yep I know the spellings and word forms on the pictures are dodgy,  I'm on morphine 24/7 and it makes me heavily dyslexic & sleepy some days.
You should have seen the " mistooks " before I tried to correct them .... no spell checker on Photobucket I'm afraid . Those mistakes you will find make no difference to me as my brain cannot recognise them today .

( Sometimes I look back on carefully edited posts ( That took me ages and ages to do ) of the past and cringe at the errors and speech content . )
 

[HesterF]

Thanks for this post! I got a heated propagator last year and started everything off early (Feb for peppers and chillies) but the outcome was not great - I lost quite a few when I moved them out of the propagator even though I made sure they stayed relatively warm. Now wondering whether light would be the answer. Tricky though because you'd have to have quite a complex set-up - not just for the propagator but enough to grow them on until May time too. Maybe one for next year for me!

[cloddopper]

Look up the last frost date( average time of the year for the last frost in your area ) work back the number of days from the planting out time so as to get a date of when to sow your seeds ..
There are not many plants you'll be planting out before the last frost date .
Put , "my last frost date " into Google etc.and you should find the UK charts somewhere in there , you might also find average temps for each week which can be a useful help when planning crops.

Yes,  plants will need light  but once the seeds poke through & develop the first four leaves the job of the starting  bed is over and you do need to move them into a similar heat in day light..  if you want the natural growth .

If you move the LED light too high too quickly the plants get straggly,  if it is too low  they will touch the LED's but won't burn unlike with using  incandescent and fluorescent tubes .

Once the seedlings get big enough for potting on / transplant,  start to harden them off ready for the normal planting out regime .
 Thermal shock can be fatal to lots of the more tender crop plants .

 If your glasshouse growing, you'll still need to know the average temps for the time of the year you intend to put the plants in pots etc in the glasshouse and work back for your sowing times.

[Padge]

Much appreciated clodhopper thank you 

[Anke]

Just looking back at this thread, we have decided to use normal halogen lightbulbs this year, as cannot justify set-up with grow lights at the moment.. , but my chilli peppers have germinated fine (in the propagator) and are now sitting on the window sill (south-west facing) and also have the lights above them. Just about to make foil covered backs to maximise light reflection. If it doesn't work I can save up for grow lamps for next year (I really would need two anyway...)

I struggled last year as I left plants too long in the house due to late hard frosts and I didn't want to risk the polytunnel. However this year I am going to build a hot-bed for them in the polytunnel (got enough muck in the goathouse...) in March and should hopefully have them out there despite some frost...

[Fleecewife]

I will be very interested to hear how your hot bed works Anke.  I have a similar problem in that we have very late frosts and I have to hang on to plants indoors which should really have been set out long since. We also have loads of manure   

[cloddopper]

Be careful  of the manure hot beds  in the tunnels for the heat also hatches insect eggs that may become insects that decimate your plants.

 You may also find that as the muck decays you'll get far too much condensation then your seedlings/plants will suffer damping off.

If there is plenty of ammonia produced it may also affect the plants in an adverse way .