Seedhunting

[bulborum]

To keep everything together in one topic
here my (and your) experience with seeding
and growing bulbs from seed

I seeded most seeds in December
the first to germinate was Phycella ignea
Most flower-pictures are from my suppliers

Roland

[Hoy]

What kind of light do you use?

[bulborum]

Just nature

I have to orientate me this year if Led is good enough already as grow-light
and maybe the price get more reasonable
Do you know other alternatives ?
best not consuming giant amounts of energy

Roland

[cohan]

So far I have only used Fluorescent T12s (old fashioned kind) and slightly better T8; I  would really like to get high output T5 (not regular cheap T5 under kitchen cabinet lights) but they are expensive,  though a friend told you me you can get them much cheaper if you do not buy the full set-up with reflectors, but then you need to build/prepare your area with your own reflectors/reflective surfaces, or you are wasting your light; these give much higher light (more like full sun, unlike regular fluorescents) for reasonable electrical consumption..

I'd also like to try LED, but I want to experiment with regular LED sold as household light-- the ones sold for plants are supposed to be more efficient, so they have no white light- only blue and/or red- so its very ugly, it may work for growing plants ( may work, the extravagant claims made by the sellers of these lights are controversial) but you cannot see the plants at all properly under them.. I think if I used them, I would put some regular lights between them, so that when I want to look at the plants, I could turn off the coloured lights for proper viewing! Household LEDs are regular white light, and of course not as powerful, but I would like to experiment with them-- maybe they would be good just to supplement weak natural light, and very inexpensive for electricity!

[RickR]

Of course, you can get regular flourescent lights (T12,T8,T5, etc.) in soft white, cool white, daylight,etc., or so they are called.  Of these, the higher Kelvin rating is better for plants (3300K-3500K).  I don't know the K rating on grow lights.

[cohan]

Depends on the plants, too-- some seem to respond better to warmer light, some to cooler... cacti and succulents, for example, are often grown under all cool lights, seems to be less etiolation...