Last year I posted a great deal about gardening, building a big garden and an orchard in my Crucible series, with posts of progress throughout the season. Most of that content can be found under the 2023 Garden header at the top of this Substack. I probably won’t be writing as many garden posts this year, though I will be gardening just as much as I did last year.
A snow storm is bearing down on the upper Midwest as I write this. The next two days we are expected to get 12-18in, which is 2-3 times more snow than we have seen all winter. That is a good thing, I would rather get 2ft. It will melt soon. Last spring, all four days of it, through July it hardly rained at all. The most rain we had last year in one spell was three inches over Christmas. Without that unprecedented rain, the soil would be very dry.
Last year was the first year I got serious about starting vegetables early. These first four pictures were last year’s system. I ended up purchasing 6 lights.
I stacked the other two lights above the first four, DIY. It was janky but it worked. Best vegetables I ever started.
I went back to the same store this spring to buy more of the lights I purchased last year, but they discontinued the model. Lowes carries them, but the price was 80% higher than what I paid last year, there isn’t a Lowes anywhere near here, and they were sold out anyway. So I bought 4ft LED, florescent-style bulbs, housing for those bulbs, and then I built a hood from spare plywood from storage in the garage. I painted the inside of the hood with a high-gloss pure white paint.
I’m not sure why the light from the older units is blue, while the new style are red. The older units have two settings, the first is blue and the second is red, the instructions say the red setting is for encouraging plants to flower. I have not done the research to understand the difference in spectrum between the two systems, I’m merely working with what was available locally.
The new lights are hard-wired. I found this mechanical timer, which is working very well.
The lower system plugs in, which is convenient. This timer has a dual plug-in; you are not supposed to stack more than five, there are six so this divides them into two systems of three.
Ten trays of starts. Peppers and brussel sprouts I started early, though I started the process two weeks later than I did last year. I started a lot more onions this year, about three times as many. We are still eating potatoes, cabbage, carrots and squash from the root cellar, but we ran out of onions before the first of this year. I started twice as many peppers and brussels, maybe too many. A little more of everything. Whatever I don’t use will find a home.
The total watt output of all these lights is 68 up top, 150 on the bottom, 218 total. They will run for a little more than 12hrs a day until I can bring the trays outside, hopefully in a month. I haven’t worked out the financial numbers, the overall cost for these vegetables, compared to buying starts from a nursery, or buying vegetables in the grocery or farmers market. I’m sure it is a savings. But it’s only partially about that. Not everyone is going to start a garden this way, grocery’s, nursery’s and farmers need support too. For me, the satisfaction, and joy really, of managing these plants as they grow, seeing them through to harvest, alone is worth the cost.
Inspiring!
I'll get my started in a small green house soon.
It's great to see your creativity in action on all fronts! I am bummed that Ron and I will not be passing near your area on our roadtrip this year. The closest we will be is in Woodbury for a quick shopping trip before moving further east to my sister's lake cottage. I will be in Dent with my dad's side of the family later on, but it will be a very short visit with a 6-hour bookend drive. So I'll be greatly anticipating your gardening photos and videos, even if I can't be there to witness it!