These things are great!!!!...

This is my 125w CFL grow light! I have been using it for about 2 months now and i have had the best results ever! I had previously atempted to grow a big indoor vegitable garden with a 1000w HPS grow light (1000w is much more powerful and covers much much more growing space) but with no success. The bulb was so hot that my plants were deformed and burning under the light. It was very very hot. So I did some research on what I could do to fix the problem. The fix to the problem was to buy a "cool tube" that fits around the grow light and run vent fans connected to the cool tube to take the heat away from the light. Well at the time I didn't have the money to purchase the cool tube so I just left it for a while and just grew plants out side in my back yard garden. A couple months passed and I decided to move to a new apartment with out a garden so I got back into indoor grow light gardening. But the 1000w was too big for my bachelor apartment. It covers a space of 5'x5' and I didnt think that was the right size for my apartment. So I sold the 1000w HPS and bought the two 125w CFLs... and boy! am I ever glad!!! They run very cool (not very much heat from them) so I can get away with a fan blowing on them to keep the seedlings safe from the heat, and one of them does'nt even have a fan. I just keep it a bit farther away from the seedling, and it is very happy! This time around my atempt to grow trees and plants has been perfect. The trees and plants are healthy as can be. They are showing amazingly fast growth, and color-wise they are looking very vibrant and bright! I have no complaints about the CFLs. The only thing about the CFLs is that they are meant for a maximum of one or two plants or small trees (I'd say after the plant or tree reaches a height of 1.5 to 2 feet its time to put it under a more powerful light). This is due to the fact that with the CFLs the "full sun" plants or trees need to be very close to the bulb to have any effect. Im experimenting with the carrots to see if it is possible to increase the grow area by placing partial shade or shade plants/trees around the CFL. We'll see if that theory works with the CFLs. I'll be sure to keep you updated about that experiment in future posts.

as promised a look at the growth of lemon seedling #1...

                                                          lemon seedling #1 at 3 days old

lemon seedling #1 at 8 days old

seedling #1 at 16 days old

seedling #1 at 23 days old

and last but not least 29 days old

seedling #1 at 29 days old - first branch

So there you guys have it...the growth of lemon seedling #1 from "birth" till 29 days old. In the upcoming posts I'll show you the amazing growth of the lemon I started in the summer on my balcony, or as i call it "the summertime lemon".



I have 3 lemon seedlings all together check 'em out...

Lemon seedling #1 at 29 days old

Leomn seedling #2 at 27 days old

Lemon seedling # 3 at 3 months partial shade on balcony (with not much growth)

and 5 weeks 5 days under CFL (lots of growth, nearly doubled in size)

Now that we've seen my lemons and carrots in my next post I will explain how I'm going to contain the lemon trees' growth and how I do grafting. In later posts I will show the growth of the lemons from day one (except for the biggest one that I started on the balcony in the summer, because I didnt have the camera yet)