Lights in the Basement

Tomatoes are here! I've had some tasty Sweetie cherry tomatoes and a few Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes, which I think are a bit early for the area. I started my tomatoes indoors a good eight weeks before the average last frost date, which is April 23rd in DC. In addition to tomatoes, my peppers and marigolds were started way back in January! I started kohlrabi, cucumbers, broccoli, basil, cabbage and a few flowers all by seed indoors. To do this, I set up florescent lights in the basement.  

There was an old shop light in our basement when we bought the house and last year I simply added new bulbs and set the light up to a timer which gave my seedlings about 18 hours of light per day. This year I got a little more sophisticated and added a warming mat for the seedlings and created a little shade around the light with tinfoil to add more reflective light for the plants and help contain heat. Once the seedlings were an inch or more tall, I transferred them from the small seed starting containers to larger biodegradable planters. I kept these in small plastic tubs, which made for easy watering. 

tomato seedlings under the old light

By early March everything was growing so well that I ran out of space and needed another light. I decided to buy inexpensive shop light and the brightest bulbs that I could find at my local garden store. I spent only $20 on the light and another $10 on bulbs that had the biggest lumen count available. It's quite lightweight and was easy to mount on existing shelves in the basement. I bought another timer, plus an extension cord, and we were set! Aside from the increase in electricity (which I never really attempted to measure), it was an pretty inexpensive endeavor.

tomato seedlings under the new light

The sweet bell peppers, which I started first in January grew really well and started to bloom already in April. I think they were started just a bit TOO early. They had grown tiny little peppers and were quite ready for more space outside well before it was warm enough. In the end, I lost a bit of time because the blooms and small peppers eventually fell off. After the transition outdoors and some fertilizer, they bloomed again and now I have nearly full-sized peppers. 

pretty purple pepper stalk with blossoms forming

tiny peppers growing out of blossoms

Before the plants were ready to go outdoors at the end of April, I had to slowly transition them to the temperature and light in the sunporch. It's a great step in spring when the days became warm and sunny but it is still cool and sometimes freezes at night.

Starting the veggies indoors worked out pretty well. For some, it took several weeks for the plants to become established once they were planted outdoors. The cucumbers didn't grow much at all until the weather became hot, but the kohlrabi, cabbage and the broccoli grew slow and steady, especially in the cool sunny spring days that we were lucky to have this year. Now, they have become healthy full-sized crops ready for harvest.

I'm certainly planning to start plants from seed indoors again next year. I'll have to hold off and not do so many so early, but I will be planting again in the early spring to get a head start on the growing season.