Albert's Greenhouse

This year, I finally got my seed starting area together before the actual start of seed starting season. There. Say that three times fast.

In the past, I've started seeds indoors, and I've done it with and without a heating mat, usually on top of some flat surface that was not currently in use - the kitchen table, the filing cabinet, the washing machine. I'd hurriedly try to rig up some source of light just as the seeds came up, and as they turned scraggly, I'd try to add more light, hoping that it would soon be time to plant them all outside and tear down the setup. Well, no longer.

This winter, I got serious. Went out to Home Depot and bought a couple of T-8 fluorescent ballasts, a case of bulbs and some endclips. I cleared off a section of 4-foot wire shelving in the back of my laundry room, wired up six lights, cut up a section of styrofoam insulation for the shelving bottom, and set up my seedling heat mat. The lights are on a 12 hour timer, the heat mat is on a thermostat ( the thermostat sensor is buried in a container of sand on top of the heat mat ), and green growing things are doing quite well, thank you.

The new T-8 fluorescent tubes that are available give off about the same light as a standard 40W fluorescent tube, but are quite a bit thinner and more efficient, taking only 34 watts of electricity to do the same job. The new electronic ballasts help this efficiency, and provide instant start as well, even when it's cold.

So seed starting is a little less ad-hoc now, I have enough light and space to grow on the seedlings for quite a while, and my electric bill has been suitably enhanced. Though not by as much as one would think. 6 tubes @ 34W is 192W for 12 hours/day, which comes out to 2.3kwH/day, or around 50 cents at the exhorbitant rates we're charged here in sunny California. So for an extra $15 per month, I can start my seeds on time and save having to buy seedlings at the local nursery. As with most suburban gardening projects, it's not really that efficient financially ( ever calculate how much that summer tomato cost you? ), but it's certainly rewarding in other ways.