i was out today looking for a more appropriate fluorescent light for the tomatoes. at the store, the guy who helped me said that my lights were fine, but i may want to try adding some reflecive mylar around the shelf. thankfully, the shelf i'm using isn't very big, so the mylar wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. i bought ten lineal feet of it at $2.50 per foot. it was a one time cost that may very well be worth every penny.
since the plants are still less than 2" in height, putting the mylar up today won't really help them much. but once they start growing taller, the light at the top will not be intense enough on it's own, so the mylar will help distribute the light to the bottom of the plants. also, because of the light i have, i had to move it to sit on top of the shelf, so i could wrap the mylar around it. the corona box is used to keep the seedlings as close to the light as possible. i still have to figure out how to best cover the last open side of the shelf. i know i will need continuous access to it to tend to the plants, so a sturdy 'door' will be something i will be working on over the next few weeks.
now it's time for a plant update. the last update was 5 days ago, and the green pineapple plant (above) was just starting to poke thru the soil. well, has it ever grown since then. it is now about an inch tall and looking stronger every day. it did have a tough time shedding the seed shell, which only happened last night. it only has one of it's primary leaves, so i hope it still does well.
above is the purple calabash plant. every day, it seems like there is some new growth on it. this is by far the strongest of the 2 seedlings. it's hard to have expectations on a plant, but i expect to eat some mighty tasty tomatoes of this guy sometime around early may.
No comments:
Post a Comment