Grow Greens Indoors Under Lights

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When we purchased our shelf for setting up grow lights I failed to appreciate the importance of having enough clearance for growing tall herbs and seedlings such as peppers or tomatoes. These two Spicy Bush Basil plants outgrew my light station after just a month or so. For a long time I pruned them heavily to try to make them fit under the lights, and then I finally gave up and placed them on a table next to the shelf instead; they are flowering now, and I hope to save seed from them. For anyone setting up shelves for growing, you may wish to consider having at least one shelf with extra space. 2' might sound like a lot but it's not, because the light bars take up several inches and you have to keep the foliage of the plants from touching the lights. Add a 4" pot to the equation, and a tall shelf quickly becomes a very good idea.

 

[ducks4you]

If you have an old florescent light ballast in your basement, you Could purchase one with LED's. I had one and I purchased pink LED gro lights, 4 ft long.
You could grow them on a table underneath this.
Just a thought...

 

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In the next few weeks I will be sowing seeds of several lettuce varieties that I indeed to grow out for seed. Frank Morton tries to get his lettuce starts planted out 'no later than February 20th', which he says is a lot earlier than you would think. His farm is in Oregon, in planting zone 8b. In this essay he indicates that he starts his lettuce a full month before he starts his tomatoes and peppers. https://www.wildgardenseed.com/articles/how-to-grow-yourself-some-lettuce-seed

I grow a lot of lettuce, and I never would have thought that it should be one of the first crops to get started. Our last frost is typically in the latter half of March, and young lettuce is pretty frost tolerant. Looking back over my notes, the lettuce that I planted out in early March did great-- however seedlings set out in April or May really struggled. This year we had incredible heat in May, and it was inhospitable for lettuce. So I am going to do my best to get my 3 or 4 weeks old lettuce seedlings out the door by early March this year. I may do a couple of waves of the lettuce varieties that are most important to me this year; that way some of it is likely to make it to maturity. I would like to save a lot of seed from 'Tom Thumb', for sharing; it is the most adorable little butterhead that I have ever grown, and it was incredibly heat tolerant too. Some of the summer crisp heads alluded me last season, so I will try a bunch of those again, with earlier planting dates this time around. And I would like to create a cross of red Romaine 'Pandero' and green Romaine 'Kalura'. I tried to cross them this summer but the green one flowered about two weeks after the red one-- so my timing was way off. This time I'll give the 'Kalura' a two week head start, and I may plant them out in a checkerboard pattern to maximize the likelihood of a bug crossing them for me. That would be really cool.

 

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My, how time flies! Fast forward seven months and many varieties of lettuce have set seed in the garden. Last week I cut ripe flowering stalks and placed them in large bins under cover, and then after a few days I could scrunch the flowers and harvest the dry seeds. By then there were many more varieties ready to cut, so the bins were filled for a second time-- and good chance that round three will be ready in another few days. We've had nice sunny warm weather which is good for seed saving. On August 12th I filled several 1" and 2" plastic cups with vermiculite to start a bunch of lettuce for autumn. They have sprouted well, and will be pricked out in the coming days. The photo on the right shows two little cups with what I suspect are dud seeds; nice that not a lot of time or effort went in to finding out that these seeds were not viable.

 

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After 10 days under lights I made blocks and pricked out the lettuce babies. Some had 3" long roots, so I likely could have moved them out of the vermiculite and into soil blocks even sooner. There were six kinds of lettuce, so each variety got its own tray of 35 blocks; the whole process took about two hours from start to finish. The seedlings were placed away from the bright LED lights for 24 hours so their roots could settle in; then they were watered lightly and moved under lights to grown on. These large blocks don't dry out very quickly so they will be low-maintenance, with watering every 2-3 days or so. If all goes well by mid-September the lettuce will be of a nice size for planting out to fill empty spaces in the garden.

 

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After another 10 days the plants are beginning to look like lettuce, which is encouraging. I made an interesting discovery when I opened the fridge today. Back on August 23rd I had placed some Gustav's Salad lettuce seeds on vermiculite in a cup with the lid on in the fridge, and then I kind of forgot about them. When I noticed them today they were starting to sprout-- in the fridge-- so I took the lid off the cup and moved them under lights.

 

[Branching Out]

Two weeks have passed and it's time to get the lettuce seedlings outside and in the ground. I will need to clean up a few garden beds this morning to make room for them. Good timing though, because many of the bean and tomato plants are finished and ready to be culled. Note that the little cup of Gustav's Salad lettuce are still sitting in the little cup of vermiculite; I had better get those seedlings pricked out as well.