Daylight Bulbs

I am not sure about it, but I did buy some low energy screw in lighbulbs. I think they were 60 watt or so. Flourescent grow lamps a bit higher I think and certainly two tubes throw out a lot more light. It was cheaper for me to use the standard screw in type receptacle.

The extra warmth would be minimal. Soil cables would be much more practical.

My only pearl to this conversation being. Do a search for Police auction houses. Here in the States there is a great site specializing the reselling of confiscated property. Since pot growing is a big deal here. So are deals on the confiscated equipment. I even got a great chainsaw for a super price.

In this case crime did pay, in two ways, they lost --I won.

Thanks for your reply. Actually I did not expect the bulbs to give the extra warmth,I am already using the soil warming cable for the extra heat. I did not know if it had to be ultra violet bulbs to give the light or if the normal daylight bulbs would do the trick. Nice to hear you had such a bargain with the chainsaw.

Actually Vera modern low energy light bulbs are if anything even more efficient than standard grow lights as long as you just want light which is as close as possible to the wavelength of sunlight. If you want heat of course you are out of luck but you say you dont. The only thing is because of the lumens psm being rather low on these household lights they do need to be fairly close to the seedlings in a light box, but they won't scorch them so no problem. I won't go into full details (unless you want technical bumph, in which case PM me). It is not the amount of light that the human eye can detect but the wavelength of the light and it's closeness to sunlight. Household low energies are very close indeed better even than the flourescent ones sold for fish tanks. I keep a small lamp above my Pachypodium lamerei to boost daylight in winter. It works.

John