My simple home garden

The staff there were so nice.  I was able to talk to someone for a while about what I planned on doing.  They weren’t condescending even thought I told them, and it was obvious, that I was new to hydroponics.  I did get a raised eye when I said I had some corn seeds that I wanted to grow inside.  I picked up the hydroton (50 l worth) some mylar film, and some more rockwool.

I was kind of shocked to see how fast their sprouts were growing.  They had some peppers about 10 days old and they were about 4 inches tall.  My peppers are still having issues.

You can bet I’m going to go there to pick up any equipment I need.  I loved the service and how nice they were.

There is a link is to the right to the new store. I only have one design on some apparel right now. For some reason, at this time, the items aren’t showing up. Maybe it will work itself out over time.

The main reason for creating the store is not to make money (though that would be a plus), but rather to get more links to this site to get more people interested in what I’m trying to do.

I was at homedepot and couldn’t pass by the lighting area after reading about overdriving fluorescents last night. I picked up a shop light and a ballast.

I rewired the original ballast in the shop light for now (the new ballast is still sitting unopened). I plugged in the fixture with a tube, Everything looks pretty much the same to me, but who knows. I wish I had access to a light meter, but I’m not about to go out and buy one for the few times I would actually use one.

I haven’t put the fixture in the basement yet, but I did lower the one there to get it 2 feet closer to the plants.

Mark’s pepper seed hasn’t sprouted yet. I did notice another strawberry seed has sprouted. I’ll let both plants grow for a while and just snip off the weak one when they get a bit larger.

I’m going to try to go out to Worm’s way tomorrow and see if I can’t pick up hydroton. The shipping on that stuff is ridiculous and generally runs about the same as the cost of the bag you want shipped. If I can pick it up locally I’ll save a bunch of money even when you add in tax.

Apparently some people that grow underwater plants have been “overdriving” light fixtures and have been doing so for years. What they do is called Overdriven Normal Output Fluorescent lighting or ODNO.

Basically they are rewiring ballasts in flourescent light fixtures to add the power that was supposed to go to other bulbs in the fixture to a single bulb. Then they will add more ballasts to the fixture to light any remaining bulbs.

Here are the gains in light output they report:

• 2xODNO (2 power leads per bulb) – ~50% increase
• 3xODNO (3 power leads per bulb) – ~75% increase
• 4xODNO (4 power leads per bulb) – ~100% increase

Pros:

• Much cheaper than buying other types of grow lights
• More light output from a light fixture

Cons:

• Potentially dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing
• Opperating costs slightly higher because of added inefficiencies