Hmm Boags said:
Just as the little bugbers start to show their faces the sun has f&*ked off for the week. I read that sprouts need plenty of light to grow. I assume this is direct sunlight, is a more ambient light still OK. I've also bought a sun light bulb to help them along. Looks just a normal light painted blue if you ask me but the guy in the DIY shop assures my that it will be fine. All it says on the box is 100W daylight bulb????? Any clues?
That grow light bulb is just about worthless. It's an Incandescent bulb with color filter so that only certain parts of the light spectrum make it though, plus it's chewing up a 100watts of power. What you need is a CFL (Compact Florescent)or 2. CFL's have a much lower power consumption rate and are cool so you can get them closer to the plants without worrying about burning them.
There are 2 factors involved in choosing a CFL. Lumens and color temp. (Kelvins) In my little grow room I have 2 CFL's and 2 T12 flourescents for a combined lumens output of around 10K. The 2 CFL's screwed into normal sockets that I already had and the T12's are in a regular shoplight fixture. I bought a combo fixture so I can upgrade to T8's if the 12's dont produce enough light. I will have to see how much I get from the window. $30
So basically the higher the Lumens the higher the light output.
Now onto Kelvins. Kelvins measure the type of light, or which part of the spectrum is being projected. This is usually marked on the side of the box something like this. 2700K or 6400K
2700K, or cool light is used for seedlings and vegetative growth.
6400k, or warm light is used for flowering / budding growth.
So as you can see the higher the Kelvin, the warmer the light. Now you can really spend some money if you want to get into HPS and MH lighting, both of which produce more light, but then you have added cost, power consumption, and heat to worry about so for small indoor projects I recommend CFL's.
I would also invest in some mylar too so you can reflect the light to all sides of the plants if you plan to have them indoors most of the time. Those are long season plants you have so I'm not sure if you could make it outdoors in England. (without a greenhouse of course.)
Oh BTW, I stole that picture from a place in Birmingham called
GreenStream Hydroponics. Not sure how close that is to you but might be worth checking out.