Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Hello!

Where I'm at, it's a bit freezing in the winter. I wondered if any of you had good ideas about what's good to plant about now, in small start cups. I didn't know if they would actually grow w/o much sunlight. :)

If you have a sunny (south/west) window you can start a number of things. But most of what I start inside are just to get a slight head start, like maybe a month at most for squash family and lettuces, but 2-3 months for tomatoes, peppers and other Solanaceae Family members. So look to when you could transplant starts outside and count backwards. They'll often provide tips on the backs of seed packages, or in seed catalogs - which you can also peruse online!

Here in Portland I'll start indoors in early February, with onion seed. The first couple of years I used a sunny window, but now I start everything under shop lights, using the cheapest fluorescent tubes rather than grow lights, and it works much better than windows.

Do the cheaper florescent tubes work better than grow spectrum lights? I got some of the grow spectrum florescent tubes which look kind of purple when they are on and used them last year, which worked, but I was wondering if the regular ones work better since they seemed brighter or something.

VA, when it comes to growing phase of veggies, regular ol' florescent tubes are fine. The only time you need something more aggressive is if you are growing tomatoes or peppers, shiitake that produces fruit or flowers.

I am currently using spectrum lights at my place and it provides sufficient light which is required.