Low Cost Grow Lights That Work.

Here at the Halpern Homestead we have been using fluorescent shop lights as grow lights for the past 3 growing seasons.

We bought our fixtures at Big R in Spokane. 2 fixtures will cost you 38 bucks (they used to be $9.99 a piece.) Same light, same box, increased price. Must be better? We then buy bulbs from Lowes. They have a good Kelvin range in their bulb selection.

This bulb is rated 5000kelvin color temperature.

This bulb is rated 6500kelvin color temperature. Ideally I would like to have a 3000k, 4000k, 5000k, 6000k bulb equally dispersed throughout our light fixtures. The greater the range in the color temperature the more variation of light on the color spectrum the seedlings receive. We have a couple 3000k bulbs in use, but the majority are 4000-5000k bulbs. They all work well, but the more variation the better.

You can really tell the color temperature when you have multiple fixtures running next to each other.

The one downfall to florescent fixtures is that we have lots of cords!

If you need a reasonably priced grow light and have 25bucks to spend, check your local hardware or feed store. We use T-8 bulbs because they use less watts, but T-12's are fine too, maybe even a little cheaper.

Thanks for reading