Sunlight vs Grow light

We're getting close to gardening season (sort of close...there's 15cm of snow outside but we're getting there) so it's time to look at starting seeds indoors.

I have a south facing window so I was really debating if I needed a grow light or if my seeds will do ok in only sunlight.

Here is what I have discovered so far.
January, there just wasn't enough sunlight to sustain plants at all. Almost everything I started in Jan died.
February, there was more sunlight and I was able to start several lettuces but they were all stunted in growth. Didn't get bigger then 2 inches
March, once again the sunlight increased, but it was quite uneven across my plants since the sunlight is coming in various angles. So out of the 3 lettuce I planted side by side, I had 1 tiny, one medium and one bigger. None of them were big enough to eat yet and after a certain size, new leaves would die as if there just wasn't enough light to sustain it growing.

Even though sunlight in March for my area is suppose to be about 11hrs, the plants were at most getting 2-4 hours of sunlight depending on position because of the position of the sun.
Also, there were lots of cloudy days in Jan-Mar so it's hard to get 3 hours of sunlight consistantly.

So I finally gave in and decided to buy 1 grow light to see how it would help.
After a lot of research, I decided to try an LED Grow light that is specifically Red and Blue.
There are different ratios of red to blue depending on what type of plants you're trying to grow but this is the one I got. Mine has more reds then blues. The bigger blurry ones are the blues.

My friend was actually very skeptical about my grow light since I got it from China. It's definitely hard to tell what quality are you getting and if it was done properly so it actually works. But I figured if Philips is selling their LED business to China, the tech there should be fine as long as I can find a good seller.
I spent a lot of time shopping on the Chinese websites, looking at reviews, etc before I finally brought this one.
Key things to look at for any online buying no matter where it's from, look for light with the right voltage for your area, look at reviews for the product and look at seller reviews.

I don't have an expensive branded LED Grow light to compare with, but this one seems to do it's job.

I noticed immediately after using it the second day, the weak leaves on my lettuce that was about to die actually got stronger. I don't have wilting leaves anymore and the smaller plant is finally growing.

So far I'm only using it to supplement the sunlight I get as I do not like to leave lights on when I'm not at home. However, this helps stretch the hours of sunlight my plants are getting from 3 hrs to 6 hrs.

Since I'm having success with it, I'll now be using it on the seedlings I'm trying to start for my garden.
In the next 2 weeks, I hope to have my sweet peas, broccoli and cabbage seedlings started so that I can transplant in about a month into the garden.

If the weather warms up next week, I'll finish my mini hoop tunnel and sow some lettuce directly outdoors once the soil is warm enough. I'm hoping to actually get some produce by May if the mini hoops work.
Fingers crossed :)

Categories: Gardening