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Saturday, March 29, 2008

Seedlings!

Broccoli seedlings that are now out in a cold frame getting ready for transplanting in the next week out in the market garden.

One of our light stands with kale, lettuce and a few flats of empty soil blocks on the bottom shelf. This light stand is a homemade job. Eugene took 2x4's laying around the farm and built this in a couple of hours. the lights are shop lights/fluorescent bulbs hung from light weight dog chains. You can see on the bottom shelf that one side of the lights are higher than the other side.

The other light stand that had broccoli, kale, lettuce, onions, and a few other things. Most everything that was on this stand when the picture was taken is now out in cold frames hardening off. This light stand is a commercial unit we picked up at an auction about 10 years ago. We paid $50 IIRC and it lists new for around $1200. We have had to replace all bulbs many times (annually is optimal and we replace bulbs about every other season). We have had to replace the ballasts 2 or 3 times for each shelf. To increase use we have hung additional light fixtures from the bottom of the unit as well as from the ceiling.

1 comment:

sammy said...

I love reading your blog. It gives me such a real picture of what small scale farming and life on a farm really is, not the rosy idea I have in my head! A lot of hard work. But I'm still jealous and keep thinking someday...