How to Build a Grow Light

[Music Playing] Eric: So it is January. Yesterday was like 65 degrees. Female: No, it was 72. Eric: 72. Female: It smashed the temperature record. Smashed. Eric: And we have got an email from a viewer, we have viewer mail. It is from a guy named Kurt and he says, great videos, I really enjoy the garden stuff, as spring approaches I was wondering if you going to create some videos on how to start plants. I am torn between grow lights and a cold frame. I am in Raleigh, North Carolina and it is warming up to start plants with a cold frame. Female: Warming up here too. Eric: It is warming up here to. I think for things like lettuce and greens and stuff like that, starting with a cold frame is good because they are cold hearty plants and like we have with our cold frame over there. Female: Read between your lines. Cold frame. Eric: Oh, those are sticks for plants. But anyway, I think that for starting lettuces and things like that that a cold frame is a way to go. For starting like peppers or eggplants or tomatoes and stuff like that kind of singular plants that fruit, I think grow lights and some little what are those trays, seedling trace are the way to go. So today, I am going to show how you to make an inexpensive grow light that I think you will like a lot. Let us go look at the cold frame now, let us see. You see this; I mean it is not like growing very much right now because it is middle of January. Female: So even though it is growing now, it will die and then come back stronger or these same plants will grow in the spring? Eric: These same plants will grow. I do not know if the word is dormant but because it is kind of cool and there is not a lot of light, they are not growing very much. I do not know if that is the right word because I think dormant suggests that they lose their color but I could be wrong. As I have been wrong a lot. So let us go to the basement. Female: Okay. Basement is a treat.. Eric: I cleaned part of the basement for today’s show so we just would turn the camera to show the other part of the basement. Female: All right. Eric: Because it has been so warm I wanted to go outside so I turned a couple of the raised beds here and I just want to give you a little preview. I have a soaker hose system. A drip irrigation system here on these beds and we are going to do an episode in the spring about this little rig I have here and also some drip irrigation that we use in another part of the garden. That will be kind of fun so stay tuned for that. Okay, we are going make your grow light. Female: Yes. And to the basement we go. Eric: I cleaned the basement. So to make a grow light, you can buy a grow light out of one of those catalogues and that is just fine if you are not real handy doing that kind of thing that there is nothing wrong with buying a grow light but I am being a little more frugal, I thought I try to make my own grow light and I have done it for a couple of years now, I have figured out a pretty decent to do it. What we are going to use are two inexpensive fluorescent fixtures here. You can buy them at home improvement stores or at the big box stores. Female: Oh, big box stores. Eric: Those stores that sell large items. And basically, these should not cost you more than $10 a piece. And then you have you have to get the bulbs as well. So what I do is I grow all seedlings in a seedling tray like this. What I want to do is now is figure out how much light I need—the width to go from here to here. So I brought one of my trays and I stick it down here like that and sure enough when you gang up two of these, it will cover this very nicely. Female: Who needs math? Eric: Who needs math? And by the way pie R squared thing from that cold frame video, I screwed it up and a guy emailed me and said we did we the math wrong. Female: But it was close. Eric: But it worked. That is all that matters. All right so, I going to show you how to fasten these two lights together and how to hang them and plug them into a timer and we will have a neat little inexpensive grow light for you. What I want