I can only answer a small portion of your question. I started seeds last year in my unheated garage under ordinary shop lights (not grow lights), and they did very well. I kept the cups on large cookies sheets, and on nice days I moved entire trays out for some real sun. :)

Jo

I won't say you "need" lights because, strictly speaking, vegetable seedlings usually can be raised in sunny south-facing windows. What I will say is that I get much better results when I am using lights.

When seedlings are getting leggy like yours are, it is because they are having to stretch to find more light. They do not necesarily recover from the legginess, but sometimes they go on to grow well despite the legginess. A lot depends on how thin and stretched their main stems are. Often they get so leggy so quickly that the thin stems cannot support the weight of the plant and collapse onto the soil surface. Sometimes you can repot the leggy plants (how well this works depends on various factors) into deeper containers with more soil and bury part of the elongated stem into the soil. It doesn't work with everything though.

Without seeing how the sunlight comes in through the windows and hits the shelves, we're only guessing if the shelves are part of the problem, but I am assuming they are.

My seed-starting shelves have lights suspended from each shelf that shine down onto the plants below. I keep the lights as close to the plants as possible---so close they almost touch. My lights are suspended by chains so I can raise the lights ever-higher as the plants grow. I don't usually have much trouble with legginess. I leave the lights on for about 12-14 hours per day, but not on a strict schedule--I just turn them on after I wake up every morning and turn them off right before I go to sleep at night.

I've always had the light shelf since our early days here, so cannot really compare a pre-shelf electric bill to our current electric bills, but I don't think the use of the light shelf adds much to our electric bill. Our January 2012 electric bill just arrived and was much lower than last January's bill, but we had very cold weather last January and very warm weather this year, so with that kind of variation from one year to the next, it is hard to know what sort of difference the light shelf makes.

My light shelf does generate a significant amount of heat though, so I close off the HVAC system's vent to the plant room and also open up windows during the day to let in the cooler outside air. The door to that room stays closed to keep the pets out of the plant room, and to keep the cool air coming in through the window in that room. Otherwise, the room stays uncomfortably warm which causes the plants to grow too quickly. It's better, when starting seeds indoors, to keep the plants slightly on the cool side or they will get too big too fast, and then where are you going to put them if they outgrow the light shelf while it is still too cool to move them outside?

You might be able to put a light shelf in your garage and raise seedlings there. No one can answer that for you because we don't know how well-insulated your garage is, how cold it gets at night, how much an array of lights would heat it up, etc. I keep a Min-Max thermometer in our very well-insulated but unheated garage so I know how cold it goes at night since I overwinter some plants in there. Usually, the plants I keep in the garage don't suffer cold damage/death until the temperatures in the garage drop lower than about 20 degrees.

I know lots of people raise seedlings in unheated garages on light shelves, and they just do whatever they have to do to make it work in their specific location. Some people wrap their light selves in plastic to create a sort of mini-greenhouse in the garage. Some put a small heater in the garage near the plant shelf. Some depend on heat from the lights to keep the plants warm. The issue I see there is that you'd have to leave the lights on all night on cold nights in order for them to keep the plants warm, and seedlings do better on the light shelf if they have a regular period of darkness every day than if they have the lights on 24/7.

I raise hundreds of seedlings inside every year using simple shop lights suspended from each shelf on my light shelf with chains. My light shelf comfortably holds 3 flats per shelf, but I can cram in 4 flats per shelf if I have to and if I don't mind having each flat hang off over the edge a little bit. So, with 'cramming' and careful positioning, I can have 20 flats on my shelving system at once, because for the top shelf we hang the shop light fixtures from plant hooks inserted into the ceiling above the shelves. This allows me to grow all kinds of veggie, herb and flower transplants from seed, and as soon as one flat of plants goes out to the sunporch to start hardening off, a freshly-seeded one takes its place. Being able to grow so many plants from seed indoors allows me to put in a pretty fast "instant" garden in the spring, although it does mean I have some long days of transplanting. However, it also means I'm not paying retail prices for plants at the nursery.

Dawn

Canokie,

Most people use whatever fluorescent bulbs they own, and if you already have some use them. However, if you are buying from scratch, here's my recommendation for cheap and effective. Buy your 4 foot fixtures at Wal Mart for about $10. They're the ones in a white box with red lettering. You can pay more for the other one with a pull chain, but you don't really need a pull chain. Next stop at Home Depot and buy the Phillips ALTO T8 light bulbs, with the designation 6500K. 6500K is the Kelvin designation signifying the color spectrum that most closely resembles daylight. You could buy another brand marked "grow lights", pay more for the marketing, and guess what you'd end up with? 6500 K bulbs. Oddly, you won't find exactly what I am describing on the website; you'll have to go in person. However, I shopped extensively the year I bought my setup, and I've never found a better price on the combo of the two products I described. By the way the "T" designation in fluorescent bulbs refers to the diameter in eighths of an inch. T5s are 5/8 inch, T8s are 1 inch, T12s are 1 1/2 inches. I said T8 because that's what fits the fixture from Wal Mart. The Phillips ALTO T8s come in a two pack or a 10 pack. There are never a lot in stock so you may have to dig.

I also use a remote Max/Min remote thermometer. They're easy to find at stocking stuffer time for about $10; I don't know about now. I agree with Dawn that growing in an area that's too warm will yield legging seedlings. That's why I germinate in the house in coffee filters, where the temps are best suited for germination. After I pot up I move my seedlings to the light set up in the basement where temps range from 50-60 degrees. I get much stockier seedlings that way.

I'm a mom pulled in a hundred directions, and find that a timer to turn on my lights in the morning really helps me out. It makes for one less thing for me to remember. When I used non-specific shop lights I kept them on for 14 hours, but with the 6500K lights I find it works best with 12 hours.

Seedmama

We all have a method that works for us in our conditions and with what we have available. There is no one correct answer. I say this as my "Dear Mother" who was a better gardener that I will ever be started plants for over 60 years and never owned a grow light or light shelf. She used south facing sunny windows and porches and never had leggy plants. She didn't grow large numbers and never started as early as I do many of mine. I have a fair sized light shelf. It is 4 ft in Length, 24 inches wide and 6 ft tall. It has 3 shelves each with 4 48"fluorescent shop lights. I don't use grow bulbs. This provides the plants with plenty of light. With your set up in my opinion it will be very hard to get sufficient light to those plants on the lower shelves. With the shelves in my opinion it almost requires lights everywhere except possibly the top shelf. Personally I would add lights to every shelf including the top shelf. It don't require as many as I have. I used 3 lights per shelf for a few years before adding an additional light per shelf. I know there are several growers who have their set up in unheated buildings. Again there are a lot of different factors that can affect whether you need additional heating and if so how much. I know some that just use heat mats under the flats on each shelf.In some areas north of here where it can get real cold at night others actually use heaters. In my opinion there is nothing colder or hotter than a non insulated all metal building. My garage isn't insulated. But has what I call painted cement plaster sides over 1x6's. It stays a lot warmer than my solid metal bldg. I don't know your climate or weather tendencies. Here I feel anytime after Feb 20th I can leave plants in the garage and be fine. Another option on real cold nights is to just leave the lights on all night. One night of solid lighting won't hurt the plants and can give off enough heat to prevent freezing if temps are border line. I'm sure you will receive several opinions from those who know your climate better that I do. I do feel if you intend to use the majority of the shelves you will need lights. I wouldn't spend the extra on the special bulbs myself. Jay

I was pecking away. I always enjoy reading others opinions and comparing them to mine. Jay

The best set-up I have ever had was in my old house. I had a 9'long 5' high south facing window. I built a table level with the bottom and a narrow shelf half way up. I had no covers of any kind for the window and the plants did fine, I did have to turn them because they always reach for the sun.

I now use 4' t8 and 4't12 and they do OK, but I had rather have sunlight. My plants tend to get too skinny if they stay under the lights too long. That is one reason I have not started any yet.

You will have a harder time finding 3' light and they may cost more. It may be better to use the 4' lights it you think this may be a long term project.

Larry

Thank you all so much! This is very helpful.

A few additional things that came to mind...

Since this is earlier than I have started seedlings before, could the length of days and/or angle of the sun be different and explain part of the problem?

Are spinach and lettuce seedlings, which I have never started before, more prone to legginess than, say, tomatoes or peppers?

Are spinach and lettuce among the types of seedlings that can be planted with soil partway up the too-long stems, like tomatoes can?

I have a new house and one of the things the builder emphasized was the "low-E" windows that are supposed to cut down on heat coming in through the windows. Could this be cutting down on the amount of sunlight my plants are getting?

My house is really small (1,117 square feet) and my current setup is in my bedroom. Since I don't have a spare room, I am looking for either a setup I can put up with in my bedroom, or a setup in the garage or outside.

My garage is insulated and drywalled inside, but not heated. Maybe if I wrapped the setup with blankets or plastic, heat mats or even just the heat from the lights would be enough to keep it warm enough? Anybody in the OKC area tried this in February/March?

Would it matter to the plants if I left the lights on for 12-14 hours during the night and left them in the dark garage during the day? That way they would get their dark period each day, but the lights would be providing heat when it is most needed.

Would a cold frame work for starting seedlings without supplemental heating? I was thinking that I could build something against the back fence, which faces south, using lumber with plexiglass in the front. I've seen these little pop-up cold frame things, and mini greenhouse systems with several shelves enclosed in plastic, but with the winds down here I don't think they would stick around very long...

The pup-tent cold frame I have stands up to strong wind. I have it set up in a 2x2 frame on the ground with plated screws through 1x2 strips, through the seal flap into the 2x2 frame, then I have stakes driven into the ground with screws through the stakes into the 2x2 frame. It has had 60 or 70 mph wind and did just fine.

The sun angle will change slightly every day. At my house it was 36 degrees a week or two ago, with a range of 32 to 78 degrees winter to summer. There is a chart on the web to tell you your sun angle, of you can check it yourself. I use a magnetic based angle gauge and a piece of EMT, just set the EMT where there is no shadow and stick the angle gauge to it and read the angle.

I like the idea of attaching a cold frame to your fence, it would be out of the way and have some protection also, but that still will not keep it from freezing or getting too hot. I have been kicking around doing the same thing on the south side of my shop.

I can relate to having too little room in the house, I have the same problem.

Larry

As mentioned earlier, each person has a different set of circumstances to work with. I once started everything inside my house. One year it was just a few flats and I had them on a table with shop lights supported on food cans. The next year I made another place so they wouldn't be in my house, but the following year brought more changes and I had to put them in my sewing room. Other than not having room to sew, it worked out OK because the shelves I had were segmented and I just used part of them and put them on a tabletop. I could turn the heat vents off in the room and it had a ceiling fan, so I made it work.

Finally I was able to put it in a better place so I bought four feet wide stainless shelves and this year I didn't even take it down. We have a small bunkhouse and people who come to stay with us just have to ignore the fact that they share the space with my gardening setup. Normally I don't have much winter or spring company so they don't conflict, but last year was an exception.

I don't turn on heat in that building unless the temp is going to drop lower than about 30, but it is well insulated and has a freezer, refrigerator, and a gas hot water heater that all furnish a little heat, so it would probably have to be really cold for a long time to become a problem. Even when I do have the heat on, it is not in the same room with the plants unless someone is staying there.

I don't use a heat mat at all, but I cover the top of the unit with a mylar blanket (no fire danger) which drapes down to the shelf where the first light is. I put germinating trays, with domed covers, on the top shelf OVER the lights. The heat rises and the blanket holds the heat inside, so it stays nice and warm. As soon as I see green, I remove the dome, move the flat to the light shelves, and put the lights close. My lights are just regular shop lights and I have two fixtures on each shelf (4 bulbs). I can have 12 flats under lights and 4 germinating, and I have room to add another bank of lights if I need them.

I like growing in a cool room for most things, but I normally put the peppers just above the light so they have some heat coming up from the bottom even after they are on the light shelves. At this point, they would have lights above and below them.

Jay has a great cold frame that sits low to the ground and equalizes the temp even more by removing soil and making his plants sit below the grade level of his garden. I could not do that because in April and May it would become a wading pool in my climate.

Several of us will create a warmer environment in our garden in early Spring as we add row cover to our plantings. My intent is to protect the crops from Spring insects, but I reap the benefit of a little added weather protection in addition.

I think a good cold frame is a benefit, but I doubt the benefit from a lightweight plastic pre-made one, would last long enough to make it worthwhile or offer your plants much protection.

As soon as the temp allows, I move most things outside. Tender things will go out for warm days and go in for cold night lots of times, so it is a pain. I have plans for a greenhouse, but it will be expensive to do what I want to do so I am still in a 'holding pattern' on that project.

I have no problems building things and have a couple of windows that I have been keeping to use for a cold frame, but I have a small property and nine large trees, so sunny spots are hard to find. I will probably build a much different frame than Jay did because my garden is more protected with structures all around and I like the taller one. One like I want would not only get colder for him, but might go airborne in his wind. His coldframe is excellent tho.

My advice would be to try what you think might work and keep adjusting until it does. Don't plant all your seeds at one time in case you don't get it right the first time. I would also suggest you try wintersowing for some of you hardy things. Those jugs sit outside all of the time and require almost no care.

I am in OKC and the setup you describe sounds very similar to what I did in my unheated garage last year. I bought a five-tier wire shelf from target, it fits 3 flats of 72 count jiffy pellets per shelf. I put it in my unheated garage and hung shop lights (they came with chains in the box, I just bought extra s-hooks to hang from the wire shelves) fit with daylight temp fluorescent bulbs (not grow lights). The lights were at least a foot longer than the shelves, but I had space in the garage so it didn't bother me, I just hung them where I split the difference and had about six inches hanging off each end. As I started seedlings, I set them in my kitchen on the counter (not particularly near a window or anything) with the plastic dome from the starter pack on and as soon as the first sprouts started germinating, usually a few days to a week, I moved to the garage with dome propped open. After a few days when all the rest germinated, I took off the domes. I put a timer on the power strip that I plugged all the shop lights so had it on roughly 14 hours a day.

I was limited by kitchen counter space to starting a few trays every couple of days, but that was fine for me, since I work lots of hours and didn't have extended time to start many flats at once anyway. I hung a regular thermometer from the lightshelf, and looked at it occasionally to note it never got below freezing in the garage. On hot days, I would open the garage door a bit to help ventilate. I eventually added a fan, set on top of my washing machine, to give some wind resistance training to the seedlings because the garage was very, very still and I wanted things to begin to get acclimated to our wind.

Because I only hung one light from each shelf, I used pieces of aluminum foil loosely draped over the shop lights to create little "light rooms" for each shelf to reflect the light on all directions of the seedlings, after I noticed that only the seedlings directly under the light strip were growing straight up and the ones on the sides were reaching.

Lastly, when it came to starting pepper seedlings, I broke down and bought a heat-mat type thing because I was afraid they would get too cold or not heat enough to germinate. I didn't by a grow mat, I bought a strip of heated plastic stuff that is usually used in reptile cages. It was much cheaper and did great, plus the guy who sells it on Amazon cut it to length so I got exactly one shelf length that matched my set up - I think it was like $40, and would heat three trays worth.

PS - I probably should have tried to hang the lights really close to the seedlings but I didn't, I didn't have the time to keep up with it very well. All in all, I produced something like 12 flats of 72 each and I was OVERRUN with seedlings for everything. That's where the spring fling comes in handy. My problem was potting up into bigger containers and all the moving in and out that was required to harden off - 12 flats of pellets becomes something like 36 flats potted up into 4 inch containers - and the light shelf was not going to fit all of that.

Of course the daylength and angle of the sun has something to do with how much light reaches the seedlings, but I don't think that's the only reason you see legginess on the seedlings. They simply need more light than they can get via a window at this time of the year. Winter sunlight is weak and inconsistent, and it is even weaker on cloudy days.

When I first starting raising seedlings indoors in the 1990s, I raised them in a window, and it wasn't even a really sunny area, but I would carry them outside for several hours a day from the very moment they sprouted. They only had to stay inside on cold days. I had legginess issues all the time because they just couldn't get adequate light when they were inside, which is why I switched to using lights instead of relying on natural light.

I don't know that lettuce and spinach are more prone to legginess than tomatoes and peppers, but because of their growth habit, they seem to tolerate legginess less well than the tomatoes and peppers.

I would assume the low-E glass might allow less light to reach the plants.

It won't matter to the plants if they have light during the day or at night as long as they have it. I don't see why you couldn't leave the lights on at night and turn them off during the day. I am assuming there is not a garage window that would let in just enough light to make the plants start stretching towards that window, thereby becoming leggy in the process.

You can wrap your shelf with clear plastic or reflective mylar to help hold in the heat.

A cold frame might work for starting the most cold-hardy seedlings at this time of year, but only if it is covered up with a blanket or something at night to keep out the cold and if it has a vent to allow excess heat to escape during the day time. All a cold frame does is keep frost off your plants and provide them with a warmer environment when the sun is shining. It does not keep them much warmer at night because it lacks both insulation and a heat source, so it cools down once the sun sets. Those pop up cold protection things and plastic mini greenhouses do not keep the plants warmer during cold nights and tend to roast them during the day without venting. If we ever build a cold frame (and I have saved a storm door to use whenever we get around to building a cold frame), we will insulate the walls.

I use floating row cover material to keep frost off my plants on cold nights in the spring once they've been transplanted into the ground or into their permanent large containers, but even the best row cover made (and I don't have it) only gives you 10 degrees of protection. I have two different weights---one gives 2 to 4 degrees of cold protection and the other gives 6 to 8 degrees. So, even with them, I can keep the plants only slightly warmer at night. I have had some luck keeping plants warm on really cold nights by putting on two layers of the row cover that gives 6 to 8 degree protection, but just because you double the fabric doesn't mean it gives the plants 12 to 16 degrees of protection. I think it might give them 10 degrees if doubled. However, in spring, it is enough to prevent the plants from freezing (usually) on cold nights.

We have a sunporch with insulated half-walls and glass windows and a greenhouse, and it gets pretty much just as cold inside both of them at night as it does outside. I could keep either or both of them warmer by heating them, but don't think it would be cost-effective. They are warmer during the day on sunny days though, and are uncomfortably warm on warm to hot sunny days, so venting is essential. In past years I have started leaving seedlings out on the sunporch all night long once the temperatures are staying above about 35 degrees at night. I won't chance losing them by leaving them out there on cooler nights.

I use a heat mat to germinate pepper seedlings and that's about it. I remove the heat mat as soon as the seeds germinate because leaving the plants on the heat mat after that is not good for them.

Every one of us has had to experiment to figure out what works for us in terms of seed-starting and then the hardening off of seedlings so they will be ready to go into the garden. I have found that what works best for me is to avoid all the "too's"...don't start seeds too early or too late, don't give them too much light or too little light, don't grow them in temps that are too hot or too cold, don't keep them too wet or too dry, don't expose them to too little air movement indoors followed by too much wind movement outdoors before they can acclimate to it and don't plant too many. (Well, I still have trouble with that last one.)

As your home and property change, you will have to adapt your seed-starting practices accordingly. For example, I used to use the wrap-around front porch, which faces east and south, to harden off seedlings when I moved them out from the house. However, as our young trees and shrubs grew, the porch became increasingly shady, which is great on a hot summer day but not great for seedlings that need light. So, then I had to move the seedlings to a new location to harden off. You have to be flexible and adapt as your conditions change. You also have to be able to adapt to every kind of weird weather Oklahoma throws at you and your plants in spring.

Starting seeds indoors is a wonderful process but it will drive you crazy if you let it. Things happen to young seedlings---a flat gets dropped and hits the ground upside down demolishing little seedlings, the cat decides a flat of tomato plants is a cat bed, a sudden wind gust sweeps a flat of seedlings off an outdoor table. It happens. I just always raise enough seedlings to make up for life's little disasters and don't let it make me crazy if a variety germinates poorly, is hit by damping off or meets with some unforeseen disaster.

Thanks everybody! There's a lot of good information and ideas here. I think my garage will work well since it is insulated, especially if I use some heat pad type things underneath some of the flats. I'm also going to pursue the cold frame idea for next year.

A few more questions if you all don't mind...

I'm attaching a photo of my spinach seedlings. Most of them have gotten to the point where they are laying on the soil surface because their stems are too long. Do you think I could plant these and just bury the excess stem, or would that work for spinach? Should I just throw them out and start over?

I read a lot about starting seedlings in little 72 cell flats and potting up one or several times as they get bigger. Is there a reason for doing it that way rather than using the flats that have much larger cells so you don't have to repot?

Has anyone tried making portable cold frame toppers that could be moved from one raised bed to another as needed? I was thinking that a lot of cold weather crops could be started in place with a cold frame rather than in seedling flats that need to be transplanted, as long as the cold frames could be moved from one bed to another as needed. That way I could keep the permanent cold frames for starting tomatoes, etc. Thoughts?

Here is a link that might be useful: Spinach seedlings

Last year was my first attempt to grow my own seedlings under lights, all those tricks I got it from the great folks in this forum (above). I am sharing few pictures of my success (see below link). I observed that without grow lights, seedling tends to stretch themselves to reach light coming from windows which leads to leggy seedlings. Wish additional lights close to seedling makes great seedlings. -Chandra

Here is a link that might be useful: Indoor Seed Starting Experiment

I use shop lights. They cost about $12 at Lowe's; I like the narrow ones. Some of them have reflectors that make them wider. I buy the cheapest 40 watt bulbs. Since you already have the 3 foot wide shelf, I would use chains and hooks and attach the four foot shop lights to the shelves you have. It might look strange but it would work. You could set a big pot on the sides or something. Everyone has started small and adapted their set up to what works for them. It does make a mess in the house. I think it is needed for mental health in the winter and is worth it. I have not tried setting up in an unheated building but I may this year thanks to these responses.