hi Jenny, I just looked at your Garden Diary. Its really nice and I am very excited for you. I was just wondering if you have a backyard where you can transplant bigger plants when spring comes. If not, how much did the light you and your fiancee purchased cost?
I have seen some sites talking about "Growing Under Lights" but they usually talk about hydroponics also. What is it that you want to know about "Growing Under Lights"?

oh at last! someone I can play with!
I've been growing veggies indoors for a couple of years now with a 1000hps also. I've been trying to find others as well that don't use hydroponics. (I don't like to eat chemicals) I haven't fired up the light yet, but soon I will be planting lettuce, bok choi, tomatoes, radish,cucumbers (they grow up the wall), and I'm going to try green beans this year as well as whatever else catches my eye in the seed box.
There are some photos of my last year's garden here....
I actually had a small sugar pumpkin ripen in the house. And I will add, zuccini doesn't do so well in a pot.

Here is a link that might be useful: 2007 garden (indoor and out)

This is great! ! ! Where did you get your 1000hps lighting? I searched on the net and see that they are outside industrial pole lights. True? Flood lights?

mxbarbie, I couldn't get your link to work. It took me directly back to this thread. hmmm.....

I have been experimenting with onions, garlic, carrot tops, lettuce, and ginger. I don't have enough light for them to do very well. I have a sunny window in a 60* room. 9hours, 13 minutes of light 69.2* sun angle

Any further tips will be appreciated. GL

I don't think I can post the links here, but I have seen this topic on two other gardening forums recently: Helpfulgardener and Gardenstew dot com.

I'm impressed with your detailed environmental knowledge, Granilege. Since a good part of the "lumens"* your plant needs are already being provided by 9 hours of natural light, a florescent shop light could be used as supplemental source.

If you are not growing fruiting crops, you will not need red spectrum bulbs. Folks in the Growing Under Lights forum can tell you which ones to use.

*Every bulb is rated to provide so many lumens of brightness. 6000 lumens per square foot would be my (arbitrary) minimum goal if all lighting was coming from an artifical source.

Hope this is helpful.

My light is an XTRA-SUN brand ballast. I bought it from a local indoor garden/hydroponics store it was about $250 for the ballast, bulb and shade.
Sorry the link to my photos doesn't work, I killed my photobucket account by accident last night. I have to fix that. How is the Ginger working out? It's not something that needs much light, I found it very slow growing in pots so I planted it outside and am hoping for the best for spring.