Growing Chillis, Peppers and Aubergines: Day #17 - Let there be light!

A few of the seedlings in the Ikea propagator were reaching for the light and I measured that in the corners of the propagator they only receive 500 lux, compared to 4000 lux in the centre. This means I have less usable space in the propagator than anticipated and I'm adding new transplants each day. It's time to upgrade to the grow light setup I'd been planning to move the plants to after potting up.

This is just a quick status post to record that I've changed the setup. I'll go into more detail on my DIY grow light setup in another post.

All the parts for the setup were bought a few weeks ago and are sitting here waiting to be setup. The shelving unit was a 30 EUR flat pack that took 30 mins to put together. (Why so long? It's cheap, so the screws didn't line up properly making assembly a bit tricky, but I got there...)

After 30W of 6500k LED lights (costing ~30 EUR) were attached I have what looks like a fairly professional setup. The seedlings are now receiving 15,000 lux and this will increase to over 25,000 as they grow taller and get closer to the lights.

15k lux being received by the seedling leaves

The seedlings are still inside the propagator which is probably deflecting some of the light and reducing the amount reaching the leaves. The covered propagator is important to keep the humidity high as the coir pellets dry quickly, but in a few days I'll try potting up a couple of the seedlings and see how well they take to being outside of the humid propagator.

Ikea propagator under DIY lighting

Pepper & aubergine seedlings receiving 15,000 lux of 6,500k LED light

Strange photo effect caused by LED lights. The dark "bars" are only seen by the camera.