Sunday the 20th (today) I checked things and felt that it might be slightly warm in the greenhouse with the new lights. I wasnā??t sure, but it felt TOO warm, so off we went into town to get an inexpensive thermometer ($2) - stuck it in the greenhouse, and found the temperature was hovering around 35 C/95 F. I have had a ton of contradictory information about temperatures ā?? some books and sites claim that the ideal temp is 68-72 F. Some claim that the warmer the better until you are over 100 F. 95 has me slightly concerned, so I put the second fan on the bottom shelf of the greenhouse blowing in and up while the first one is on the middle shelf (where the plants are) blowing down and out toward the door. I clipped the door open with the tieback, and clipped the lower part of the ā??curtainā? of emergency blanket out of the way of the air with some clothespins. Now there is a small air space at the front-centre of the middle shelf, and large gap in front of the bottom shelf to let air in. Things went down and are stable at about 31 C/88 F and that is likely where they will have to stay.

At the moment the seedlings have some pretty good sized secondary leaves which are beginning to get larger, although the stems seem a little spindly. Half of them are relatively straight up and down and the others lean a bit here and there. Iā??ve got zero idea what they SHOULD look like right now, but if they were tomatoes I wouldnā??t be worried in the least about them so Iā??m choosing to not panic and see where they end up in a little while. They have not really gained much of anything in height (maybe .5cm-1cm) since the new lights went in. If I rotate the plants, they reorient themselves in the general direction of the light again (not as fast as they did before the shiny stuff was on the walls, though).

I will try and keep things up-to-date on a semi-regular basis. I canā??t seem to post pictures yet but when I can I might put some up. At the moment the inside of the greenhouse looks like some kind of experiment on a space station, though.

As for costs so far (aside from seeds):

Spent:
$17.00 on 4 26W 6500K CFL bulbs
$15.00 on wire, sockets, marrettes, & Ys
$ 5.50 on chain leash, emerg blankets, ext (power) cord, hooks
$ 7.00 on small clip-on electric fan
$ 2.00 on small thermometer
$ 7.00 on larger pots, yet to be used
$ 9.00 on soil, perlite, peat pellets and peat moss
$62.50 cash

Value of items I already had on hand:
$ 7.00 - small clip-on fan
$25.00 - small vinyl/metal greenhouse
$ 9.00 - tape, small piece of plywood, screws, misc other stuff
$10.00 - small lamp timer
$51.00

Equipment expenditures value in total: $113.50 (including tax)

Obviously, if you had a closet that was already white to grow in you would not need the greenhouse and some of the other stuff, and I didnā??t count a few cents worth of yeast and sugar for producing the little CO2 boosters. This seems to be about as inexpensive as I could get ā?? and it is a good thing since I have nothing much more to spend. If I can collect enough empty beer bottles I might invest in a better timer in the near future since the mechanical analog ones sometimes seem to lose time.

Iā??m not sure if others have found ways to spend less, and I am not sure how this is going to work out, but this is what I have and Iā??m going to hope for the best I can get with it. Follow along if you are interested in how it turns out over the next few months. Iā??m still learning as I go along, and I hope I donā??t mess up anything too drastically along the way.

Thanks for reading so far!