In article ,
bobby wrote:
Do florescent grow lights work well? I'm thinking about setting up a area in
my basement to start some cuttings. Any info or ideas for setting up an area
would help. What worked and didn't work.

An ordinary cheap shoplight with a couple of 4' tubes works well. There
are a number of alternatives now, but for decades this was all that was
available and many people had excellent success in growing house plants
and starting garden plants this way. I've started thousands of seedlings
and grown them to transplanting size using some 4' fluorescent fixtures
some friends rescued from a dumpster 25 years ago! I made a three tier
rack from wood and still use it. I'm no cabinetmaker, so it's not furniture,
but it works fine for me.

I used to recommended the cheapest tubes, cool whites, but almost all of
them are 34 rather than 40 watts now. Daylight tubes are good too. Stick
with 4' fixtures, the tubes are the cheapest because of economies of scale.

Your basement may be too cool to propagate tropical plants. One advantage
of a several tier rack is that the ballasts generate a fair bit of heat, so
plants on the tier above get some bottom heat from them. You may want to
experiment with this. Bottom heat is excellent for promoting rooting.