Phil Williamson wrote:
Hi all,

I'm planning on taking a shelf from my bookshelf and installing some floros
on the underside of the shelf and starting a little herb garden in the
kitchen. Has anyone done anything similar, I'd like some pointers if anyone
has.

I plan on growing basil, chives, parsley, lavendar, and thyme.

How many hours per day should I leave the lights on?

Would it be easier to install the light to the shelf and move the plants to
the light or the other way around?

I'm in a different situation but I'll relate my experience.
I suspect you'll have to leave the lights on at least 12 hours
a day. As your plants will likely be different sizes you'll
probably be better off fixing the light, varying the shelf
position, and putting different size blocks under different
size plants to keep them a few inches under the lights. The
longer the lights, the better because they don't give out
much light at the ends.

I built a stand with five adjustable shelves. Then I built a
8' frame on wheels that rolls over the shelves. The frame has 8
4' 40 watt florescents hanging from it. Half warm. Half cool.
I put the lights on a timer that left them on 14 hours a day.
The adjustable shelves allow placing the plants within inches
of the lights regardless of their size. The rack is next to an
ESE facing window that is partially blocked. I had herbs
growing all winter and had good luck except for dill and parsley.
The dill (grown from seed) got too leggy and the parsley (also
grown from seed) was just plain sickly and never got more than
an inch or two high. I don't know if the parsley problem was
due to light or something else. Both standard basil and thai
basil did fine. In fact, I grew the thai basil from seed indoors
without problems. I also had rosemary, lemon verbena, peppermint,
spearmint, lemon basil, lemon thyme, english thyme, and oregano
that I brought in from outside in the fall and wintered over.
They didn't grow as fast as they did outdoors but they grew.
I had more problems with scale, whiteflies, and remembering to
water the plants than I did from lack of light.