On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:32:26 -0800 (PST), richardg
wrote:

I am growing my own lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes etc. plants in my
basement for planting into my garden.
There is a conflict in growing instructions for lettuce and cabbage. I
have read that they grow best if the lights are several inches above
the plants. I have also read that lettuce and cabbage like the growing
temperature to be around 60 degrees. The problem is that when the
lights are several inches above the plants the soil temperature is
around 75 degrees. BTW they are grown in an unheated (around 55
degrees) basement. Is there any best solution or only some compromise?
Thanks, Richard


If you are using regular flouresents. like a combo of hot and cools or
gro lights the lights must be as close as possible to the plants. Once
they are a couple of inches away there's not enough light and the
plants get leggy. For this reason these lights only work to grow for a
short time. Once the plants have grown a couple of inches not enough
light reaches the bottom leaves. If you've got some sort of new high
intensity lights they can be much farther away depending on their
type. To straight ahead raise vegetables under lights you would need
pot farmer lights like metal halides. For the temperature problem get
a heat mat.