When I started planting I had insufficient lighting, at least my lighting was too far from the plants. Everything that came up was reaching for the light and became long and lanky. I lowered the lights to within about 2" of the plants and moved the second light from the unfinished growbed over the plants. Things began growing well after that, but the lankiness really affected the radishes. They were supposed to be about three inch cylinderical and they ended up about 6" with only the bottom inch in the gravel. The top 5" are red, but are growing above ground. They taste fine and are edible all the way up to the green of the leaves. I planted carrots, three different salad blends, spinach, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. We have had several meals from the salad greens and spinach. The rest are slower to produce, but I am sure they will get there.

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Yesterday I added more lights to my "garden". I searched for fixtures to complement my existing lights, but found they were too expensive. I ended up building my own. I made four fixtures and added one fixture at each end of the growbeds. Here are the materials I used to make the four fixtures:

4 - Bakelite twin lamp sockets, medium base
4 - 3/8" electrical nuts
4 - 4" aluminum dryer vent pipe sections
4 - tool 2 wire replacement cords
4 - electrical boxes with covers
4 - electrical box clamps
8 - 6" pieces of stailness steel wire (I used Orthodontic wire because that is what I had available)
8 - wire nuts

I first cut the corregated portion off the vent pipes, drilled 3/8" holes in the centers and bent them to be reflectors. I then drilled 3/8" holes in the bottom of the electrical boxes and knocked one end plug out of each box. I added the box clamps to the boxes and assembled the sockets, reflectors and boxes and tightened them together with the 3/8" nuts. Then I fed the cord end into the boxes and fastened the wires (white to white and black to black) together with the wire nuts. I Screwed the covers on and punched 2 holes near the bends in the reflectors on each end. I then bent the stainless steel wire to make attachment wires. I hung the fixtures on chains to be able to adjust the height of the lights over the plants.

For lights I am using TCP Compact Fluorescent Lamps 42W 6500K spiral glass medium base lamps. They seem to work fine, but if I was going to do it again I would get Mogul base sockets and 55w lamps.

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If anyone has questions, I will be glad to answer them, (If I can).