49 States Covered With Snow?

Yeah, that's what I just heard today on The Weather Channel! With the last snow storm that hit the south from Texas all the way through the pan handle of Florida, on to the Carolinas, all but ONE state, Hawaii, has some snow cover on the ground! Incredible.

We are again looking at some snow for Monday where I am. They are calling for up to 6" as of now, but I am sure that will change a bit. With the last two storms we got a foot the first time and 6-8" the second.

What happened to Global Warming??? I like the snow, though. Lets keep it around as long as we can!

Good Deal - Fluorescent Shop Lights, Grow Lighting

Last year I set up a fluorescent shop light as a grow light for starting my garden plants. I got a 2 foot long single T-12 light. This got the plants growing OK but became problematic once I brought the plants outside. The plants were used to the very limited amount of light and got burned real easy in the sun.

So I figured I would get some bigger lights so I can get my plants used to more intense light!

Lowes has a really good deal on two bulb T-12 4' shop lights - $10! That's what I paid for my 2' single bulb T-12 last year.

I picked up two of them. Each bulb is 40 watts, so I will have 160 watts x 4' of lighting (as opposed to my 20w x 2' last year). That should help with getting my plants used to more intense light. I will still have about the same amount of plants.

Last year I used an outdoor timer for Christmas lights as my light timer. This worked OK. However, I found a digital in-wall timer today that I am going to try this year. It should make for a cleaner set up.

The next task is to get a shelf set up that I can mount everything to. I really rigged up my light last year and it worked, but I would rather have a nicer set up than what I did in the past. The timer will be in a box on one of the legs and the lights will be mounted so the plants get hit on both sides.