Start Spring Seedlings With Help From LED Christmas Lights

Planet Green:

Spring is near and you might be itching to get your garden started. But there is still danger of frosts and it's better to start seedlings indoors. Light boxes can be real energy suckers, but not if you use LEDs! CheapVegetableGardener.com has great instructions on how to put together a seedling starter box using LED Christmas lights for less than $5 and in just 15 minutes.

Not only is the grow box thrifty in construction, but also in wattage. The Cheap Vegetable Gardener states: "By replacing the two 24 watt CFL and one 80 watt incandescent bulb with a few hundred LEDs I could drop at least 124 watts with my new configuration. Assuming I am running my grow box every day for 14 hours a day this could save me over $45 a year as well as just being the more environmentally conscious thing to do."

Read the whole story: Planet Green

Comments

[ThomasMc]

10:54 PM on 03/20/2009

I guess people forgot... the sun is FREE.

[lingram]

09:34 PM on 02/23/2009

Here's another thought on starting seedlings: you can transform those cardboard tubes you find in toilet paper rolls into little seedling pods. You can start them inside and then bury them right in the ground when it gets warmer. Why? Because the cardboard is biodegradable. I covered ways to reuse toilet paper rolls on my blog here: http://suddenlyfrugal.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/7-ways-to-reuse-toilet-paper-rolls/

Leah

[research]

08:11 PM on 02/23/2009

Great idea!

If you add a full wave rectifier you can probably double the amount of light.

[cmarte]

03:26 PM on 02/19/2009

Are these LED's full spectrum? If so they could help with seasonal depression.

[alvdh1]

09:57 PM on 02/18/2009

Huffington Post put up a story on Bill Clinton's efforts to convince the Mayor of Los Angeles to replace 140,000 street lights with LED street lights which is estimated to save Los Angeles $48 million in electric costs. The story mysteriously disappeared from HP today while much older stories with little significance remained.

We waste 50% of all of the electricity produced in the U.S.. At a time when climate change is front and center in the news along with coal representing 50 percent of our electric power production. This is one of the most important stories to make the green section of HP because of the opportunities to reduce our reliance on coal through energy efficiency.

Please put this story back on the green page for a few more days. 23% of our electricity is consumed for lighting and energy efficiency through the use of LED lighting presents one of the best opportunities to cut our consumption of coal.

[research]

08:12 PM on 02/23/2009

With motion sensing, it would eliminate wasted energy on lighting.

[fleaba]

03:02 PM on 02/18/2009

Thanks for the info. Also under discussion were those heating mats they use for plants...they cost $30.00, but we are trying to think of a way to use a regular heating pad instead of dropping the cash.

[PaiaGirl]

12:39 PM on 02/18/2009

New target customer for LED sales: Pot Growers! :-)