I'm kicking myself the past several days that I never invested in any kind of a grow light before now. It's roughly one full week short a couple hours since I set it up and the results are a game changer for me.
I had that starter tray with lettuce and Tatsoi that wound up getting pummeled by the rain and lost most of the Tatsoi and half of the lettuce but surprisingly some survived and began to perk up as it dried out. Beets sprouted almost immediately after and shot up into long stringy stems. I think the new soil block technique was a big help as it wasn't surrounded on five of six sides with plastic and was able to dry out pretty fast.
Likely wouldn't have gotten so beaten up if they weren't standing so high on threads.
Then the light came. I posted a few progress pictures already but this is the comparison of the whole tray. Some stuff was added from the 3/4" mini blocks that had sprouted a few days before the light came and was just "potted" up to the 2" blocks on Wednesday. Plenty of space available after removing the empty blocks from where the seedlings didn't survive.
Just under a week under the light. Everything that survived the rain is on the right, the left is seeds that were started just a few days before and just potted up two days ago.
I've been very interested in obscure heirloom varieties of certain things for a while now and have found a few good places to get seeds for things nobodies ever heard of before.
One of those is a romaine lettuce Fruition Seeds calls Flashy Troutback. ("HEIRLOOM This marvelously speckled romaine has roots deep in 18th Century Germany, her name ‘Forellenschluss’ translating to ‘Speckled Like a Trout’"). This is a heat tolerant variety that can also go well into the beginning of winter.
Just in behind it is one of the surviving Tatsoi/Asian spinach.
Another is also Fruition's Plato II lettuce and another of the heat tolerant varieties
This interesting one is called Blue Rock from Johnny's Seeds in Maine. Not sure if it's an heirloom or not.
