Question: Grass-in-a-cup for patching

[Bestlawn]

There's always space and it doesn't have to be a major project. In your case, it would be easy to overseed 1 lb/1000 of just Bedazzled.....unless you like the lawn being mostly Midnight and Moonlight. One deciding factor is determining what it is Bedazzled offers that the other two don't. If you like the lighter element, then that's your reason. You may find one or more other reasons if you compare resistances and tolerances that your growing conditions influence. Will be difficult, as all these three exhibit quite good resistances but still good advice to everyone.

[Danbo]

If you like the lighter element, then that's your reason.

Morph liking the "lighter element"? Yeah, right. This guy has the darkest green lawn I have ever seen ( besides TT). I think he's doing some Photoshop "touch-ups" of the pics he posts.

Now I just have to figure out where to keep 100 pots of grass in an area with enough light in February...

I'm also going to try the grass pot thing and was wondering - Does the grass need actual sunlight to grow? I presume not, since KBG seems to germinte quite nicely wrapped in a damp paper towel. What if you just use an artificial grow light in your basement? That's what I am planning to try. On a much smaller scale than 100 pots, however. Good luck commandeering enough space for that.

[MorpheusPA]

If you like the lighter element, then that's your reason.

Morph liking the "lighter element"? Yeah, right. This guy has the darkest green lawn I have ever seen ( besides TT). I think he's doing some Photoshop "touch-ups" of the pics he posts.

Nope, Photoshop not necessary. Although, to tell you the truth, P-Shop would be a heck of a lot easier than hauling thousands of pounds of stuff.

I do like the lighter element to add a bit of depth to the lawn and keep it from being a solid monobloc of color. However, for right this instant, I'm content to let the Moonlight and Midnight II dominate a bit more. I did wish I'd used a bit less Bedazzled in the first place--perhaps 15 to 20% instead of the 30% I seeded.

[andy10917]

On a much smaller scale than 100 pots, however. Good luck commandeering enough space for that.

If I found space for 48 tomatoes, I'll find the place for 100 cups.

[jglongisland]

Here's last year's setup. Grew all my annuals from seed (probably spent an extra $100 over the two months for electric).

[Danbo]

JG,

That's a nice setup. Looks like a laboratory.

Those look like regular fluorescent bulbs. I thought you needed some special bulb?

[eriocaulon]

Yeah, sweet setup JG!

[jglongisland]

I did a lot of reading and went with cool white bulbs. I bought $9 fixtures from HD. You can easily spent $150-$200/fixture, and that's not even counting the HID stuff. As you've seen with all my pictures the plants came out fine. Morph could probably give us the science as to why the plain old bulbs work OK.

[MorpheusPA]

What's it worth to you?

Even a standard incandescent will do, adequately, sort of. Plants absorb energy in the infrared, red, blue, and ultraviolet regions of the spectrum primarily (although green light is certainly used) and at extremely specific frequencies (that vary by type of plant, and even within species due to individual genetic mutations).

If your light happens to illuminate in the frequency that the plant can absorb, it's fine. Incandescents have a color temperature of around 2800 K or so, so absorption will be in the IR and red primarily. They don't output a great deal of green or blue light. The advantage is that the output on an incandescent is a pretty consistent curve with the only absorption being what the gas in the bulb sucks in.

Halogen has a higher temperature, so outputs more across the entire spectrum and far more green and blue.

The disadvantages of incandescent and halogen are heat, electrical inefficiency, and your plants are still throwing away large chunks of the spectrum. It's interesting to note that sunlight is pretty close to an incandescent light at 5780K.

Fluorescents vary in color temperature by what phosphors are used, and I've seen numbers from 2800 to 6000 (reddish yellow to very, very blue). My standard compact fluorescents in this house are 2800's as I like the color and it fakes incandescent light well. They output in spikes, however, and not a broad curve like incandescent lights do.

If those spikes don't happen to strike the same frequencies that the chlorophyll of that plant absorbs, you're out of luck. If they do, party on.

Plant lights have strong output in the red and blue, where plants want it. Plain old fluorescent bulbs output a lot in blue, but it still works.

[Danbo]

So using a fluorescent bulb to grow grass should be ok? Has anyone here ever tried it successfully?

JG's setup was for annuals, so I don't know if grass would respond to this type of cool white light as well.

I also found this website that sells fluorescent grow light bulbs:
http://www.homeharvest.com/fluorescenttubes.htm

Do you think this type of bulb offers an advantage over standard T12s from HD
?

[bpgreen]

I suspect that if you google for growing grass in flourescent light, you'll get a lot of results, but the grass is probably a different variety than what you're growing.

[clay&crabgrass]

shop the box stores for full spectrum bulbs in the required size. might say, "grow light", might say, "full spectrum".
when the grass is grown, turn it upside down to dry. hehehehehehe.

[andy10917]

I do large heavily-planted aquariums as a hobby in the winter (400 Watts per tank), and I'm moving to all specialized LED lighting, which puts out EXACTLY the right light frequencies for plants. Way too expensive to grow grass. For growing grass and seedling plants, I mix "cool white" and "warm white" bulbs in the same fixture - and I've had lots of luck with that.

[turf_toes]

In some places, the police look for high energy use as evidence that folks are growing drugs like marijuana.

Here's one example

So be careful growing your grass in the basement. You might find yourself doing the "perp walk" on the local evening news!

[andy10917]

TT, you're right - but most of the "alternative agriculture" crowd is using Metal Halide lights that can be up to 1000 watts each. I run into them all the time because they are looking for the same lighting that the Aquarium crowd is looking into. A few T-12 lights in the basement is unlikely to attract the attention of the Federales.

[MorpheusPA]

Yeah, don't bother with expensive lights (although halides would be perfect, if somewhat hot). Just mix 1 warm white fluorescent with one cool white fluorescent. If that's inconvenient, 2 cools or 2 warms is just fine.

You'd be looking for color temperatures around 3,000 Kelvin (cool) and 5,000 Kelvin (warm). For this instance, stated CRI (color rendering index) doesn't matter (I used to work in the lighting industry; can you tell?)

At no point will the absorption spikes be perfect no matter what you do (individual variance, again, not to mention species differences), but you'll get close enough.

Leave the basement windows uncovered and you won't have trouble with the cops.

[Abyss]

A good aeration before seeding would take care of that thickness issue morph.

I understand the whole diversity idea with disease resistance, but say your blend conquers all aspects of what could happen to it. If you start to lose one of your cultivars was it really meant to be there? My midnight II doesn't do well along my fenceline with powdery mildew. The northstar is basically a monostand through that area now

if you have a blend and a disease comes through and hits one of the cultivars you have the others to take it's place and fill in

as far as morphs lawn, it's happy switching over to two cultivars, and the one cultivar is obviously weaker in his stand. As long as his stand is healthy, I'd let it be. If he gets a disease that comes through and effects it, then I'd worry about overseeding something in that is tolerant to that disease

I would think the main reason for choosing a blend would be for uniformity throughout a whole stand that solves issues throughout the property

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[Abyss]

Err I didn't see their was a second page

I bought one of those bulb planters from home depot and it worked great. I still need a little more filling in my bigger holes and I'll hit them with a few more plugs next spring and they'll be filled by fall

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