It's Cinco de Mayo, and I have no time for battle plans or comparision shopping. Two $75 trips to pick up my investments and I'm off and running with seeds in a 36 and 72-tray starter. I'm unable to spot the sprouts with pure enthusiasm, and an actual check a week later reveals a crop of struggling lettuce. Green, nonetheless, and drinks are on the house. I wedge them confidentally under my setup: two 4' "plant" bulbs and fixture from Wal-mart. Now I've grown plants from high-intensity special order bulbs before, and I've read about enough people having fine luck with regular bulbs, so I figure this is at least passable till they can go outside. It's on an adjustable height chain from the ceiling, just in case. Which drops a link the next day, and a link, and two links... My first lettuce sprouts snap and fall over just as I bury the bulbs in the soil. From then on the flats go outside every day, and the worthless excuse for lighting hangs idly, never to be used again. My small, early-sprouting seeds: onion, brocolli, lettuce, are the first victims, albeit replaceable ones, of my shortcutting ways. The rest are marked with a number system, the key to which is saved on a computer that died days later. The flats become confusing, crowded masses of unidentifiable and increasingly inseparable green. Oh well, they'll do fine once they get to the garden.
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