TIL: Don’t underestimate the superpowers of grow lights for seedlings

Today, my friend Sarah sent me a picture of some broccoli plants I gave her about three weeks ago. At that time, the seedlings were but wee babes that I “thinned out” (maybe a week old?). Here are her seedlings, which have been living on top of an aquarium and–more importantly–under a grow lamp for the past three weeks.

Image of thriving broccoli seedlings in a peat pot
Sarah’s “Aquarium Broccoli” (which may be the first time those words appeared in that order in English…)

Meanwhile, the original seedlings have been sitting on my kitchen counter by the window. I thought this would be enough sun (it’s fairly sunny, with the caveat of “for Seattle), but I guess not.

image of broccoli seedlings
The long-lost siblings of the larger broccoli plant above, planted the EXACT same day and with the same seeds.

While Sarah’s plant is just about ready to go off to Plant College (the raised-bed garden), mine are still stuck in their awkward Middle School phase. They’re tiny and awkward, and if they were humans, I imagine they would have lots of zits and opinions on Justin Bieber and followers on Insta.

All the plants were Ferry-Morse Organic Calabrese Broccoli. (Note: I have no affiliation with Ferry-Morse except as a customer, but I like their seeds).

A few of my seedling trays have been living under a lamp that’s actually designed & bought to eliminate Seasonal Affective Disorder, or “SAD.” This is pretty endemic in the Seattle in winter (and undoubtedly lead to a lot of really annoying Emo music, but I digress).

Full-spectrum light over plant seedlings
Various pepper plants destined to live in containers outdoors…

Being very new to gardening, I’m concluding based on this limited data that we should all …

..use grow lights to plant seedlings.

Because, as it turns out, plants really like light, so our kindergarten teachers were all right.

And this concludes my TED Talk.