Yet another experiment, starting a new garden with "expired" bulbs....

[MacTech]

About a week ago, the "Change Bulbs" light illuminated on my AG6 Silver, of course, me being the cheap bugger I am, I have no intention of replacing perfectly usable bulbs until they actually fail, my plant selection was getting a bit long in the tooth in the AG6 (Thai Siam basil, Lemon basil, flat Parsley, Bee Balm, Lemon Balm, Micro Tom) so I ditched them (the mints weren't doing well, and the Mocro Tom had reached the end of it's productive phase), planted the basils and parsley in my outdoor garden, and I'm starting a new garden from scratch....

the difference is, this garden will be running on "expired" bulbs (over six months old), lets see how much of a difference it *really* makes.....

This time, I'm growing a "Pasta Sauce Garden", four Red Robin cherry tomato plants, and a Globe Basil and Greek Oregano plant

[kforrest]

Awesome....I, also will not be replacing bulbs until they burn out.

Please let us know how it goes.

[MacTech]

All the Red Robin seeds have put down taproots, the Globe Basil has sprouted and the baby leaves are visible in the pod, the Oregano has put down taproots

so far, I'm not seeing a drawback to these "expired" bulbs yet...

[Corinne]

Interesting experiment which I will be following!

[callisto9]

My SS6 is on expired bulbs and it seems to be doing fine.

Looking forward to your experiment!

[shane arthur]

Im using my bulbs till they die. I have plenty of backups, im just cheap about some things.

[callisto9]

Im using my bulbs till they die. I have plenty of backups, im just cheap about some things.

Same here. If the stuff is still growing, I'm keeping them! I may toss them at a year, we'll see...

[MacTech]

Update; left-hand original bulb died today, so both bulbs have been replaced, I'm a bit annoyed at the short lifespan, but I *was* pushing them past their "best by" date and they did function for the listed time duration

there is a visible difference between the old bulbs and the new bulbs, the new bulbs are visibly brighter, and seem to balance more towards the blue spectrum, the older bulbs had a warmer reddish tint at the end of their lifespan

seed growth under expired bulbs seemed to be much slower, easily half the speed of a garden with fresh bulbs

[graycyn]

Interesting. I found that my old bulbs looked rather greenish tinted and that's been in two different gardens. New bulbs do seem to be more blue, as you say. At any rate, I've about decided that when they get to that dimmer, greener, warmer point, I will just replace rather than trying to eek them out to the point of burnout. Or replace at one year, whichever comes first.

I replaced the lights at seven months when I started my bean garden, because they were just dramatically dimmer than my other two gardens that also were at the seven months use  point. Putting the new lights in that showed that the other two gardens, which were pretty bright still, were not *quite* as bright as the new bulbs. I'm still getting good growth out of those with chard and pak choi, so I'd say that one can probably extend use of the bulbs beyond the six month point, just keep an eye on them and if possible, compare to a garden with new bulbs. And it might be better to use older bulbs for herbs and greens, rather than fruiting veggies that might need the stronger light.

[bab43]

I noticed a difference even with four and five month old bulbs.  When I plugged in my new machine last week the new one tinted blue, the other machines tint green.  I thought at the time maybe the green was the reflection of the growing plants, but second opinion was that the blue and green were definitely there.  I'm going to watch for red...

[MacTech]

Looks like the bulb did not fail after all, the left bulb socket has gone bad, the left replacement bulb has gone out, but works in the right socket

I called AeroGrow and they're shipping me a replacement hood, they don't want the old one back, so I have a spare I can use to try different bulb sockets in

In the interim, I can simply move my plants into the HB-13 13 pod homebrew rig (the flowers are growing much slower than expected) while I wait the 10 days for the replacement hood

I'll probably put the expired bulbs back in the new hood when it arrives and put the new bulbs back into storage, they only have a few days runtime on them, the silver AG6 will be shut down for the 10 days or so it takes to get the replacement hood

yet another reason it's good to have backup hardware, even a simple homebrew rig

[bab43]

That works out well!  So the experiment will continue...