Products We Love: Active Eye Growroom Lenses

The yellow/red color spectrum that fruiting and flowering plants need for optimal fruit/flower production is great for them, but not-so-great for our eyes.  High pressure sodium lamps create UV which can degrade our vision over time.  They also change the way the plants look to us, which makes it difficult to detect problems and deficiencies.  Hydrofarm's Active Eye Growroom Lenses are an inexpensive way to avoid all of that.  They block out the UV rays from your HPS lights and make your plants appear as they should.  They retail for $19.95, which is lower than most of the other HPS-light-correcting glasses on the market.  Keep a pair in your grow room and protect your eyes while working.

Looking through them at our peppers growing under an HPS light.

2016 Seed Picks

Our 2016 seeds are in and (as always) they're 100% organic and non-GMO from High Mowing Organic Seeds.  Every year we try and select a unique collection of seeds, specifically heirloom varieties and odd strains that you won't find in your typical garden center.  Here are our some of our picks for this year:

Watermelon Radish - A great early spring and fall crop, white radishes with hints of green and pink centers like a watermelon.

Shanghai Green Pac Choy - Open-pollenated with densely packed spoon-shaped green leaves with light green stems.  We like it because it can be spaced more closely than bok choy which makes it great for city gardens, hydroponic systems and any place with space constraints.

Maxibel Haricot Vert Bush Beans - Produce 6"-8" thin French filet beans, these guys yield a lot if you pick as soon as you see fruit and often.  

Honey Nut Butternut Squash - Smaller than most butternut varieties, which makes it perfect for small garden plots or indoor gardening.  Uniform shape, with tan skin when it's planted early.

Veronica Romanesco - This northern Italian variety of cauliflower is great to eat but the main draw for us is how cool it looks - the heads form many little fractals, like tiny sandcastles.  The heads of this particular type grow chartreuse in the cool weather or white with a tinge of pink in the heat.  

High Mowing Mesclun Mix - An all-in-one mix of lettuces and mustard greens, it takes the work out of choosing!

We also brought back some favorites like the Chioggia Guardsmark Beets, Santo Cilantro, Oregon Sugar Pod II Snow Peas, King of the North Peppers (one of the best: early ripening bells specifically for the north east), High Mowing's Common Sage and Pirat Butterhead Lettuce.  Stop in and check out our selection and our seed-starting supplies.