Starting Seeds

If you spend any time in the gardening community online, you'll quickly get recommended to start certain seedlings indoors so that you have plants to grow once the risk of frost has passed. You can get the job done with a window or a a couple clamp lights, but why not go all out?

To go all out, you'll want some sort of shelving. The industry standard are NSF wire racks, frequently seen and used in kitchens. You can try to find these used or on clearance, I got mine for $40 or $50 on sale at Menards.

The next step is to get some basic shop lights. These hold fluorescent lamps. I picked up two two lights that were roughly the same length as the shelving. 

These have wires that you can hang and adjust the height of as your plants grow, but you have to buy a couple S hooks separately.

You really want things as automated as possible, so grab some auto timed outlet thingees. They should be carried year round but near Xmas they have tons of them at all retail stores. You can get a cheap one like this:

It is simple to operate. Just set like it up to "set the current time" then push all the buttons down for the period of time you want the lights to be on for. This is setup to run from 6am to 8pm. You do not really want to remember to get up at six am and turn the lights on for your dumb plants, let's be honest.

If you go all this way, you might as well buy a seed warming mat. They just keep the seeds and soil a little warm to encourage your seeds to germinate. They are like $20, and since this setup is in a cold basement I'm happy I bought it.

So that's about it. Total estimated cost is something like $120, if you don't include the bulbs. As you can see there's definitely room to grow, here, if I added lighting to another shelf.

A lot of people recommend an oscillating fan to simulate wind, which should strengthen your seedlings, which I don't have.

Here are the tomatoes coming along. We have the lights about two inches or so above the top of the seedlings.