Our Giant Grow Light Stand!

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 11:15

One of our favorite family gardening activities when we get spring fever is planting seeds in cell packs and nuturing them indoors under florescent lights.

We have done this for years but we only had enough space for about four flats of seedlings. This year however, we have added lots more vegetables and many flowers to our seed-starting list. We needed a newer, bigger light stand to hold more seedlings. I wrote previously about beginning the construction but finishing it was one of the things on my Naturehouse 2007 Garden to do list post.

With the new stand, we've now quadrupled our capacity! It's big and heavy and a bit ugly, but oh how many plants we'll be able to grow now!

It is really just an old kitchen table extended with plywood and built up with scrap wood to sport a second level. With two levels, we can hang 4 shop lights under the top level and 4 shop lights from the ceiling. Under those lights we have room for 12 flats. Using cell packs that fit 72 seedlings per flat, that's a possible 864 plants at a time! That's not a real number because of transplanting to bigger pots. Regardless of the number, I think we finally have enough indoor grow space. we like to start almost everything on our garden list from seed. Last year it was pretty crowded under the lights. I found myself kicking plants out into the garden earlier than I wanted to just to make room for other plants. This is what our light table looked like last year:

Here is what each level of the new and improved light table looks like:

Bottom Level

Top Level (not being used much yet)

I didn't spend anything on the wood and I just used regular 40 watt florescent bulbs in the light fixtures instead of spending lots of money on "growlight" bulbs. To me the key is having a lot of light. Remember, with florescent lights we are trying to mimick the Sun. The Sun is so powerful and puts off so much light that even though we are 93 million miles away, we can't even directly look at it! With that in mind, I have added an extra light fixture per level. I have four fixtures over three rows of flats instead of the normal one fixture per row of flats. It is also important to keep the lights only a few inches above the tops of the plants. By suspending the lights with chains, we can easily adjust the distance as the plants grow, or as we use bigger pots.

We keep the lights on about 16 hour per day. I don't believe in using an automatic timer either. If I have to turn the lights on and off manually, that is a guaranteed two times daily that I will look at the plants. That way I will always notice when they need watering or any other attention.

This post was really only supposed to be about the new light stand. I will write more about the art of growing from seed later. After all, we still have about 1000 seeds left to start!

Blessings to All,

Pa

wow!

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 12:47 - Link

Wonderful! I am sure that this takes some work, but surely will be worth the efforts once you get those starts in the ground......... we used to have a greenhouse and would start all our seeds in there and it worked wonders! We have since moved and don't have the greenhouse anymore..... I sure miss it!
Good luck with your garden!

BTW, how are you able to upload photos to your blog? I have tried to start a blog here and have not had luck uploading photos - so I continue to blog at blogpsot.com....... would love to switch over, though.

Blessings
gloria
blessedmamaof10.blogspot.com

Untitled Comment

Posted by homesteadinthemaking on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 07:11 - Link

I want to here more about the process. We are starting from seed this year and my Dh says they need no light the first couple of weeks. Your grow stands look amazing.
Blessings,
Trixi

Looking good!

Posted by Purewater on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 12:32 - Link

I havent' commented in a while and wanted to say "hi"! The table looks great! Good work.

You ought to put up pictures of your new deck when you get that finished, too! It is amazing how long it takes to do these projects when time is limited, isn't it? Too bad we can not be home full time to work on the real important things....

Great plants

Posted by JubileeFarm5 on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 07:04 - Link

Your plants look wonderful!! I think I better get some seeds started!!
Melanie
Jubilee Farm