So, let’s do a deeper dive into our temporary growing set ups. They are essential to our seed raising operation and are “the thing” that allows us to grow hundreds of garden starts indoors.
One of the most underestimated things by new gardeners growing from seed indoors is the expansion it takes once you start potting up those plants. A lot of new gardeners see those 72 cell trays and think, “Oooh, look how many plants I can fit in that bad boy!” Turns out, those cute little seedlings turn into much larger plants and they all need their space and quite a bit more soil!
We deal with this issue in a temporary way by setting up 2×6 growing tables with a couple of quantum board LED’s over them. We use a very inexpensive PVC light hanger that we crafted, about as cheap as these things can get. A couple of light hangers allow us to dial in the height of our lights, typically we put them about 24 inches above our plants.
These lights are exceptionally powerful, with just two of them easily covering about eighteen square feet of growing space. Each light is about 90 watts, and if you know much about lighting, that’s a really good “watt per square foot” value. Especially considering how much light our plants get. Our specific lights are the HLG-100 series out of Horticulture Lighting Group, they are USA made and we absolutely love them.
You’ll also notice we favor what we call a “single plane” over using things like shelves. That’s on purpose. Having done it both ways, the single plane gives you ease of seeing all your plants in one go, which means we can catch problems early. It’s also much easier to water, move plants around and prepare for hardening off. These are near daily tasks for us, so the quality of life of a single plane is worth it.
Lighting for shelves is also often more costly. Sure, you might score some “low wattage” LED’s, using something like 30 watts each. Seems like a small number, right? But, when you need eight of them to cover all your shelves, your total power budget is now 240 watts. Not to mention, you spent a pretty penny on all those “cheap” lights!
We have two of these setups, which we can deploy at any point. It really helps us deal with the sudden expansion after transplanting, especially in seasons where we can’t start kicking our seedlings out to the greenhouse due to temperature or weather. We’ve only once nearly hit maximum capacity and that was in a season where we couldn’t get our plants into the greenhouse until May!
Anyway, lots of ways to go about this stuff and there’s no one right way. But, we figure showing you how we deal with these issues might be helpful.
