When I talk to someone about starting seeds indoors, three things are essential you need to keep the soil damp, you need to keep the soil warm, and once the seeds have sprouted, you need to give plants a ton of light.
But it sometimes needs to be clarified how they can accomplish those things, so I will share my setup for starting seeds indoors today. My setup is simple; it doesn’t contain a specialized gardening product. Everything I discussed today, you can purchase at one of your local stores like Walmart or a home improvement store, or online.
Suppose you want more information when planning your seed starting system.
In that case, you need to consider where you will keep everything while waiting for your seeds to sprout and keep them indoors before planting them outside. They can take up a lot of space. Hence, you need to think about where you’ll have enough room to keep them and then also be able to provide for those three critical things. If you don’t have an excellent spot to keep them, you’re not going to be able to provide the lighting and moisture, and temperatures that they need to sprout and grow healthy.
My solution to this is to use a wire shelf. It has a lot of room on it, and even with how I plant my seeds, I can still fit up to 180 plants on this shelf. It fits right in the corner of my living room, so it’s inside where it’s warm, out of the way, and not an eyesore. A wire shelf is a better choice than something with solid frames. Because it makes it easy to put lights up on the shelf, adjust them, and move them around when you need light.
I’m using just standard led shop lights. They’re not fancy grow lights or plant lights or anything like that. These are inexpensive compared to some specialty options that you can find the ones I’m currently using run about twenty dollars, and a grow light in a similar style would be 60 to 80 minimum. The light spectrum is the most significant difference between these lights and a grow light. Grow lights have a range, so they can provide the plants with all the types of light they need to grow well, whereas these lights don’t have all that. But for starting seeds indoors, these will work just fine.
The shop lights are hung on each shelf using these chains and hooks. These work great because you can put them as low as you need to and then raise them slowly as the plants grow to keep them above the plants’ height. Because these are led lights, they don’t use much power. So plugging in, even though I have six of them running on my shelf right now, it’s not gonna take a ton of electricity, so I’m not gonna see my electric bill skyrocket by having these lights all plugged in.
You could also use standard fluorescent-type shop lights, which would work fine. And you can get a larger spectrum of light using those lights, but you’ll have more electricity being used on those. They won’t be as energy efficient as the led lights. One of the nice things about led lights is that they have a long lifespan compared to fluorescence, which you must replace almost every year as the bulbs burn out. These led lights that I have been using these for several years. I think the oldest ones I purchased were over three years ago. This is the third or fourth year I’ve been using the same ones without replacing them.
Regarding holding the soil and planting the seeds, I use plastic cups to keep everything. I don’t use any particular seed starting trays. And my reason is once those seedlings begin, if you have one of those large trays with 70 plants that can grow once, they get a couple of inches tall. They’re too big to be in that tray anymore, and you have to transplant them anyways. So I skipped that step and put them in larger containers right at the start. This makes it where I have to have a lot more space right from the beginning when planting my seeds, but it saves me the time and trouble of replanting things in a few weeks when they get too big.
I know many people use those seed starting trays, which work well for them. And if that’s how it is for you, then you should use those and do it that way. This is just how I found that’s best for me. I place all the cups into these metal trays. These are just disposable roasting pans. Compared to a lot of the other seed starting supplies, this is inexpensive. The drawback is that you’ll need much more soil and fill those cups. And it will take up a lot more space.
Now that I’ve shown you everything I’m using in my seed setup. I will explain how these work together to provide for those three really important things keeping the seeds damp and warm and providing lots of light once they’ve sprouted.
1. First, let’s talk about how to keep the soil moist while waiting for the seeds to germinate.
Some of those seed starting trays come with really nice covers, and it helps create almost like a miniature greenhouse while waiting for those seeds to sprout. But we can recreate that with just one really simple product, some plastic wrap. If we place plastic wrap over the tops of all the seed containers within one tray, we can seal that in and make it like a miniature greenhouse. That will keep the soil from drying out while waiting for those seeds to sprout.
2. Next, let’s talk about keeping the roots warm.
One of the most common ways gardeners start their seeds and keep them warm is by using heating mats. The heating mats are expensive, and you might not want to invest in them, especially if you’re just starting. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to use the lights. To kind of double purpose, not only for light but also for heating. These led lights, and the fluorescent type lights, give off just a little heat. They’re not hot. The fluorescent lights are hotter than the LEDs. So we will put those close to our containers, and the heat will be just enough to keep the seeds warm. You’ll be surprised if you put your hand under them. You’ll feel well. This isn’t that hot. It will be enough to heat the soil to a lovely temperature for sprouting seeds. We try to put it within about an inch of the top of the containers. We don’t want it to be right against them where it won’t get any airflow because we don’t want the lights to overheat. If they’re not getting enough airflow around them but close enough that there’s going to be some of the ambient heat going into the soil for the seeds.
3. Going into the soil for the seeds.
And then, because we put the plastic wrap on top, that will heat it more inside those containers. Because now it’s working like a greenhouse and trapping that heat inside. The light will go through the plastic wrap and warm up the soil. Then the heat’s going to get trapped inside. So it’s good it will create a friendly atmosphere for getting those seeds to start sprouting and, of course, having enough light for the seeds once they’ve grown. With all these lights that we’ve put up, the lights are pretty self-explanatory; we’re just going to keep that light right above the plants as they start to sprout. As they grow, we’ll move them up using the chains to keep them just a couple of inches above the plants. As they grow, we can move the plants around, so we can always keep the tall and the shorter ones together. So that the lights are always in the best place for all the plants.
There’s something nice about using these plastic cups and metal baking trays: it makes it easy to water the plants. In each of the cups, I’ve drilled a hole in the bottom so that the water can drain out of the cups and go up through the bottom into the cups. So watering all these plants is easy. I can just put about half an inch to an inch of water in each baking tray, which will pull up through the bottoms of the cups and water the plants. So it’s really easy to water all these plants. If I have to hand water a hundred plus plants, it’s gonna take me a long time. But if I have six trays full of plants, I can water them quickly just by putting a little bit into each.
That’s my seed starting setup. You can see that I recreated many of the features of the more expensive products using these less expensive ones to get the same result. It’s a good way for new gardeners who are just trying to get started and don’t want to spend much money. This whole setup can hold up to 180 plants if I fill it up all the way, and the whole setup probably only cost me about 200, including all the trays and cups. So I can get 200 plants for about 200. But then the most expensive parts, the shelf, and the lights, I will reuse that year after year. So next year, when I plant the plants again, it will cost me a lot less to replant 200 more plants. This is a great option to save money and get started in gardening! Do you think so?
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