I'm Back and building Lighting Shelving

Hi folks. I have been away for a long time with starting a new job and some other changes, I haven't had much time to write any blogs. But I am hoping to get back into writing a bit more regularly. I also have a Facebook page which I update pretty regularly if your interested in keeping in touch that way.

At this time of year I always seem to get a burst of energy and enthusiasm so far as the garden goes. This year before the season starts we have a few jobs that need doing. We have to replace the the plastic on the polytunnel as the opening flaps on the sides are all torn and its starting to show a bit of wear in a few other spots. We have ordered the plastic to do that, now all we need is the weather to improve a bit to allow us to put it on. Today I ordered some seeds, a little later than I planned, but what's new there.

Every year when it comes to starting seeds the windowsills fill up with pots, trays and propagators. Every year I seem to have less and less space. At some point over the winter I saw a post online about starting seeds under lights. I can't remember where it was to credit the website but there are plenty of different sources when you look around online. I read around online to find out information about how it works and if I would be able to give it a go.

What I have gathered from my research is that the best light to use is fluorescent tubes. The provide the necessary light for seedlings to grow. You can buy special (expensive) grow lights. These are designed for growing palnts that you need to flower, fruit or bud (ahem, ahem). When starting seedlings we only need them to grow from seed to seedling stage, not for the full duration of growing. It is possible to grow lettuce under these I believe. This is to do with the spectrum of light required for different stages of plant growth, which I read a few bits and pieces on it made my head hurt so I stopped. It's enough to know that fluorescent lights are sufficient for growing on seedlings which is what we want to do.

I looked through a few different design types. You can go from a single fluorescent lights hung from a pvc-pipe-built frame right up to expensive commercial units. I decided that if I was going to build this I wanted to do it right and make sure it would be big enough that I wouldn't need to build another one in a year or two.

My 4ft x 2ft lights

My search started first with looking for the lights. I found a few on different second hand sites. I found some that were 2ft square with 4 tubes which weren't ideal but I was considering them when I discovered some 4ft by 2ft lights with four 4ft tubes in them. They looked ideal. After a bit of negotiation I agreed to buy 4 of these lights for €70. They had been taken out of an office that was being updated. This then decided on the size of my shelving unit. A footprint of 4ft x 2ft and I needed to have enough room to hang 4 lights.



I decided on my materials and got them together for about €60. I used 11mm OSB board for the shelves. It comes in 8ft x 4ft sheets which I had cut into four to give me my shelves. I also bought four 3"x 2"s for the legs and some 2"x 1"s for cross members. This isn't going to be a pretty piece of furniture, no frills, just functional.


I cut all the pieces to length and got them together to assemble the shelves.




I first assembled the sides of the unit. I then put the OSB sheets on them an secured them in place. Might be handy to have a second pair of hands but balancing each side against a wardrobe and a door will do in a pinch.

As you can see there is actually five shelves needed to hang four lights. There will be no seedlings on the top shelf but it needs to be there to hang the light from for the shelf below. I will probably use the top shelf for storing pots, watering cans and that sort of stuff. I had some spare MDF to use for the bottom shelf. It doesn't bother me that all the shelves dont match but if it did you could buy a quarter sheet of OSB but it usually costs nearly as much as a full sheet.

I painted the whole unit with two coats of white gloss paint. It will protect from splashes of water when watering and protect from general wear. The white should also help reflect the light also if I remember the science classes from school. (Thanks Mr. Corcoran) Also it was the one that was on special, which always helps.



It was then time to hang the lights. I used four short lengths of chain at each corner hung on a hook from the 2x1 above. The chain can be raised or lowered to suit the height of the plants below. You need to keep the lights close to the seedlings so that they don't become tall and spindly reaching for light. This can happen when they are kept on windowsills as there isn't really enough light for the seedlings in winter and early spring. The lights will need to be on for between 12 and 16 hours a day. I have heard different times from different sources but I will probably start with 12 hours and see the seedlings grow.

 With all the lights working I decided to sort out a timer. I am not a very organised person so remembering to turn on and off lights everyday and having to be home every 12 hours just wouldn't work for me. Luckily I had this timer at home which is perfect for what I need. Actually it is probably more than I need as you can program it to come on certain days and not others. All I need is on at about 8 in the morning and off at 8 in the evening. This unit will be kept in my bedroom so I can't have it on at night, although the electricity would be slightly cheaper at night. I also each light connected separately so if I only have one shelf with plants on it I can just have that light on. That should help keep electricity costs down.

I have not got any seeds on the shelves yet but hopefully I will get some started in the next week or so and I will get to see how it performs. In all the shelf cost about €160. To buy something with this much growing space would cost a lot more than that. It is hard to find places to buy these but in Ireland most seem to be fitted with the expensive growlights so it's not really a comparison as they can cost upwards of €1,000. I guess we will see how good this is after its been used.

 Hopefully I will be posting more regular updates here as things go on. I will probably post again when my seeds arrive. This is mainly to document which varieties I am growing this year so I can look back next year and see how well they grew. I normally do this on a scrap of paper which I lose by the next year.

Until then.