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Poor man's (and lazy man's) growing station

This is my third year growing peppers (or anything, for that matter), and my first year trying
to grow under artificial lights. I usually start germinating mid-March, and just use
natural light through my windows, but then I have pepper plants scattered around the
house, and moving them around where the best light is throughout the day was a pain.
So was carrying them inside and out multiple times to to harden them off.

So I needed to try something different this year. I wanted to build a self-contained
workstation to grow my plants. My requirements were:

1. It had to have grow lights for the seedlings.
2. Make the height of the lights easily adjustable.
3. Make it large enough to hold all of my plants from seeds until they were 8" tall or so,
for planting outdoors in garden beds in May.
4. Make it mobile.
5. Make it cheap.

So I built this two-tiered growing station on wheels. I keep it in my basement, which has a walkout.
The plan is, when it comes time to harden the plants off, I just unplug the extension cord feeding
power to my lights, and wheel the whole thing out the door each day during the hardening off period,
and just wheel it back in at night. When I 'm ready to plant, I'll just wheel the whole thing up to
the garden. No moving individual plants around ever.

So here it is framed up.
grow1.jpg


grow2.jpg


The basic frame is made with 1x2 furring strips (1.22 at Lowe's) and the bottom is a 4x8 sheet of
1/8" hardboard that is less than $7 per sheet (in the paneling section).
I cut it into three 16" x 8' strips and framed it with the 1x2s to make the three shelves.
growframe.jpg


The entire cart (without plants and lights) is less than 70lbs.

To make it less flimsy, I reinforced the corners like so.
growcorner.jpg


...to be continued...
 
The tires are 4.10 -3.5 inflatable tires I had laying around.
I used some large carriage bolts I had for makeshift axles.
growwheels.jpg


Here it is with the first set of lights, in the raised position to allow easy watering.
These are just $10 shop lights from Lowes.
grow3.jpg


Here are the lights in the lowered position to give maximum light to the seedlings.
grow4.jpg


The lights are run off a cheap 24hr timer hooked to a power strip, so it
self-manages the amount of light per day.
growtimer.jpg


...to be continued...
 
Here is the high-tech lighting height adjustment mechanism. Nylon rope run through
eyes and hooked over strategically placed drywall screws to set the height of
the lights. As I need more levels of adjustment, I'll just add screws at different
places.

growhanger.jpg


That's about it. Sounds good in theory. Other than the furring strips, the 4x8
sheet of wood for the shelves, and the lights, I built this with scrap wood and
things I had laying around my garage. So this experiment didn't cost me much.

I'm currently using only 1/4 of it. I have room for 8 shop lights total, (only using
2 right now), and using 48-cell flats, could theoretically start up to 384 seedlings
on this cart with 8 shop lights.

I'll post more updates as the weeks roll along to let you know how it works out.
 
Very innovative and it looks like it will be quite effective. But... (there's always a but...) when are you going to add the area that gets flooded with water and then drains, so you can automatically bottom water the seedlings? And the cooler for the beer? Not to mention the stereo system and wide screen TV?

Seriously, I love seeing these kind of projects! Great luck with it.

Mike
 
Very cool cart system! And nice budget also.

I'm wondering about the lights....it looks like they have chain on the lights, why do you need to hook them to the board and then hook the board to the rack? Can't you just put a couple hooks up and use the chain to raise and lower the lights? You can buy more chain for really cheap at hardware stores.

I see that the ropes do go out at a little bit of an angle so the lights are in the middle and the eye hooks are on the edge. If you put a board across the underside of the upper shelf, a 2x4 or whatever, (basically where the eyes are right now) then you could position the hooks for the chains in the middle right above where you need the lights to be.

The light board looks like it adds quite a bit of weight, especially if you have 4 of them eventually.

just wondering~~~
 
salsalady said:
I'm wondering about the lights....it looks like they have chain on the lights, why do you need to hook them to the board and then hook the board to the rack? Can't you just put a couple hooks up and use the chain to raise and lower the lights? You can buy more chain for really cheap at hardware stores.

I was doing that...moving the lights up required adjusting 4 chains.
I'm just playing around with a way to do it faster and thought
moving two ropes to pre-determined locations was faster than
adjusting 4 chains on the lights. It's an evolving work-in-progress.

salsalady said:
I see that the ropes do go out at a little bit of an angle so the lights are in the middle and the eye hooks are on the edge. If you put a board across the underside of the upper shelf, a 2x4 or whatever, (basically where the eyes are right now) then you could position the hooks for the chains in the middle right above where you need the lights to be.

My thought was to allow maximum room under the lights for the plants, so
I didn't want to lower the eyes any more than needed.

But if I used something thinner, like 1/2" plywood, that might work better.
Thanks for the suggestions.
 
OK, I understand your reasoning. Thanks.
 
very nice man...heres to a great growing season for you.....
 
pappywith4 said:
I like the idea, I would put some foil back foamboard on the back and sides for reflecting the light!!

Would cardboard with aluminum foil glued to it work? (see requirement #5)
 
aluminum foil will cause "hot spots"...uneven reflection...best use flat white paint...or mylar
 
you can buy mylar emergency blankets at wal-mart in the camping section for $ 2.49 been using them for 3 years work great for me and cheap.
 
I loved the idea and the contraptions.
This year, just on an experimental basis, I have used two of the most common things in any modern household to sow my seeds till sprouting stage.
This is done using available resources in house and using nothing extra.
Things required are, A plastic/metal cup, tissue paper, wrapping film (cling film)duct tape and little water.

I will reach Detroit tomorrow and know how succesful my experiment is.

AND THE TOTAL COST FOR THE PROJECT IS ZERO CENTS/PENNIES/DOLLARS/POUNDS.
 
Just an update. As the plants have grown, and as I have added more, I have fully populated my original design with a total of 8 worklights (2 bulbs each, 16 bulbs total).
All tomatoes on the bottom row, three flats of peppers and one flat of broccoli/cauliflower on the top.

IMG_48181-e1269566456229.jpg


Full size image

IMG_4820-e1269567062182.jpg


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IMG_4819-e1269567170633.jpg


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I abandoned the ropes for raising/lowering lights and just went back to a simple design where each light hangs independently on chains. Mainly because
as plants started growing at different rates (starting them at different times, etc) I found I needed to move some plants to the front and some to the back
and adjust each light to a different height to accommodate the variation in height, but still keep lights very close to the plants.
The entire thing is wrapped in mylar emergency blankets (as suggested by HawaiiAL...thanks!) which do a great job of trapping what little heat the
fluorescent lights put off (I hang some in the front when I'm not working on the plants). Now I'm just eagerly awaiting the last frost date
so I can plant these dudes!
 
jetskee ...... Sure looks nice !! You sure have a bunch of work coming your way when you plant them outside .....

Peace,
P. Dreadie
 
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