One gardener’s seed starting setup
I’ve seriously raised my game this year with regards to a station for starting seeds. From doing just a few trays previously to ordering those 130 varieties (more on that here) this year, there was no turning back. I’m sharing my seed starting setup here in case that’s helpful to others looking to create a little corner of green in a dark basement/garage/spare bedroom. Here’s what I’ve got:
Location: the obvious choice for me was a corner of the small unfinished part of our basement. I could set it up against one wall and mostly keep it out of the way of the storage on the opposite side. Plus, it being unfinished had the benefit that I knew I could hang some lights and try a few iterations not feel too precious about it.
A structure: instead of buying one of those fancy shelving units, I decided to give it a go with a piece of furniture I already had taking up space in the basement. It’s a very simple little IKEA desk that was handed off to us when we still lived in DC by friends of ours there who were moving (and actually they got it in a similar way from a neighbor initially, so it’s lived a few lives). We used to use it in our DC apartment as extra table length when we needed to host a dinner party. Those were cozy, pre-pandemic times. Anyway! It was collecting dust in the basement, looking for its next job. I made it a two-shelf situation by adding some leftover boards to the bottom, resting them on the rungs on that connected the legs on each side. Very low-budget but effective! In case you’re trying to picture it, the desk doesn’t seem to be sold anymore by IKEA, but it’s similar to this one.
Lighting: I am using four shop lights. These, specifically. My main parameters for choosing lights were that they be a) bright enough (at least 3000 lumens), b) the right light temperature (daylight, which is a 4000-5000 kelvin score), and c) that they were able to be plugged into each other; I didn’t want to have to find outlet space for each one. Then, I bought some chain at my local Ace Hardware, put some screws in the exposed beams of the unfinished basement ceiling, and hung them up. It took a few tries to get them at the right height, and I wanted to attach the chains such that I could raise them relatively easily as my little seedlings grew. It’s important to have the lights be within a couple of inches of the tops of your plants, so they need to be very low to begin with.
Seed starting supplies: I decided to try soil blocking this year, so I got a bunch of different items:
Soil blockers of the four- and twenty-block sizes as well as snap-in square dibbles for moving seedlings from the tiny size up to the larger one.
Trays including the soil block propagation trays, the deep trays to set those in, and domes to keep the humidity up for germination.
A soil blocking and potting tray to contain the mess and a little shelf to hold my tools while in action.
And a bigger heat mat.
An outlet timer: I got this one and it works great. It was very easy to program and had space to plug two things into it: my lights and my fan. Ideally you want 16 hours of direct light every day for starting seeds, so I have my lights set to be on from 6am to 10pm.
An oscillating pedestal fan: I plugged this into the outlet timer so that my seedlings would get a gentle and moving breeze during the day. This is helpful both for preventing damping off and for making your seedlings’ stems stronger as it mimics the wind they’d experience in outdoor growing conditions.
And there you have it! I go downstairs and check my little seedlings first thing every morning, and usually give them a little water. There’s nothing like walking into what should be a dark corner of the back of the basement and seeing the most vibrant green of new growth, especially when it was still mostly brown outside.
The seedling station in action
