It's seed starting time! In many parts of the country it is time to be starting
seeds. So I thought I would share with you all today my seed starting setups,
and I've got several different ones from fairly basic to pretty elaborate. So let's take a look
So my first and most basic seed starting setup is this... and what this is is just a single
light frame where you can hang, this originally came with a single T5 fluorescent bulb fixture,
I actually switched it out to a full spectrum LED, but you can see it just hangs from this bar here
and you can adjust the height. And then underneath I can fit two seedling flats. And if you only have
a small amount of seedlings to start this works great. As you can see this fits right on my dining
room table doesn't take up a whole lot of space and you can even get these that are half the size,
just enough to do one flat. So here you can see the original setup this is one of those
same jump start lights with the original light on it just a single fluorescent bulb and it has
adjustable strings here that hold the light. So here's the same thing but it's half the size,
so you can fit one seedling flat under here. Now here I've got a three tiered growing rack, so this
was an all-in-one unit, it comes with the shelves, the trays, the lights, everything is all together
already. This one was actually a hand-me-down so I'm not even sure of the make and model, but there
are a lot of similar units available online. And as I mentioned this came with the lights,
so it's got three of these kind of standard grow lights. They've got four fluorescent bulbs per
unit and then it also has three levels where these trays fit in. You basically set them in and they
rest on this metal lip here so it came with these tan trays that fit right in this space. This light
is adjustable- you simply screw it unscrew it to loosen it and you can move it up and down
depending on where you need it in position to your seedlings. And overall it does the job. Now
I have had one big complaint with this unit and it's that the design seems to be such that the
lights are actually not wide enough to cover the entire space of my seedling flats. So they do fine
for germinating seeds and for small seedlings but once my seedlings get up an inch or two
I can tell that they're struggling the ones on the outside are struggling to reach this light because
they'll be stunted and they will start to grow inward. So ideally this light would be at least
as wide as my growing shelf here, I'm not sure why they designed this rack this way but it's been a
source of annoyance ever since I started using it. So this year I decided to set up my own growing
rack. And finally this is my in the works homemade seed starting rack. So I decided to construct this
thing for a couple of different reasons-- first because of the frustrations I mentioned with my
prefab unit and the grow lights not reaching the entirety of my seedling flats and secondly because
I wanted the flexibility to experiment with different types of light. So what I did was just
go out and get a metal shelving unit from my local big box store, I think this came from Menards,
and I just tried to get dimensions that would fit as closely as possible to the size of my
standard seedling trays and so far I've just got one set of lights on here
you can probably tell by the weird purplish glow these are the red and blue spectrum
LED lights which look totally trippy. And I'm surprised I haven't been busted yet for suspected
growing of something I shouldn't be growing in my basement, it's just spinach, but my plan is to add
to each of these levels basically a different type of grow light and really test and see
which one does the best for the money. I've got this big boy that I'm gonna attach to the bottom
and this one has six fluorescent lights in it. And same thing, I will just hang this
from the metal rack. Basically I'm just starting with s hooks and a good heavy duty chain, I might
actually use this one for this guy because he's pretty heavy, and then I come through these rungs,
loop it around, most all of these lights have
some kind of a hanger on them that you can loop your chains through,
and then your s-hook's just going to allow you to adjust that light to where you need it
and hook that up like so. And so now you can see I've got this one hanging
and ready to put seedling flats underneath there. Now I'm waiting on a few replacement bulbs I think
this one had about four blown bulbs, so I just ordered some replacements and those will be in
later in the week so I can get this thing up and running. You can see over here I've got
another type of grow light- so that's another fluorescent one, but I've attached it the same
way just with these chains and little s hooks here so you can see how that guy
puts out a lot of light when he's on. So I can fit another seedling flat underneath here.
And then when I find a third type of grow light to test out I have this space up here that I can
attach more lights to. So if anybody has any favorite suggestions be sure to let me know.
So one thing you may be curious about in regards to lights and seed starting is
whether a grow light or supplemental light of any kind is really necessary. Why can't we just
put our seedling trays in a sunny window and let the sun and nature do its work? Well you
can but I will say that in a lot of growing areas, especially in the northern hemisphere,
during the time when we are starting a lot of our seeds especially like January, February,
March even into April we do not get the length of daylight that is optimal for seedlings. So
usually you're looking at putting lights on your seedlings like 10 to 12 hours a day,
some people even do more than that, and I don't know about you but where I live through the winter
we're not even reaching that 10 hour a day mark during the darkest days.
And add to that the fact that a lot of our winter days are very very cloudy and gloomy
we're not getting a lot of full bright sunlight. And you may also not have a really great spot
in your house that's getting nice south facing sun during the winter. So all of those are factors to
consider when you're making a decision whether to buy grow lights. I will tell you personally
just in my own experience, supplementing with grow lights has made such a difference in the
success of my seedlings that I would recommend it to everyone. I think it really really helps to get
good strong growth on those young seedlings which will ultimately give you better success when you
go to transplant them out in the garden. And if you find content like this helpful please consider
subscribing to my channel- Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!