Propagation: The Game Picks Up Speed, 1 by critterologist

critterologist wrote:
Due to lots of seed trading this winter with the generous folks here at DG, I knew I was going to need more seedling space this year, even though I also did a good bit of wintersowing! DH (dear, dear DH) got me another set of "Gorilla" shelves and put them together last weekend. I set up a pair of lights this morning and promptly filled the space with a couple more flats of pepper seedlings, a flat of alyssum & lobelia, and some tomato seedling flats that wanted to be off the heat mats.

I took this picture to show how my setup works with these shelves. The shelves are adjustable, and the shelf supports knock into place using the slotted holes. (These are *so* much easier to set up than the metal shelves that bolt together!) The slotted holes are just the right size to take a 1/4 inch wooden dowel, so that's what I use to hold up the lights for the lower shelf. It's easy to adjust the height of the lights by moving the dowels to a different set of holes, but I found out that it's a good idea to remove the light fixtures before you adjust the dowels.... it seems more efficient to just hand onto the lights at one end while moving the dowel with your other hand, but it turns out there's a significant risk of having the lights slip off the dowel at the other end and crash down on some tender little marigold seedlings!

Oh, other details that may be of interest.... The shelves on this unit are made of some sort of particleboard, and I didn't know how water-resistant the material might be, so I just slipped a big garbage bag around the shelf and taped the excess down to the bottom surface. There's a timer at the other end of the extension cord; all my seedling lights are on a timer, you just can't see it in this picture. I do have another pair of light fixtures that I'll set up on the right side of my new shelves tomorrow. The top shelf is level with a big south-facing window, so that may serve as "emergency" extra space! I still have a couple of flats of tomatoes to transplant, as well as some misc. annuals, not to mention the eggplants that I started last week or the tomatillos I haven't sowed yet, so the space under those new lights will fill up fast!