It’s the time of the year that I start my vegetables by seed indoors. I have an indoor grow light that I use to grow my plants for a few months before transplanting them outside. I always start my plants by seed because I like to have full control and grow the varieties that I want. Also, I save a lot of money on vegetables in the summer because of my garden!
This year, I needed to come up with a new stand for my light. In the past, I just used a few pieces of wood to put it up. However, the wood was a little too flimsy and I decided to build a grow light stand out of PVC pipe this year. I was looking to build something cheap to hold the light up and PVC pipe seemed like the best option for me. I pulled out my pencil and paper and came up with a design that I thought would work for the grow light stand. Here is a look at the sketch I put together for my grow light stand.
As you can see in the sketch, I figured that I would need 6 tee connectors and 2 elbow connectors along with the PVC pipe. With the sketch done, I headed to my local Lowes and bought all of the supplies that I would need to build the grow light stand. It only cost me about $12.50 for all of the supplies I needed to make the light stand. I was pretty happy with this because I have seen some grow light stands online that sell for over $100!
I spent the next hour cutting the PVC pipe into the right sized pieces and then put my light stand together. Once the stand was complete, my biggest concern was that the light might be too heavy and the stand won’t support it. However, that wasn’t a problem at all!
Here is a picture of the completed grow light stand.
Now that the stand is complete, I can move on to getting my seeds started and turning my basement into a mini jungle.
Sounds sketch, Dave! Just kidding.
We always started seeds indoors, too. It’s not all that hard, and there really isn’t that much TLC that you have to give plants in their early stages – light, warmth, and water are pretty easy to come by.
After failing horribly one year to start my own seeds and move them outside, I learned a very valuable lesson that you have to keep a fan on them. Apparently most plants will “learn” quickly to adjust to their environment. Without wind, the seedlings get over-excited and grow to be really tall, lanky things. Well…it only took one move from the garage at 0 mph winds to the garden at 20+ on occasion to see all the seedlings snapped in half.
Two valuable lessons learned: use a fan, and realize that it is quite easy to get attached to plants. It’s a total bummer to throw away good plants that I worked with for weeks and replace them with seedlings purchased at the store.
I’m going to try to talk the folks into another backyard garden, as there really is nothing better than home grown foods. Best of luck with the garden and the MBA. Good to see you’re still around!
haha, I thought it was a pretty good sketch!
You are right about the fan, it definitely makes a big difference. Things are starting to come up nicely and I need to get the fan on the plants soon.