Seed Starting Shelves

A large part of season extension is in starting seeds indoors.  For this purpose, I'm going to be starting seeds indoors this year and see how the transplanting goes.  I don't have all the tools for full season extension caterpillars yet, so this is a quick, easy and cost effective way to get a jump start on the growing season.  Once the beds have full season extension features, indoor seed starting will help extend even further into early spring.

For starters, I wanted to find a stainless steel shelving system that would hold up for years to come.  I looked around and the Seville SHE14305-5 the best.  It can be found on Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/Seville-Classics-SHE14305-5-Shelf-Storage/dp/B001A0VYZY

The shelve arrived and my daughter Jill and I went about assembling it.  Jill's only 8, but she's my big helper in the garden. :-)

The rack in the box.

Once we unpacked it, it was a pretty clean and simple set of components.

There are no tools other than a small and thin hex spanner for getting the wheels attached.

The assembly was painless and straight forward.  I will just note that you need to be aware of the cylindrical corners of the shelves.  They are tapered to make them easier to position properly on the vertical supports, but if you lower the shelve the wrong way around, you'll spend some time trying to figure out why things don't fit.  Basically, if the parts don't just snap and slide together almost effortlessly, you're doing something wrong.  In our case, we assumed the shelves would have the larger lip side facing up, but that was not the case, so it took us a couple of minutes to figure out the problem.  Total assembly time should be about 20 minutes.

The ONLY tool we used, and it really isn't needed, was my rubber mallet to gently tap the shelves to the proper level.

The shelves are ready.  Now we need to get the lighting to go with it and the seedling trays to fit before we begin.

Seed Starting Tray

For the indoor seed starting, we had previously assembled a stainless steel shelf.  Now the next step is to get the starting trays that will rest on the shelf.  I'm trying out this kit from Burpee.

When you open it, the kit contains a couple of components.  The first component is a seed chart.  Since all seedlings look pretty much alike, this would be useful in helping identify what we planted where.

The next is a thin plastic elevation panel.

The plastic is VERY thin and in our case, some of the legs was crushed in transit from the store.  They pop back easily enough and since we're not supporting heavy weight, the flimsy feel can be forgiven.

The next piece is the tray itself.  This particular tray contains 72 pods.

Each pod contains a small compressed pellet.  The pellets are made of coconut material and should expand within seconds after being watered.

When we peer down into the pod, we notice that the bottoms have holes.  This is for the self watering function to keep the growing medium damp.

The next component is the self watering mat.  The mat is nylon on one side and soft spongy material on the other.

The final component is the water tray.  This is also very flimsy.  I'm a little more concerned about this one's flimsiness because we cannot afford any leaks or the self watering feature won't work.

The assembly sequence for use is simple.  Start by placing the elevation tray in the watering tray.

Now evenly place the watering mat over the elevation tray, ensuring that the watering mat's sides touch the watering tray on both sides.

Now the seedling pods is placed on top of the watering mat.  Water is kept in the watering tray which is wicked up by the watering mat.  The seedling pods being in touch with the watering mat, absorb the needed moisture and keep the growing medium moist.

Spacing of the seedling tray on our shelf seem to fit nicely with room to spare.  We can fit 4 trays on our shelf which would give us the ability to grow 288 seedlings at a time.

Planting Plan - 2014 Season Summary

When we summarize our planting plans for two beds of corn, two beds of tomatoes, a bed of broccoli, a bed of lettuce and a bed of potatoes, we find that the following seeds are required:

Beans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $10.29 = $20.58
Broccoli - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 100 seeds/pack = 3 packs X $3.95 = $11.85
Carrots - (96 X 12 X 2 = 2304) + (96 X 4 X 3 = 1152) + (48 X 10 X 3 = 1440) = 4896 @ 5000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $10.50 = $10.50
Celery - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $3.95 = $7.90
Corn - 96 X 4 X 2 = 768 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $13.00 = $13.00
Lettuce - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Lettuce (Butterball) - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Onion - 96 X 2 X 1 = 192 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $5.60 = $5.60
Potato - 48 X 1 X 1 X 0.5 lbs = 24 lbs @ 25 lbs/pack = 1 pack X $19.50 = $19.50
Soybeans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 500 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $10.29 = $10.29
Spinach - 96 X 18 X 3 = 8640 @ 10000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $11.80 = $11.80
Tomato - 96 X 1 X 1 = 96 @ 100 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $27.80 = $27.80

Adding smaller packet totals together and upsizing to a larger pack saves money so be sure to keep that in mind.  Sometimes, if you need 300 and they come in packs of 50, it's cheaper to just get a pack of 500 rather than 6 packs of 50.

Needless to say, seeds have been ordered and now we are just awaiting their arrival.  Next step is to get the vermiculite, peat moss and compost delivered so we can fill the beds upon their construction completion.

Raised Bed Building - Day 4

With the temperature finally above 30F again, we were able to make the mortar mix and get the second level of cinder block onto the beds.  The mortar mix needs to dry overnight and then we're doing some concrete pouring in the corners to strengthen the beds, wrap up the fence and we're ready for growth medium!

West view:

South-west view:

North-west view:

North-east view: