Easy DIY Seed Starting System Ideas
Check out these tips for starting seeds indoors. Grow your own vegetable seedlings at home this spring as readers offer their best DIY seed starting system ideas.
Check out these tips for starting seeds indoors. Grow your own vegetable seedlings at home this spring as readers offer their best DIY seed starting system ideas.
Growing your own seedlings indoors can save you big bucks, as well as open up a whole new world of crop varieties. When you start seeds at home, you're not limited to the "garden variety" plants available at most garden centers. You can order seeds for anything you want to try—disease-resistant, organically grown, regionally adapted or rare heirloom varieties—from many mail-order seed companies across the U.S. and germinate them yourself.
The range of systems you can use to start your seeds is as varied as the plants you can grow. We reached out to our readers to find out which seed-starting systems work best for them, and here's a roundup of their ideas. When you're setting up at home, remember that using lights usually works better than placing plants in windows, and some lights are great for this purpose. We recommend standard fluorescent T8 bulbs because two of them together produce about 3,000 lumens. Although the glow looks bright to the human eye, 3,000 lumens is a tiny fraction of the light a seedling receives outdoors. Keeping your seedlings within an inch or two of these bright lights will keep them sturdy and healthy.
1 Multilevel Seed-Starting Cart on Wheels
I built my grow-light stand last year using ash wood from my backyard that I cut on my bandsaw mill. The stand has two levels and is equipped with store lights and bulbs that I bought at Home Depot. The bulbs are Phillips ALTO T8s that put out about 2,750 lumens. For best results, I can adjust the fixture height to place the bulbs within a couple of inches of the plants. The stand is easily disassembled for storage and I built it on wheels so it can be moved. It works so well that I use it to grow lettuce indoors when I'm not starting seedlings.
2 Multi-purpose growth-light bookcase
I start my seeds in a multi-purpose unit that doubles as a seed-starting stand and bookshelf. Grow lights are a permanent fixture of the stand, mounted on the base of each shelf. When I start seeds, I stack some books under the seed-starting trays to keep near the lights, then adjust the height of the book stacks as the seedlings grow. To build such a unit, first buy the light fixtures, then compile a lumber list based on the length of your lights and how many shelves you want your bookcase to be tall.
3 Mile-High Seed Startup Tips
I'm a master gardener, but I'm also a mile-high, off-grid, limited budget gardener. After hauling potting mix home on the back of my snowmobile, I fill two dozen 2-inch peat pots and two dozen 3-inch pots, as well as some egg cartons and large yogurt containers. I start with tomatoes, peppers, basil, cilantro and more. Curd containers work well for replanting seedlings after two weeks, when larger containers are needed for starters. Recycle and reuse items that are readily available in my price range? Correct!
I cover my seeds with wet newspaper and place them near the wood stove until they germinate (keep the plastic pots far away so they don't melt). Later, they graduate to the lighted seed table, but we only run the electricity for an hour or so at night; The rest of the time, they sit on the south and west windows. As the "babies" get bigger and the temperature rises above 45 degrees Fahrenheit, I move them to a cooler frame on the porch during the day. My germination rate is about 90 percent. At the end of April, I plant my seedlings in raised beds, which I cover with plastic rings.
Anyone with a warm corner, a bright window and a flickering light or two can do this. Buy quality seeds and use a good seed-starting soil mix Thank you. Never let your soil dry out, but don't drown small plants either. Transplant to a larger pot when the seedlings are taller than you started with. Keep it in the sun as much as you can.
4 Getting Started with Seed Soil Blockers
I start my seeds in soil blocks, which means I don't need any small containers. I make my own seed-starting mix based on a recipe from Elliott Coleman's book, The New Organic Grower. I place a heat mat under the trays to help the seeds germinate, and spray the seeds daily with a spray bottle. After the seeds germinate, I unroll the heat mat.
When the sprouts develop their first true leaves, I transfer them to six-packs (larger soil blocks can be used at this point to avoid plastic containers altogether). I put them in a south-facing window until they start to harden off for planting in the garden. To harden off seedlings, first put them outside in a safe place for an hour or so a day, then gradually increase their time outside each day.
5 Use electric blankets to heat the seed starting trays
I am a horticultural technician and have a large country property in western Quebec. Our growing season is much shorter than most. In winter, our temperatures drop to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, so the soil doesn't warm enough to host tomatoes and other heat-loving, long-season crops until July. I want my seedlings to be big, tough and ready to produce in this short growing season.
Bell peppers and tomatoes require an eight to 10 week jump-start in our region. To get rid of them, I place an electric blanket under my seed starting trays. I put a heavy plastic sheet over the blanket and let it dry. I was able to buy used electric blankets for less than $10 each. For plants that germinate best with soil temperatures around 70 degrees, including tomatoes, we use the low setting on our electric blanket to maintain heat under the trays. For plants that do best with soil temperatures around 80 degrees, like bell peppers, we use the medium-high setting of the blanket. Between the bottom heat and overhead lights, my seedlings are big, vigorous, and ready to produce bountiful crops for my family to enjoy.
6-layer seed-starting layers
I use tall, simple, six-tier shelves that I adjust as my plants grow. A fluorescent grow light hangs on each shelf. Each light plugs into an outlet in the light above it, so that each overall unit has only one mains plug that goes into a wall outlet.
The six-tier grow tower displays the peppers I grew last year; I started over 500 of them. Every year, I start onions, sweet peppers, kale, cabbage, broccoli, edible flowers, microgreens, and hundreds of leeks. Once the nighttime temperatures warm up a bit, I will start more seeds in my unheated greenhouse
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