With expanding my cut flower garden, I needed something more than my current grow light, which holds 12 standard sized trays. We are in the process of building a small 10’ x 10’ window greenhouse, but it won’t have heat the first year. It will hold young plants, but it won’t be warm enough to start seedlings in. To help with my seed starting without spending lots of money, I build another grow light garden with a very easy design that takes about 1-2 hours.
Supplies for Grow Light Garden
Over the summer, my husband went to a local auction where he bought what he assumed was a whole set to create a shelf for one of those cheaper greenhouses. Uhh . . . it was only the shelves, it wasn’t the metal rods that hold the shelves together, haha. Oops! It’s all good though because it was only $5 for everything.
We thought about finding metal rods for the shelving, but to be honest, I hate trying to match the size of one thing to another. My husband could do it, but I really just wanted to reuse the shelves we had, not necessarily replace the missing parts with something.
I stopped at Lowe’s the one day and bought 2” x 3” boards 8’ long to create this grow light garden. I could have gone with the 2” x 4” boards, but I didn’t want this to be that heavy. And with using 1” x 3” with my last grow stand, I figured smaller sizes would work. I purchased five boards, four for the legs, and then an extra one for extra width pieces.
Building the Grow Light Garden
Cutting the Boards for the Left Side of Grow Stand
Measure the height of your grow light garden. Wanting mine to be taller than my last one to allow more room between the plants and the grow lights and liking to have two-foot height between each tier, so with three tiers, I cut my boards at 6’.
I didn’t use my husband’s radial arm saw. I still don’t have training on that. But I did use the radial arm saw’s table since the work bench was crowded with other items.
We call this little square Mr. Mustache since it came with a mustache sticker and it is truly called “Mr. Pen.” Using a square to create a straight line at 90 degrees then allows me to make a straight cut.
Next I use my Ryobi circular saw to cut my mark.
Repeat this process of cutting a total of 4 boards to a 6’ length.
With the four pieces of wood that were left over from the previous cuts, double check that they are all 2’ long.
Assembling the Left Side of the Grow Light Stand
On a clean work surface, mine happens to be the woodshop floor, lay down two 6’ boards about 2’ away from each other. Then lay down the 2’ boards perpendicular to the 6’ boards starting at the bottom. Place a screw into the 2’ board to then attach to the 6’ board.
Before repeating with the other 2’ boards, measure where you would like to place them. Make them even on both sides. So, if the left size has a mark at 2’, measure and mark 2’ on the right board. When placing the 2’ board, have both sides of the bottom or both sides of the top run along those marks. Do not have the top end of the left side be above the line while the bottom end of the right side be at the line, or vice versa.
I made marks at 2’ and 4’ on the first side, and that’ll be the same marks as the second side. It keeps it simple.
Repeat with the remaining boards. And congratulations, now you have one side of the grow light garden finished.
Right Side of Grow Stand
Let’s move onto cutting more 2’ boards. The fifth board has been laying around for this step. The 8’ board should be divided into quarters, each 2’ long. Measure, mark, and cut.
Create another side of the grow light stand, keeping to the same measurements as the first side.
Add screws to the 2’ wide boards for the shelves to be placed on. It is wobbly at this stage, but there are some tricks to making it more sturdy. First, add more screws to connect the 2’ board to the 6’ board. This will stop the 2’ boards from having a little wiggle.
Boards on the Grow Light Garden’s Front Side
Another structural addition is to add boards the length of the front sides. My husband added one to the to, which taught and led me to add other boards along the front. I found some extra 1”x3” boards we had outdoors. They were in pretty rough shape, considering their life so far has been sold at an auction, piled in a barn, transported over 100 miles, and then outdoors in our neck of the woods for at least a year.
I gave the boards a good sanding before attaching them with two screws on each side into the 6’ tall board and the 2’ board going across the sides.
At some point, I think it would be nice to paint all the wood white, but since it is staying in my basement, I think it is fine unfinished for this growing season at least.
Monios Grow Lights
When planning back in December my seed starting set up, I realized that my current grow light garden was not going to hold all of my projective seedlings. I had room for 12 seed trays, and building our greenhouse took longer than a weekend to where I realized, I needed something else for this season to start my seedlings.
I do love the grow lights from Lowes, the GE brand. However, I bought all of mine on clearance. I didn’t have the heart to spend $60 or $70 per grow light. On Amazon, I found a grow light brand called Monios. Their grow lights are LED, with reflective edging, which I liked because it is like the 2’ Ferry-Morse grow light at Walmart. They also have connectors, to connect all the lights together, in a similar way to Christmas lights. All the lights can be plugged into one outlet when using those connectors.
They’re also affordable. 6 lights cost me about $85 with tax. That’s about $14 per grow light. I did pay less for my GE grow lights, but I needed these lights this growing season, so I couldn’t wait until March or April for grow lights to possibly go on sale. They may not this year.
How to Assemble
The lights will come in a long, large box. The reflectors come separately from in their own pile. Grab two reflectors and one grow light. One side of the reflectors will have a little edging. This edging matches a slot at the end of the grow light. Place this in and then slide down the light the whole way.
Once assembled, the grow lights will be able to shine and also reflect off these metal pieces to concentrate the light to the plants below.
Hang the Grow Lights
To hang the grow lights, clip on the hanger attachments. These are little clips that cling to the top of the grow light with a hole to place hooks in.
The kit does not come with chains and S-hooks, which I did find to be unfortunate. They came with attachments to screw into wood, as well as zipties. Nevertheless, I had some chains leftover from building my last grow light garden, so I found them and used them for this build.
I separated my chain with a pair of wire cutters. That’s a teed-bit dangers. Pliers work too. By opening up one of the links of chain, it creates a hook as well as unlinking itself. I then use the new hook on the chain to hang the chain from the wired shelf above. At the bottom, I add an S-hook for the chain to connect to the grow light.
Plug-In the Lights
At each end of the grow lights are inserts for the connectors to go. Start with the connector that will be plugging into your outlet. Decide where it works the best for it to reach. For me, I plug this first cord into one of the top lights, on the side where my outlet is.
On the opposite end of that same grow light, use a small connector that will connect to another grow light. I connect the two top grow lights together. On the second grow light at its other end, I use another light connector to the grow light below it. Then, I continue the process to allow the grow lights.
I find the main down fall with these grow lights is that they do not have a switch on each individual grow light. If I only want to use two lights at a time, I need to disconnect the cord from the other grow lights.
Last Thoughts on Grow Stand
I find that the framing on this grow stand was so easy. It took me an hour one evening to do the bulk of the project. I learned some more tricks with wood building. Two screws provide more support to a build. Wood supports on the front provide it to be more stable. Using small boards than the standard 2”x4” allows it to be lighter weight in carrying it.
The stand itself only cost us $20, $15 for the wood, and $5 for the shelving. The grow lights were an additional $85, bringing the total for this project to $105. That’s not a bad price for a grow light garden. Others as whole kits range from $150 for a baker’s rack with grow lights to $1,000 for a beautifully designed grow light garden.
With cats, my main concern is wondering if my plants will survive their attacks. If they do get to the young seedlings, I may surround the right, back, and left sides with chicken wire, like my last grow light stand. If they leave them alone, I plan to leave the design of the stand alone.
All the trays on this grow stand will need to be water proof. I have many leak-proof trays. For some that have accidental holes, I am going to try various way to cover that hole, maybe with a small layer of silicone. If I need to buy more leak-proof trays, I do know that Lowe’s sells them individually, and they are much higher quality being thicker.
Overall, I’m excited to get this grow stand in use now that I have my original one filled to the max with young seedlings and some seeds that are still germinating. First plants to be moved here are some of my petunias that have just germinated and are needing some more light.
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