DIY Garden Seed Starting Setup

Valentine’s Day has passed and that means for where I live in the Pacific Northwest of the US, it’s time to start seeds indoors. Floret did a mini online workshop about seed starting this year {AMAZING, as always} and her final video was how to create your own seed starting shelving system at home with things you can purchase locally. I live about 25 minutes from her so my experience was hers but other parts of the world might be different. My setup looks almost identical to what she showed. I had done about 4 years ago so I’d thought I’d detail what I have going on.

Before adding lights
Potting bench setup using 2 packages of short wire shelves
Upper Lights
Lower lights
  • Wire Shelves I use the short ones because they don’t block the windows in my sunroom. Lots of people use the taller ones.
  • Warming Mats My sunroom is not heated and still gets quite cold at night.
  • LED panels I used these flat panels and wired them into plugs with some leftover wall mounts. You can get any LED or panel light. No need for grow lights
  • Starter trays I have so many of this type from past years. Anything with a lid works great.

I don’t have a picture of the seeds on trays under the lights as the above pics were from later in the year (June-ish) but they would go under the lights on top of the warming mats.

If you’ve not had a chance to watch Floret’s limited series Growing Floret on HBOMax, it’s so beautiful both in content and cinematography.