Finished Off the Pallet Scraps

The white wood is from my old laundry room cabinets, the

closet pole is from the closet that used to be in the office

I'm sitting in right now.  Everything else is from pallets.

16p nails used for linchpins

I decided a couple days ago that I'm gonna take another shot at starting plants indoors.  Like any good student I've learned along the way and will tap into my past experiences to hopefully find more success this time around.  The main thing I learned is that I should not mix many different types of plants in a single large cell flat, but rather use individual or (and this is my plan) use 6-pack flats.  Having many varied plants in a single flat makes it difficult to correctly water and fertilize as each species may have slightly different needs.  I also learned that insufficient light will result in VERY leggy plants that end up collapsing on themselves and suffering stem damage.

To address these issues I'm ditching the 52 cell flats and going with a bunch of used 6-cell packs.  For the light I rigged up a new "growing base" from my pallet scraps left over from the potting bench.  This new base has a few advantages:

• It spans across my sink so that I can get the plants in the center of the light
• The light is much more adjustable, I can adjust it all the way to the deck
• It relieves the stress of having the fixture hanging off my wall sconce
• It looks much better, has that reclaimed material look that I like
• It's portable, I can move out to the shed as it warms up in the coming months

Heat pads and lights ready.  Tomorrow I hope to get the
seed sown

I've been programming all day and hit a design block for almost two hours.  I just keep drawing the same UML class diagrams and sequence diagrams over and over and couldn't clear the blockage.  This "growing base" project was a nice 2 hour distraction and change of pace.