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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Seed-starting project

An idea has been rolling around in my brain for the last several days... and idea for a project.

Because can you ever have too many house-related projects? Evidently, I am on the road to find out :)

In our basement, we have a "furnace room" which is basically a 9x14 room that has our furnace in it, our hot water heater, but also- some awesome shelves.
Here's a wonderfully accurate drawing of what that room looks like: -------->

Those shelves on the right hand side are built right along the wall. They're probably 8ft across and a total of 6 feet high, and I believe (describing from memory here) that there are either 4 of 5 shelves total.






 Here's what they look like(ish):
                                               
What I am hoping to do next year is........

make a seed-starting area on these shelves!

I've been researching indoor seed-starting to see what I would need, and I think these shelves might be perfect! Individually, they seem to be about a foot apart, and that might be far enough apart for certain types of plants if I rigged some florescent light bulbs under the shelves.

Then I could just buy (or save) seeds next year and start things in my basement! When the seeds have developed into little plants, I could transfer them out into my beds, under a cold frame, and I could have lettuce and other cold weather crops a lot earlier!

Here's a useful tutorial on About.com re: Seed Starting 

1 comment:

  1. Excellent idea! There are lots of people starting seeds so there will be plenty of help. I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing this could be a good room because your furnace may put off a little heat and you do want some warmth for your babies. Can't wait to see how this experiment goes!

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