Expanding our grow light setup

At first I balked at the ~$100 price tag of these tents for grow lights, and I could not find any used ones. But then I calculated how much earlier we’d be able to grow our our produce and stop buying from the store and our CSA and the return-on-investment becomes an obvious good one.

We had our original setup of grow lights in our laundry room, but quickly ran out of space when the second wave of seeds needed to be sown. By moving the set up out to the unheated garage inside this tent, the existing two sets of lights + heat mats can be use to nurse along *many* more seedlings. The tent serves as an insulation barrier and the interior reflective surfaces allows the lights to reach many more seedlings.

An extra IKEA shelf system from the attic proved to be the right size to fit inside the tent with just four quick saw cuts. With the sun making its reappearance every few weeks, we’re looking forward to transplanting all these seedlings out into the food forest soon!