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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Basement seed room
  • Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:18:39 -0500


On Dec 13, 2009, at 4:48 PM, Richard Robinson wrote:

I am busy getting ready to install a seed room in my unheated basement, and wonder if any of you have any general or specific words of advice. I am thinking of 6'x12', with two 12'-long sets of shelves on either side of a center aisle. I will enclose it with rigid insulation, and include a vent to the outside for excess humidity. Light will be from 4' fluorescent fixtures fixed in place over the shelves; I plan to raise and lower the seedlings, rather than the lights (though would be interested in easy ways to move the lights instead). I will include a plug-in electric heater (one of those oil-heating units) to keep the temperature up.


Do you mean a seed room, as in a room for the storage of seeds, or a transplant starting room, for growing transplants from seed in? The phrasing of the name sounds like the first, but the rest of your description sounds like the second. Requirements are going to be a lot different.

If you mean for growing transplants, I would hang the flourescents from chains, and raise and lower those instead of the plants; it's much easier, as the lights will weigh much less than the plant trays. All you need to do is put in open hooks to attach the chains to, and just move the chain so a different link is hooked over the chain to raise or lower the lights. Most lights I've seen come with an attachment point at each end for chains; any hardware store should have chains of various sizes. -- This also allows you to raise one end of the light more than the other, if some of your plants are taller than others. If you tried that with shelves, things would slide on them.

I would also recommend some heat mats to provide bottom heat for germination of heat-loving seed. You don't want to have to heat the whole space into the 90's F to get your hot peppers to come up, when plants of other species, and even the peppers themselves once they're up, don't need nearly as much heat and will do better without it.

A fan might also be needed, to improve ventilation, possibly angled to allow you to get some air movement across the plants so stems will grow sturdier.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



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