Happy Mother’s Day. At our house we say that with flowers but not cut flowers with flats of flowers. I bought, delivered, and then planted flowers for my mom, whose birthday fell very close to Mother’s Day, so she got double the flowers. My family has bought, delivered and helped with planting for me as well.
It’s a time honored tradition and I have loved it. The kids are all adults now and we are separated from some by distance, but that didn’t stop the flowers. Bill looked at me the other night and asked, “What do you want for Mother’s Day?” I looked at him and thought about it for a while and then replied, “Flowers.” At which point we both started to laugh.
We were laughing because we have been planting seeds since February. We normally plant a few different kinds of flowers but mostly it’s veggies. This year something inside our brains, my brain, popped and we planted flowers with wanton abandon. Some of the veggies have already gone out into the garden. Some of the flowers have already joined them. Mostly marigolds because good grief we have marigolds. 10 flats at last count. But many others are still in the house and we are working on up potting them.
The next morning over coffee Bill looked at me and said, “I’ve been doing some math and we have 40 flats of plants in three rooms of our house.” “Yep and I’ve got at least 40 more to get planted, I’m not sure I understand your point, dear.” was my reply. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t joking and he now knows I’m serious, which is why we had to run at lunch and go get 2 more bags of dirt. All of this brings me to his answer to the question, what do I want for Mother’s Day, when I already have all the flowers one woman could wish for. Shelves on which to hold my plants till I can put them outside.
A decade or so ago we discovered the metal racks that they sell at Sam’s Club: “Member’s Mark 6-Tier NSF Heavy Duty Wire Shelving, 47.75″ W x 18″ D x 75.5″ H”. These are still under $100.00 and when we purchased them they were probably $20 less per unit. We used them at work as server racks, we used them at home in the office as our actual computer desks. We put a piece of melamine at desk height and had big fairly inexpensive desks with lots of storage. We have used them in the shop and still do. When we were moving we bought a lot of them so that we could put our boxes on shelves rather than having them stacked on top of each other. Okay we did the stack on top of each other first and then the stacks started collapsing under the sheer weight AND the townhouse Bill was living in had a basement that leaked. Of course all those boxes made of cardboard were stacked on the wall that the water was coming in. These racks are nice because you can to a certain degree customize the shelves, they hold a lot of weight, they are easy to put together and take apart and they have wheels. Fast forward to Bill moving back home and now we have racks, like seriously a lot of these racks, like what do you do with all these racks? Okay we still had one storage unit so we put a lot of them in there. Bill took just the shelves and figured out a way to mount them in the shop along the ceiling and they now hold things that we don’t use all the time or are seasonal plus some of his engine repair stuff. But we still have a lot of these shelves and we are now trying to get that last storage unit emptied.
These things work great for plant flats. Or, they work. No they work great. A few years ago we bought two of those small metal green house things and at that time we thought this is all the space, nay MORE than enough space for us to start our garden during the winter months. We quickly added in one metal half rack to catch the overflow. Last year we decided to not start so many seeds. That was a mistake, so this year we went back to our old ways of starting way too many seeds. We now have those two racks in the bedroom, yes you read that correctly, we added two half racks in my once again sewing room. We had to go to the storage unit to retrieve more racks and last night we put one in the guest bathroom. Now the plan is to take the studio in the basement and let that be our growing room. We just haven’t gotten there yet. While Bill was filling up the lower rack of the new bathroom plant setup he started to feel the full weight of just how many plants we have going. It hit him, we are going to need lights for the top shelf of that half rack. In the sewing room it’s okay because there is wood above the half racks that we can hang lights from. In the bathroom, not so much. So how did he do it?
Sam’s Club 6 tier heavy duty metal rack with PVC grow light holder on top
Like this. We had several pieces of 1/2 PVC plus couplers to insert into the rack legs, elbows to make the bend on top, S-hooks to hang the lights from and of course grow lights. Simple to assemble and in this case no costs because we had the PVC from another project. The great thing about this is you can make those lights as high or as low as you need by changing the height of the PVC leg. The lights are light weight and now if you need to move those racks around you just unplug one plug into the wall and it’s all free standing. You could use these outside and we intend to probably do that when we get the grow tunnel up. You could also use the plastic shelf liners that come with the selves if you are worried about over watering hitting the lights on the lower shelf.
Sam’s Club 6 tier heavy duty metal rack with PVC grow light holder on top
If you are looking for gift ideas, or need seed starting table ideas that don’t require to many tools or to much money, or you have been trying to figure a way to get lights to the top shelf, this is it.
As we were coming home from getting the dirt Bill realized he needed more grow lights. He also realized we needed to get some more racks from the storage unit. He also realized that I might have actually lost my mind this time. Happy planting, Happy Mother’s Day, happy whatever it is you are doing or planning to do.
Now I need to go get those other 38 flats of flowers planted up!
