Welcome to Day 1 of my “plants and stuff” blog where I talk about the plants I grow and any other things I do on shelves I’ve assembled in my living room. This is meant to be very casual and informal and by no means polished nor professional. It’s just the random ramblings of a bored guy in his 50’s with an interest in plants with the time to write about them on a daily basis. There’s no telling where this will lead from one day to the next. But you’re more than welcome to follow along with me on this “journey” and see where it takes us both. So let’s start at the very beginning with the assembly of the shelving units and lights themselves and tumble down the rabbit hole from there…
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I purchased two standard six foot tall, four foot wide chrome shelving units and as I was assembling them I took one of the shelves and used it to connect the two shelving units at the top. This spaced them exactly four feet apart, but also secured a way for me to suspend a light fixture between them in the event I were to grow any plants too big for the shelves. |
| I installed two four foot long 3,500 Lumen LED light strips under each of three of the shelves on the first unit, totaling six LED light strips. I then placed a larger 7,000 Lumen LED light strip beneath the lowest shelf, with about three and a half feet of vertical space for the bottom area to give me plenty of room for medium height plants that may need brighter light than provided on the upper shelves. On the right shelving unit, I placed the brightest light, a 10,000 Lumen LED light fixture on chains for any plants I have that require it, like tomato plants. |
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I filled the left shelving unit with the plants I currently have (more on them in the coming days) and a vacant pet cage is presently between the units. For now the right side is used mainly for storage and breeding bins for my Superworms aka Darkling Beetles (Zophobas morio) – more on them later too! |
| Here’s a full view of my living room. Plant shelves and pet cage on the left, and my workstation and couch on the right. I work from and attend school at home, so I make use of a big screen TV as an extra monitor, along with my two laptops, printer and iPad. I have a nice balcony (I live in a second-floor apartment) and my place is very comfortable. As you can readily see, I’m not shy about surrounding myself with my hobbies and profession, as they both bring me enjoyment and satisfaction. Due to how I live my life, my motto has ALWAYS been:
“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
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I expect to propagate and sell plants and seeds on eBay as a helpful, though infrequent, source of income from time to time. Below is how I (rather brilliantly) came up with a way to most efficiently accomplish the task of raising young plants to sell as easily as possible with the materials I happen to have on-hand.
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I am starting out with a single shelf, because I’m very limited at the moment in exactly what I have to propagate. After a few months, the plants I propagate now will provide source material for me to propagate even more. But I have to begin at the most logical place – the beginning. So I start with a single shelf. |
| A few months ago I purchased a couple wholesale boxes of small jars. My original decision for getting them was to use them to create small kits for sale that could be assembled into little terrariums. But since I’m so freaking resourceful, and can use anything for something, I suddenly had a whole new idea for them. I decided to use them to create a well-organized “propagation station” of sorts. |
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As I was about to begin taking out the little jars, the protective foam insert caught my eye and suddenly a brilliant solution to a problem I was going to be up against was solved! The problem? Keeping the jars from banging against each other or falling off the shelves and breaking. The jars are all spaced and well protected as they were shipped to me from China like this. So why not make use of the foam inserts as well? |
| Here’s what the individual jars look like. Each one includes two different types of lid. A cork one that is easily lifted off, and a hard plastic lid that snaps on and is difficult to remove. The jars have many different potential uses. I have no immediate need for the lids but have some ideas, so I placed them in a bag in my closet. I can reuse the jars because they are glass. |
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I bought a pack of 100 89ml “Bath Cups” a while back. They fit perfectly in the little jars with about an inch of clearance. As they are shown here, I can put water in the cups for rooting cuttings and leave the jars empty, using them to stabilize the cups. Later I can punch a hole in the bottom of the cups, run a piece of yarn through them, fill them with soil, and keep water in the jars to make small low maintenance self-watering pots for young plants to grow in. |
| I discovered that three of those foam inserts, or what I’ll call “trays” from now on, will fit perfectly on a single shelf. With each tray holding 20 jars, this means one shelf will support 60 cuttings or plantlets being propagated at one time. Another good thing is, the spacing allows air flow around what I grow, preventing bugs or diseases from migrating between plants. |
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I was incredibly pleased to discover that the trays fit perfectly on the shelf from front to back. No overhang to risk me brushing against, and it insures all the young plants are in the most suitable location directly under the grow lights to receive uniform light. They will all grow and develop at the same rate so a tray or shelf will be ready to sell at the same time. |
| The trays are perfectly sized from front to back and also perfectly sized from side to side too, with space at either end to account for the ends of the light fixtures where there is slightly less light than in the rest of the length of the shelf. I couldn’t have done this better any other way. I cannot fully express to you just how incredibly satisfying it is to take things that have no relation to one another, and find that they work seamlessly together to provide a solution to a problem! |
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I now have an assortment of plants growing, bins of Superworms and Darkling Beetles, and a rather unsightly hodge-podge of trays, tools and, for lack of a better term, doo-dads on the shelves. I have several more 3,500 Lumen light strips on top of the right shelving unit that I intend to install on the shelves of that unit later on once it is needed to hold additional plants. |
| In the coming days I’ll take the time to individually discuss a number of the plants I currently have, but in general I have Venus Flytraps, Sundews, Nepenthes, African Violets, several different kinds of succulents, and a variety of garden annuals grown from seeds and even some tomato plants. I’ve always been interested in a very wide variety of plants and flowers over the years and continue to grow and care for them as my interests in them come and go over time. |
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Hopefully what you’ve seen so far is interesting enough to keep you coming back from time to time. I do want to point out that my plan is to post every day, seven days a week. Mainly to keep up the interest, but also – when it comes to plants – there’s ALWAYS something I can find to take pictures of and write about. Also, each day’s blog post will appear at exactly 11:11 PM (Central Time) each evening. That gives me the entire day and afternoon to write the blog post before it is scheduled to be published on here. I am really looking forward to what unfolds moving forward!
