YES! I made good and accomplished my big grow! I hesitate to use words grow-room because of the obvious connotations. Ha! It’s veggies and flowers folks! I wonder how my garden will look this year? Here it is last year halfway through the growing season.

I have two trays dedicated to just two types of flowers…French Parfume Lavender and White Ice Lavender. That’s 100 lavender plants. Don’t worry they’re really small and compact. I really want to use them as a living paint so to speak and create something special. Fingers crossed for another hot Summer!

A tomato seed waiting to be pushed into the seed start mix.

Some plants need the dark…like these delphiniums. Oh I could just grow those and be happy. Tried last year…am trying again.

Lots of tomato and peppers, but some greens too. Most of those will be hand sown directly into the ground in about 2 weeks.

The temperature stays about 74F in the bathroom…perfect for everything…except those treasured delphiniums. Come on delphiniums grow, grow, grow!!

Wow life is really crazy right now! Trying to find time to actually plant my seeds and nestle them in, all comfy like. Tonight it shall be done! That is my goal! The community garden I run with some other fine folks is already getting really busy. I’ve/we have been having issues with a rogue gardener (is there even such a thing? Yes, yes there is) who is monopolizing the boards time and stirring the pot, again. Sheesh. Try as you might, some people just live for drama. Did I say too much? haha!

This photo is for Isle Dance who really really wanted to see the lights of my T5 setup! Here you go ID!

I’ve shopped around for light stands…they all come back with the same review, “flimsy but works”. I wanted something that would last longer than flimsy so I decided to do a little DIY.

First stop, hardware store to buy four 8 foot long, 1 inch by 2 inch pieces of red oak. Oak is a hard wood and perfect for this project as it is tough and really beautiful.

My brother Matt graciously let me use his chop saw and I made the major cuts at his place. At home, I made some additional cuts for strength and started piecing it together. Glue here, screw there. Sand, sand, sand!

I then applied an eco friendly finish I made myself out of melted beeswax and turpentine with a tiny bit of stand oil. Beeswax of course comes from flowers, turpentine from pine trees and stand oil from flaxseeds.

I wanted to use mini-pulleys. (hardware geek alert!) I just think they are so neat. But it was a bit more complicated than I would have liked. To attach them to the top beam I would have had to use u-joints bolted to the top. Ugly. So I opted for eyelets. By the way, see how the finish brought out the beauty of the wood?

Now to thread the thing. I made sure and singed the ends of the nylon rope so it didn’t fray. I made sure to use knots that were meant for loads, in this case I opted for the timber hitch.

I was fascinated that each one of the eyelets on the left post carried and equal tension, which surprised me.

And yes all carpenters who look at this design and say, “Oh you shoulda this and that…” I fully realize that there are 6 ways to Sunday to do this.

But hey it works! So what you are looking at is a four foot T5 housing which holds 4 bulbs, in a home made light stand that goes fully up and down depending on plant height. This unit can start 200 plants. Romaine is in and now its time to get on the tomatoes! Woohoo!