As  many of you know, last year we started most of our transplants in the basement under lights.  We call this our seedling room.  While it might seem otherwise, it’s actually a reasonably good location for starting plants.  Because it’s practically a walkout basement, there’s a relative abundance of sunlight.  There’s a window we can open to allow good airflow and cooler temps at night.  The daytime air temp under the lights is a constant 70 degrees, which allows for measured, steady growth.  And, located in the house at the bottom of the stairs, it couldn’t be more convenient!

Despite all of the good qualities, though, there are two major downsides.  While there is some natural light, it’s not nearly adequate by itself.  The fluorescent lights do an acceptable job, but they’re definitely on the weak side, so the plants tend to stretch if we’re not careful.  And since we are in a basement, irrigating the plants efficiently is a bit of a challenge.  It is a basement, but it’s a pretty nice basement, and we’re not inclined to spray water over everything and let it drip onto the floor.

The solutions to these downsides?  To offset the stretching caused by inadequate light, we do three things:

1. Try to keep the overall temps on the cool side.
2. Use three shop lights per shelf (6 standard T8 bulbs) and adjust them as close to the plants as possible.
3. Get the plants out of the basement and into the hoophouse, and then the field, as quickly as possible.

To offset the irrigation issue, we devised a simple but effective technique of bottom watering.  We set 24″ x 45″ pieces of plywood on the shelves, lay large sheets of plastic over the plywood, and then place a ring of 1 1/2″ x 3/8″ lathe around the playwood to form a lip that supports the edges of the plastic.  The overall effect is that of a waterproof tray built right into the shelf.  All of our plant trays (both the plastic and the wooden for soil blocks), have perforated bottoms, so any water in the shelf is wicked up to the plant roots from the bottom.  It sure beats spraying water all over the basement!