Garden 2013: Seed Starting Shelf

In years past, we've always started our seeds on a folding table in our upstairs middle area.  It was hard to rotate the plants and didn't give us very much space.  This year, JP decided to build a seed starting shelf. We decided to go with PVC,  because we had a bunch of it taking up space.  We used the PVC Growing Rack idea as our inspiration and guide. 

Here's the completed shelf:

From the side:

To build this shelf you'll need:

10- 4 ft. pieces of  3/4 in. PVC 
18- 1 ft. pieces
8- 90 degree elbow connectors
4- T-connectors
12- 4-way connectors
Corrugated plastic sheets
Screws (self-drilling screws did not work for us)

Please note:  Our shelf is 4 ft. because that is the size that fits the area where we place our seeds.  This can be easily adapted to fit your own window size. 


JP used PVC cement, but only glued together the side walls and the bottom assembly.  So that we could take it apart and store it flat after the season. 

 

JP assembled it dry and then marked the pipe and connector where they should fit together.  So when he glued it, he could quickly match up the marks.   Rubbing alcohol will clean off the sharpie writing when you are finished. 

To brace the bottoms of each shelf, JP took an old plastic Sterilite container lid (it's all about "using what you have") and cut it into strips to fit the measurements of our shelf. He used 3 per shelf (1 on each end and 1 in the middle). 

He used screws to attached the corrugated plastic to each shelf.

That's our new seed starting shelf!