DIY Microgreens Rack — First Photos

Spent the afternoon working on my microgreens rack, which measures 7'2" long, 6' high, and 2' deep. Originally did it at 7'2" to fit into an alcove in a room, but then decided to turn it 90 degrees in the hopes of getting better ventilation. If I had to do it over, I would now just do it at 8'. Oh well.

(Sorry for the crappy cut-off photos — my camera’s screen is broken, so I have to just guess)

It probably would have been fine without the diagonal brace, but now I can be perfectly confident moving it around, as it’s completely solid. I put felt pads under the feet for easy moving as well.

Also purchased a box to mix and hold my clean soil in. I need a dolly anyway in my life, so I bought some casters and fitted it to hold my soil bin. (102L)

Now I can move that sucker around easily, and it can live under the rack, like so.

As you can see, each section easily accommodates 4 flats. So without adding any extra shelves (I have room for one more easily underneath), I have a capacity of 24 trays at a time. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself either until I know I can sell that much.

My lights are 48", and had to extend outside of the frame, since I cut down from my original 8' lengths of board. A bit of a shame aesthetically, but no big deal.

I’m not actually 100% sure that 1 unit of 48" fluorescent lights will be enough for the 4 flats side by side, or if I will have to double up to two units per 4 flats. I imagine that will give me better more uniform light coverage, but I’ll test it and see…

This is my timer unit. The blue cord runs to the wall socket, and the lights are all plugged in off the white cord running out of the timer.

Zip ties are your best friend for this kind of rigging of electric cords. I hate having loose cords flying all over the place when I’m trying to do things.

Overall, the whole thing is really ugly, but I want all the individual light plugs (control points) to be up front and accessible.

Could be a lot worse. But here’s a close up of the ugly, just so you can share my pain… But where are you going to put all that extra cord otherwise?

The black zip tie holds the block cord running out of the timer, and the white ones underneath hold the two power cords, one running to each lamp.

Anyway, a couple of things I would have done differently, but it’s going pretty well for about 4 hours work.

When I’m all done, I’ll do a good clean version of this with the ideal measurements in Sketchup in a 4' and an 8' long version, plus a lumber and cut list. Just because I’m nice like that…