I’m going to be teaching an indoor herb garden class in April. Folks will decorate their own pots, pick their herbs, and learn how to harvest and care for their plants indoors!
Here’s my math. Everyone will get to pick three plants. Assuming all 40 class slots fill up, that’s 120 in total. I’m starting one flat of parlsey, dill, cilantro, basil, and purple basil. Each flat here will have 36 cells, plus I’ll do one extra 6 cell of each as insurance to make sure I have enough for everyone. That’s potentially 216 babies to care for! After the class, I will donate some of the remaining seedlings to Plot Against Hunger gardeners.
I’ll be growing in my guest bathroom using this wire rack. For weeks I couldn’t figure out how to set up this whole system, as I never grown on this scale before. Duh. Wire racks! Then ones I already had were juuuuust a smidge too big for the bathtub. So, I bought a small rack and planned to keep two flats on each shelf width-wise. Then I realized I had a tall rack in a closet. I took that out and added one shelf from the new small rack and voilĂ ! They’re 8″ apart now, so I’ll see what the final distance winds up being. I will probably need to adjust the distance to the lights a few times. I decided not to use the bottom shelf/tub floor for the sixth tray or to build a little holder thing for lights on top, so I’ll keep the two basils together on one shelf. I’ll zip tie lights to the underside of the shelves and connect all of the lights in a chain.
This week I’m expecting delivery of the lights, seeds, Espoma seed starting mix, sheets of 2.25″ cells, and the solid trays these mesh trays will sit in. I’m not going to use heat mats, as the room should get pretty warm if I close the curtain and door. Humidity should be ok without covers, but just in case, I can wrap the whole rack in some plastic I’m holding on to from another project. My goal is to have it all set up and running by Jan 17, which will give me about 11 weeks before my class.
I’ll update each step, maybe with a video or two.
Roof Garden Gal 
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