We're still doing GAPS. I'm still experiencing healing. It's become part of who we are and less... novelty. Though friends and family still think we're nuts :-)
But it's spring, so enough of that. I've been itching to share my "crazy". Microgreens! Growing food indoors! Fun-ness amplified!!
We live in an apartment and there is (was) a window seat in our living room. It's been appropriated, by me, to become our new indoor garden.
See?
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| That's a BIG shelf you have there. |
The shelf was this one from Walmart. It's huge. It needed to be 4 feet wide, so I could use standard shop-light fluorescents.
I'm going to light the bottom two shelves with these shop-lights from Rona. In the description it says they are 48" x12". Liars! They must be including the hanging chain or something. These guys are teeny weeny, maybe 3" x 3". Maybe. So, it's going to take two of them per shelf to light things up.
I'll be alternating regular warm & cool T8 fluorescent bulbs to get most of the colour spectrum happening.
The beauty of microgreens is that they don't grow until maturity, they only grow (in most cases) until their true leaves come in. The point is that they don't need massive amounts of light. They will be overjoyed with what the fluorescents provide.
The top two shelves will be used for germination and the bottom two for the last week or so of growth, to green em up.
I thought I'd only be able to fit two trays per shelf, but I was wrong. I can fit FOUR!!! That means I can have 16 trays at various stages going at once. Holy cow! That will be a lot of greens! Did I mention that was one big shelf?
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| I'm a BIG shelf. |
See the tray? That tiny little black thing in the bottom right corner. It's 11" x 21". A standard gardening tray. I'll be able to fit 16 of them on that thing. Crazy. Haven't quite gotten over it :-)
We have a deck so I garden outdoors in containers all summer. I'll write more about that soon, as stuff is sprouting up all over the place. The indoor "grow" is going to be about winter food, mostly. Next year it will also be about starting seeds to get a head start on the season. And I'm sure I will find time for an experiment. Or two. Or more.
I'll eventually start a resource page for gardening as well. There is a lot of good info out there on indoor gardening and much of it is free.
This is so awesome I can't even stand it!! I have been battling critters in my garden for years and in the house I'd only have to block off my cats! I need to figure out how to do this! Thanks for sharing and glad you are still on GAPS! :-) So do you not get enough sunlight, is that why you will need to use shop lights?
ReplyDeleteHi Starlene,
ReplyDeleteI think it's awesome too :-)
The window is south facing so in the summer it will get ample light, but in the winter, up here on the west coast of BC, the light is low. I did a test tray a month or so ago, which I plan to blog about later, that was rather dismal.
You might not need shop lights where you are, you would have to experiment and see.
Oh you know after I said that a few hours later I thought of course you need shop lights! I'm thinking of when the babies are just coming up, they will be stretching wayyyyyy far over to the window instead of growing nice and stubby under the lights, so of course you need lights! I wish I had room for something like this! We get so much sunshine here in Arizona. I just love this idea.
ReplyDeleteYou could probably squeeze a little grow in somewhere. It doesn't have to be a monster like I have :-) Seriously, it's a monster.
ReplyDeleteAll you really need are some pots in the window to start.
I did the go big or go home thing... haha, did I mention the shelf is a monster?