The $29.99 IKEA Seed Starting Rack

Continuing on in my quest to organize the HECK out of my office, today I'm turning my attention to my seed starting station.  Well, prior to today I didn't actually have a seed starting station because the desk that I normally start my seeds on every year has been re-purposed as a .........wait for it..........desk.  My husband built me a fabulous garden shed in our backyard for me to move my seed starting mess outside of our family home, but one valuable piece was left out of his plan.....electricity.  So, the seeds continue to be started indoors until that project is complete. 

Since I have big hopes that electricity will be added to the shed soon, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a fancy seed starting rack.  So, I went to my trusty IKEA store, where I can always count on finding exactly what I need at a reasonable price.  I ended up buying their basic GORM shelving unit for $29.99.  This rack comes with 4 shelves, but I bought a couple of extra shelves just in case for $5 a piece. While I was at it, I went ahead and bought a couple of the GORM clip-on baskets for $4 a piece.  I figured once I no longer needed this shelf for seeds I needed to be able to use it for something else, so buying the accessories now made sense.  Lucky for me I ended up using them.

After assembling the shelf (fairly simply, took about 30 minutes), I dug into my photo hanging supplies and grabbed a few hooks for the lights. They easily screwed into the top of the shelves for hanging the chains for the lights. As for the lights?  I have one expensive Home Depot grow light ($50), and a couple of cheap Wal-Mart grow lights that cost me about $10 a piece.  Look around, your lights don't have to have to be expensive. 

The extra shelves and baskets came in handy for all of the odd and end plant stuff that I had.  The bottom shelf is now dedicated to mason jars which I use for giving flowers to people, or starting cuttings.  By the way, these were all spaghetti sauce jars originally, but they are too cute to just toss in the recycle bin.  The GORM baskets that I bought are used for holding plant stakes (for once the tomato plants get too tall), twine, plant labels, and Moo Poo Tea. 

I used the SAMLA containers from IKEA for organizing my seeds and and got an extra container to hold my seed starting mix (much prettier than looking at a bag). 

So, technically this entire set up didn't cost me just $29.99, but you can see how using some of the items you already have and improvising can save you money when starting your seeds this year.  By the way, it's time to start seeds..........wait for it..............  now.