Bad Munki posted:

We've been living at our current place for about 7 years now, we have a very ample garden that just gets better every year as we figure out what works, what doesn't, ways to streamline, etc. Always a learning process. The garden is two 11x30 plots off the end of my barn.


_{Sometimes, plants can thrive TOO well. The tomatoes at the back right were borderline non-navigable.}

It's enough space that we can grow all of the things we know we want, with lots of room for experimenting and making mistakes without feeling like we wasted opportunities. Pretty ideal. More recently, we've started to devote a fair chunk to flowers. Dahlias are always a favorite, but we do a bit of everything. Marigolds of all sorts, zinnias, astilbe, celosia, all kinds of stuff. Turned the whole place into a butterfly garden once we started doing that.


_{Local garden friend helping us out}

Anyhow, one aspect of this forever-project is getting started before spring. I like to grow as many plants as I can from seeds, feels real good. But I'm also impatient, and like to start earlier than I probably should. So, for a couple years, we had 4-tier plastic utility shelves in the guest bathroom shower with grow lights and such all over, it was a hot mess and super duper overkill. Also, since I had no idea how much of anything I wanted, much less what I wanted, I tended to start seeds excessively, and then lose my mind when I only needed 10% of my starts. A few years of that and I started to figure out an actual game plan.

At some point, we picked up a little seed starting greenhouse. A real piece of junk, like $20 on amazon or whatever. 1/2" tube steel, and a clear vinyl cover that slips on. I mean, it was okay for the price, we absolutely got our money's worth out of it, but it was not great. It lived out on the deck for a couple years, got thoroughly worked over by UV, and then one year I realized it was actually all the space I needed to start my seeds, and I could use the lights I already had, just way more dense, which was good, because the plants were a little starved as it was.

So that thing moved right into the living room, condition be damned. It was supposed to be temporary, we'd just leave it there for the spring, and then clear it out once everything was planted.


_{I absolutely grew to love this sexy pink light.}

And then we planted all the starts, and realized we had space to grow more things, and my elderly parents were bringing over half-dead plants from their place, so we started nursing those back to health, and so on. THREE YEARS LATER, it dawned on me that the indoor greenhouse might be a permanent fixture. So I started googling.


_{The picture that started it all.}

The fabled IKEA MILSBO. I didn't realize quite how trendy it was to convert this to a greenhouse/botanical display until much further into the project, but honestly, I don't care, it works so well. Of course, no IKEA where I'm at, but my wife was driving up to Minneapolis in just a couple weeks and we determined we could fit two in the car. Heck yeah. And while I waited, I could start planning. Lots of examples to consider.


<sub>Not bad, not crazy about the lighting. Nice flexible shelving.


Clean look, less flexible, similar lighting issue.</sub>

Lots of things I liked and disliked about the various examples. The original pic, for instance, has gridwall in the back, which is great, but man they hacked the attachment. Just some fender washers and screws. Gross. If I was going to do this, I was gonna go hard. The other major factor in all these examples I didn't like was the lights. Wires everywhere, under-lit, side-lit, thick lights overly visible. The big gotcha here: I want to avoid permanent, visible alterations to the cabinet itself if at all possible. Ended up really, really close to that goal.


_{Once the tomatoes moved out, the cats moved in. Wiring hell, to boot.}

I figured the first step would be to figure out how to attach the gridwall panel. I didn't want to use the provided glass shelves, as they'd prevent airflow, had more limited positioning, would catch water, and would show dirt/dust more. So I devised a clip that would install the same as the original shelf supports, right down to making use of two very subtle ridges on the spine of the whole thing to lock into place on the cabinet and gridwall. Just install the clip at a 45, set the panel in it, and twist it to lock it into place.


<sub>The prototype in grey for visibility.


Once locked into place, it's practically invisible.</sub>

That just keeps it from tipping or shifting, we still need some feetsies at the bottom.


_{Not truly necessary, but it seems more finished this way.}

And, lastly, we want to brace the rack from the sides as well, so we make a third part that grabs onto the edge.


_{Gotta black out all the fasteners, too!}

At this point, the rack is absolutely locked in, and integrated into the cabinet, but in a way that is as good as invisible unless you're looking to see those specific parts. So far so good, and no actual modifications to the cabinet yet, everything can be undone back to stock.

Time to figure out the lights! My previous sexy-pink lights were okay, they were just what was available at Lowe's at the time. I did the math and they were putting out nowhere near enough light, which is why my seedlings were originally way too leggy, and things only really worked when I consolidated them down to just a couple shelves. This time, I actually did the math to figure out how much light I wanted based on sunlight at the equator, and so on. And then I added a very ample buffer beyond that, so I would have flexibility. Also, broader spectrum. I'll miss the pink, but ya gotta give the plants what they crave.

With the math in hand, I went shopping. Aside from the actual light output, there were two main factors: fitting it in the 12x24 space I had, and getting it absolutely as thin as possible. All the lights I found were from 1-3 inches thick. That's dumb, they're just LED panels! Buuuuut, it appears that in a lot of cases, most of the thickness is the transformer itself. We may have options here.


<sub>These fit the footprint, and have the light I need!


So close. The actual light panel is just a circuit board on an aluminum plate, that's perfect, but then there's all this crap bolted on the back.</sub>

So these VIPARSPECTRA look real close, are apparently a good brand, just need to see if they can be modified how I need. Namely, can I take the transformer and dimmer off, run them with longer wires, and install them elsewhere, with just the light panel inside the cabinet proper. Ordered one to see.


<sub>As you can see, the business end of the light is absurdly slim.


The space I intend the light(s) to be in. Roughly a 1" deep recess in the top plate of the cabinet.</sub>

So, I tear the thing apart, get a look at how it's hooked up, and put an extension on the wires from the transformer to the light panel. Also put some black mesh wrap on the wires to help hide them for the final install. Thanks to the Electronics thread for sanity checking my plans here.


_{It lives! And can now be positioned like 5' away from the supply.}

Also, as it turns out, the dimming is controlled by the transformer itself, it just has an extra connection for DIM+/DIM- that expects a 100k potentiometer. The plan was to mount the transformer and dimmer module on the underside of the cabinet, out of view. But now I see I could refigure the entire dimmer control pretty easily, too. I'm building this cabinet to take up to five of these light assemblies (don't need that many, but I like options, and that's how many I can reasonably fit on the undercarriage of the cabinet.) With that in mind, who wants five of these big dumb boxes with a single dimmer knob on each? And who wants to reach to the underside of the cabinet to adjust them?


_{Enter: slider pots, a printed housing, and magnets}

The housing itself went through a couple revisions after, but eventually it was ready to go. Again, five spots, but no plan to use them all immediately. It magnets on to the inside top right in front of the lights, no visible fasteners.


_{At some point, I grabbed a second light, since I realized this was actually going to work. Also printed knobs for the sliders.}

Oh, and those lights, they're just held up there thanks to some nice little rubberized magnetic feet. The ones I got are stupidly strong, they work great and it's even kinda difficult to detach them from the cabinet ceiling. No concerns about anything falling down, here. Later, if I decide I want lights further down, I can just repeat the process and attach that 1/8" thick light panel to the underside of a shelf.

So where did those power supplies go, anyhow? The plan was to run them on the undercarriage of the whole cabinet, outside the actual plant space. Good for cooling them, and not cooking the plants, and avoiding humidity, etc. Nicely, the way the cabinet is built, the floor is a double layer with a full 1.5" between the layers, and the underside of the bottom is also recessed behind the structure. All of that combined, I have a pocket to hide things on the bottom, and can run screws in without them actually appear inside the cabinet. This will be the one place we actually damage the cabinet, and if we undid all of it, none of this would be visible.


_{Spent a long time playing with potential layouts here.}

Conveniently, the supplies all have a short dongle that ends in a C14, like you plug into the back of a desktop computer. So I was able to pick up a power strip that provides just the right number of female C13 plugs, and then I can run a single power cord to the whole cabinet, no more extension cord/splitter hell cluttering things up. Pre-installed mounting hardware for any future additions while I was in there.

A couple other extra touches: we'll put in some disconnects for the actual power leads to the lights, for easier future alterations. And we'll use that space between the two bottom plates to run some wires for the dimmer controls so they can all be consolidated to one spot without a bunch of exposed wiring. For the non-existent supplies, we'll just leave the wires pre-abandoned to be hooked up later as needed, since this particular cavity will be inaccessible.


<sub>2-conductor lever nuts, one per light, with a custom clip to hold them (made both 2x and 3x variants)


Dimmer control wires for current use and future expansion</sub>

Lastly, we run power from the supplies to those banks of wire nuts, which are positioned near the two back corners. And from the light panels, down along the back corners, attached to the gridwall itself and wrapped in black nylon mesh, down through the floor of the cabinet, and into the corresponding hookup.


_{This is it, the one visible permanent modification: a 1/2" hole in each of the two back corners at the floor.}

The bundle of wires from the dimmer bank also runs down through one of these holes, and hooks up to the consolidated dimmer wires we hid earlier, those tie in with a bunch of 2-pin JST connectors.

So at long last, we can turn this drat thing on, it's ready for plants.


<sub>Nevermind the hyacinth. The old folks at the home don't understand how bulbs work, it's here to humor them, they expect it to perk up again. We'll plant it in the dirt after it finishes.


I couldn't be happier with how invisible all the electrical nonsense is. Nothing there but the single power cord.</sub>

The shelves themselves were leftover gridwall. Since I'm doing two of these cabinets, I bought a 3-pack of grid, which gave me plenty to chop up for shelves. The supports are actually shirt hanger rods for the gridwall, I opted for these because they're so minimal, and were the perfect length.

With everything in place and working at last, it was time to start pirating plants. Picked up a box of apothecary jars for ~*~style~*~, I think they look rad.


_{A bunch of random stuff from various places around the house. Experimenting to see what will and won't clone this way.}

Within about a day, I realized those jars were going to take up a ton of space on shelves that could be used for bigger plants, or rearranged in any number of ways. What they really needed was a way to hang directly on the rack at the back.


<sub>EZPZ, problem solved. The support rod gets painted black eventually.


The water-filled bottles act as a magnifier, which is nice for displaying the roots.</sub>

So that's where it's at today. Can't wait to get some more plants going in here, fill it up with lush green. Since I'm actually doing two of these, I should have plenty of space for permanent residents, as well as seasonal stuff. For the other one, I'm considering skipping the dimmer bank, and controlling the lights with a raspi or similar. We'll see about that, though. A simple outlet timer is working pretty well, it'd just be nice to have it dim itself down a bit in the evening, or to kick itself into different lighting regimens for mimicking certain seasons.

e: Almost forgot, all the custom parts are freely available here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/13c9ff02c77ee9d47ae6a6f5/w/a8ae32e6d4755905bcd024e0/e/171fcae021226c0af1bc410b

Bad Munki posted:

Which brings me to my whole point for tracking down this thread: I need some food in those cloning jars. Any recommendations for what I should start with, and how much? They're about 150ml each.

Nosre posted:

Enjoying the landscaping at my sister's a bit more. Like I mentioned, this was my grandparents' house for 50 years and he worked at a nursery so it's always been a plant paradise, and it's lovely to see her continue.

Real hurthling! posted:

Got some ornamental cabbages for the roof garden this fall now that the sun doesnt make it passed the buildings anymore til spring.

Osaka white and osaka red.

Bad Munki posted:

My little carnivore is doing so great. It’s easily doubled in size, is covered in goo drops, vibrant colors, and now it’s flowering, too.

Bad Munki posted:

Added my first carnivore to the collection today! Itty bitty for now. We’ll work on that.

Bad Munki posted:

Bad Munki posted: