It May be January, but we are Building!!

Yes, It is January. It is cold, snowy, and beautiful. I may be out in my garage working while my hands are numb and freezing, but I am going to keep pushing. Before we know it, Spring will be here and I will need to get plants in the ground. The first three months of the year tend to move faster than any other part. At least it feels like it to me. I sometimes wonder how I can get everything done but I always manage.

With this being said, I am actually about a week behind in the planting side of things, but that was for a very good reason.

Have you ever gone and picked up plants already started at the greenhouses or purchased the starting kits from the stores? Those “wonderful” plastic containers the plants and starts come in are great!!! You have that big tray so they can drain some of the moisture or soak up as needed right? Well, I think they are great, too. Until I start planting everything. I have these big lofty goals to reuse those containers every year so as to 1. save money and 2. reuse them since they are plastic. That way they don’t end up in the landfill. One great thing about where we live is we can always take them back to the greenhouses and they reuse them as well, or they take them to the recycling plants and they recycle them to make new trays. Again, I think they are amazing…… If you can reuse them.

Here lies the problem at our house!! It never fails that those plastic trays get mishandled, stepped on, thrown around, or left outside in the blistering sun during summer. I have three kids all under 9, what do you expect. So those poor plastic containers always come to our house to die a most gruesome death. Seriously, I actually get sad when I don’t see they are usable anymore. So this year, I decided to make a change. I decided I was going to build some seed trays with supplies we had at our home.

I pulled together the supplies and started working. And I definitely wish I had some bigger boards, or even if they were available at our local lumber yards. But you know how it goes. Another reason why we were making due with what we had.

The supplies we used were: 1x8 boards, 1x2 boards, and we cut the tongue and groove off some panels and those were 1x4s approximately. We had contact paper left from the previous owner, and of course, nails and wood glue. One of the most important things my Opa (Grandfather) taught me is to always use wood glue. The tools we used: a circular saw to cut the pieces down to size and a hammer. Now we did use a table saw to “rip” the sides off the tongue and groove panels, but that was at my Mom’s and we got that wood from her, luckily.

Once everything was cut down to size we started the assembly. Step one was to get the contact paper onto the 1x8 panels. Mind you, we are working in our garage in barely 20 degrees Fahrenheit. We did have a heater (sounds like a jet engine) going, but that only works so well. The sticky side of the contact paper was not going to actually stick, so I laid a layer of the wood glue to hopefully help with that. While the glue was drying, I made dinner for the family. Then went out and started assembling the sides. Once all those were put together, it was time to attach the bottom. So I got working and managed to get the assembly of 8 seed starting trays done in one night.

Now you may ask why the contact paper? That was just used, because we had it. The wood was going to have moist soil sitting on top of it, which will then cause it to rot rather quickly. We would have been able to use these trays for a few years. However, they would have to be used for something else a lot sooner than I would want. What I would have done if I didn’t have the contact paper, would be to use parchment paper. Lay that down and it should make enough of a barrier. However, we had about 3 giant rolls of unopened, contact paper sitting on a shelf in our food storage room, and this will waterproof the wood a little better than parchment paper. So why not use something that we would have ended up tossing when we move.

Now, a few things I probably will do differently the next time I make these will be to use wider pieces of boards for the base. The 1x8s are okay, but I would have preferred a 1x12, or even use a plywood piece and cut that down to 15 inch widths. I would have also made the trays a little longer, instead of the 20 inches I cut them, I probably will go closer to 30 inches. More space to fit more seeds. But for now, and for spending very little money (if any), I am completely happy and excited to use these.

Watch for the next post for how we use these with our seed planting. That adventure starts technically now, with some of our seeds!!!!