Hey everyone! Here is a quick project I made last year to start all my garden from seed. We lived in a small house, and because I wanted to start my seeds early, I had to find a way to keep the seedlings inside while not taking too much space on my girlfriend's dresser. So, I decided to make a custom lamp which could also serve as a shelf, so that we could still use some of the space for our small items. It was actually really fun to watch the seedlings grow in our bedroom! The shelf is also adjustable height, to accommodate seedlings as they grew taller. Let's jump in!

Supplies

Tools

Circular saw or hand saw

Block plane (optional)

Sandpaper

Clamps

Router (optional)

A chisel or two is nice, along with a mallet

Materials

LED strips + 12V power supply

A small switch

Soldering iron + solder + scrap electrical wire

Wood glue

Wood scraps (I used plywood because I had some laying around, you can use anything!)

Step 1: Cut Some Wood to Length!

This shelf is made to a custom size to fit our dresser and seed trays, from a few 1/2 and 1/4 inch plywood scraps I had laying around. I didn't have a scrap long enough to reach across the whole dresser, so I ripped two equally sized pieces at about 18 inches length and 6 inches width. These will later be glued together using a small patch of 1/4 ply on top of them, but I'm getting ahead of myself!

I cut these on a table saw, but a hand saw would work just as well.

Step 2: Route a Groove for the LED Strip

Using a router, I ploughed two grooves about as deep as half the thickness of the plywood, to accommodate some "cut-to-length" LED strip left over from various closet/car/pantry illumination projects over the past few months.With the recessed LED strips, it is much nicer to look at the shelf from the side as you are not blinded by the lights. Also, when not in use, the shelf looks really like a regular shelf and it's much more discreet than having the LEDs simply glued under there. That being said, if you do not own a router, you have several options: plough a groove with another tool (table saw, carefully, or a plough plane), or don't bother and just glue the strip on the bottom, possibly gluing some strips of plywood next to the LED strips so as to hide them from sight.

Step 3: Assemble the Top of the Shelf

This step will not be necessary if you had a piece of plywood long enough to span across your whole shelf.

I don't really have a picture for this step, but all it takes is aligning your two pieces, and gluing a rectangular, nice looking piece of plywood on top so as to keep them together. I clamped moderately strong and let it dry for 45 minutes.

Step 4: Cut and Taper the Legs

The two legs for this shelf are made in two steps. First, I cut rectangular pieces of 1/2 inch plywood, about 16 inches high and 5 inches wide. Then, I tapered them on one side along the width to both make a more pleasing shape, and to centre the shelf in the middle of the legs such that the whole thing would not tip one way or the other when in use. I made a slightly rounded taper using a spokeshave, but a straight taper would work just as well.

Step 5: Adjustable Height Sliding Joint

This is maybe the trickiest (but really, not that tricky) part of this simple build. The sliding joint is simply a mortise cut into the shelf that allows to slide the legs in and out while retaining enough friction to hold the joint together with some weight on the shelf. In order to do this, I snuck up on the right dimension for the mortise by cutting it a tad too snug to accommodate the legs, then taking a few passes with a chisel or sandpaper to reach a snug fit. Once the legs could be driven in using a mallet, I lightly sanded the face of the legs with 220 sand paper until I was able to (using some force) drive and slide the joint by hand. If you're afraid to mess it up, do a practice piece with some scraps of the same materials!

Step 6: Glue LED Strip, Solder

I used a warm white (I think 3500 K) LED strip, because this is what I had on hand, but I believe that a cool white (5000 - 7000 K) would be more beneficial to seedlings as it imitates early spring sunlight better than the warm white of late august. But the warm white looks nicer indoor in my opinion... It's hard to tell! But in my experience, and as I hope the photos in the next step will show, the seedlings were stout and strong using this warm white LED, and yielded much veggies!

I simply cut two lengths of LED strip, glued one in each groove and soldered them together. Then I soldered a 12V DC jack at one end to be able to plug my 12V supply in and out as needed. I ended up routing a small channel to accommodate my wires between the two LED strips. I calculated that, according to manufacturer's specs, the whole shelf consumes less than 3 W of power! That's really not too bad to start a whole garden for the season.

Step 7: Grow Some Stuff!!

Now, it's time to sow some seeds! We planted everything from carrots to lettuce, onion, tomatoes, melons, radishes, etc.. and were able to replace a lot of our store bought salads with organic greens grown directly on our deck. A most satisfying moment was to encounter one of my bees (that's an i'ble for another day) on a tomato flower in May.

Thanks for reading, and let me know any questions in the comments!

Cheers,

Deluges