Setting up your own Grow Lights on a budget

🌱 Ready to grow your own plants indoors without spending a fortune? In this video, I’ll take you on a field trip to Costco and Lowe’s to show you exactly how to build a DIY grow light rack setup. From racks and lights to mats, fans, and heat mats—you’ll see everything you need to start seeds, grow herbs, or get your veggies going early.

✅ What you’ll learn in this video:
• How to find affordable grow racks and LED shop lights
• The best mats, timers, and accessories to keep your setup clean & efficient
• Tips for seed starting, transplanting, and keeping plants healthy indoors
• How to use fans and heat mats for strong, healthy seedlings

👨‍🌾 More Gardening Videos to Watch:
🍅 How to Grow Tomatoes with Florida Weave Trellis → https://youtu.be/fjyI4nZK4aw
🌶️ Pepper Growing Guide for Beginners → https://youtu.be/MfgiwwXZ0bc
🥒 How to Grow Zucchini & Squash Easily → https://youtu.be/jTYUd9-wh-4

🔔 Subscribe here for more weekly backyard gardening tips:
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#GrowLights #DIYIndoorGarden #SeedStarting #BackyardGardener #IndoorGardening

backyard gardeners what is up how you doing today it is gorgeous out it’s still the beginning of March and it is sunny as anything it’s nice and warm today and it’s it’s such a beautiful day I can’t believe I’m so glad to be off today to make this video for you and all you hear is just Birds just buzzing around and what they’re doing is they’re they’re uh making their nest to lay their eggs and uh what we’re going to do today we’re going to go on a journey we’re going to go to Costco and we’re also going to go to Lowe’s and I want to show you all the different things that you need to buy High to make your rack so basically you could grow all your own plants from seeds and how easy it is and next you know you are a pro at it so we are going to go on a little field trip so get ready and let’s go all right we’re going live here at beautiful Costco everybody going to bring it to you let’s grow let’s go wow nice oranges wao the legend of the rack actually does exist that thing is beautiful look how big and strong it is so tall and it’s only $99 oh wow six tiers Trinity oh we like the Trinity that’s amazing I can’t believe this actually exists I thought it was just a myth to be honest with you this thing is so gorgeous look how tall it is this thing looks so strong it filled up with so many plants what are these things right here oh these are wheels that must make it easy to like get it around your house or push it in and out of your garage man they thought of pretty much just everything I I can’t believe it boy this place is dangerous to keep shopping at look at that led shop lights this is what we’re looking for and it’s a two pack for $20.99 cuz it was a $5 coupon till the 18th hey that’s amazing I think uh this this is perfect except my name written all over it because I’m going to get basically a two pack for every shelf so I’m going to end up spending like $60 to $80 on lights instead of hundreds of dollars this is amazing hey backyard gardeners hey what’s up this is Jay and this is Lila this is my editor and she’s as you can see she’s pretty upset um because she needs you guys to start liking and subscribing to this channel so if you’re enjoying these videos please do so uh cuz it will help this channel out greatly and um maybe we’ll get Snapper out of her bad mood all right thank thanks a lot have a good day all right all right I had to put this little plug in for $12.99 you could pick up a 12lb bag of this impact Organics earthworm castings this stuff’s amazing it’s a natural organic fertilizer you’ll be the Talk of the Town with all your beautiful tomatoes and peppers people like whoa what did you do and this is the secret okay last detour I promise this is uh that nice Greenhouse that they have at Costco everybody talks about so this would be something nice to pick up to uh start your plants early in Outdoors uh it’s on sale right now for $200 off till like March 31st I believe but it’s got a good siiz uh room inside and look at the workspace you could put all your seedlings uh it’s got a couple vents that you can open up the doors and there’s a shelf up top it’s really nice smells like that nice Cedar smell too so this is something to enjoy on the road again I just can’t wait to get on the road again wow this where we’re going somewhere is familiar I’m going to show you how nice quick and easy this will [Music] be all right here we are at the back of Lowe’s this is where uh you’ll find all the hardware stuff and storage area this is a rubber mat it’s called easy liner one roll will do two shelves so you’ll need two of these to do your rack system and basically I use this underneath uh on top of the shelf so it kind of goes under the trays and just keeps Everything clean and also when you’re Watering your plants the water doesn’t drip onto your floor and all the dirt and everything it’s just a good idea to have this uh on on each one of your shelves all right moving on so these are power cords with uh multi Taps they’re located in the electrical area where you get all like the other multitap usb chargers and everything so this is an 8T cord and it’s got a multitap on there so you can hook three things to it and it really depends on how far away your rack’s going to be from an outlet so this one is pretty decent you know and it’s about $10 and if you’re going to need something a little longer say your racks look farther away there’s another one here it’s about 15 bucks it’s 15t this will also work and also has a multi-tab of three all right we’re back at the house and basically I would like to show you how easy it is to put this rack anywhere I have this one set up in my living room and you could basically put it into a laundry room you could put it in a spare bedroom I wouldn’t put it into the garage just yet I would wait till it’s more consistently in the’ 60s maybe almost 70s because you don’t want your seeds to get too cold uh they’ll take longer to grow but anyway there is um this rack basically has four uh shelves set up um each one of them are spaced out so it gives enough room for the light and then enough room for these plants they’re going to grow all the way up to the light pretty much so if you notice each rack has that the black mat I was showing you in lows so one roll will do two of these uh these shelves so basically two rolls s and you could get any kind of thing you want I wouldn’t really suggest using cardboard or anything because it cardboard kind of just makes a mess over time and it doesn’t really do you justice um but that rubber mat this this rubber mat’s a couple years old and it looks like pretty much like brand new um it fits on there perfect I had to cut it to width as well as length but um and I cut out the little Corners right here you just so lace flat and uh these are actually my pruners uh I go through and or I use these to thing cut if you notice some of these trays have uh more than one uh to this is a pepper plant these are actually looking really really good these are my haulinator bell peppers I got yellow and orange peppers in here which one’s this this is a corada orange um so basically when there’s two in one cell I could basically pull this out and you know just be careful with the roots and then I could stick it right into a whole another fresh cell so now I’ll end up with two plants and if you notice I’ll have a lot of that in some of these other ones but look at this look at this um cilantro look how big it’s gotten since the last video and then same thing even with the basil see the basil there’s like four or five plants right here I could basically pull one of these out and put it right into a new cell and have a whole another fresh plant um you know they start off small like this um and I like to give a lot of these away same thing with these These are those brassas I’m going to B basically thinning those out I’m going to pull some of them out and give a few of them away you know hey you want some broccoli plants um you know my neighbors my friends they love me for that so anyway um that rubber mat’s nice and then this is the heat mat this heat mat I got it from Johnny’s they actually always have good prices on the heat mats I have it set to 80° man it’s really really warm keeping that soil nice and warm because some of these plants really need warmer soil like especially pepper plants and uh tomato plants like we were talking about but look at all these nice uh plants here these are all Habaneros these are jalapenos and I love when they they still have like the little shell on here from the seed I love picking these off and uh that’s the actual seed that you plant I don’t want to mess with it too much in the there we go see that’s the actual seed that you plant in the ground or in the soil and then it pops up anyway and then this right here I’m actually going to take this humidity Dome off uh this this is actually the seeds that we planted just the other day on the last video these are all the sun gold cherry and the super sweet 100s all of them are already germinated remember I was telling you it takes between 3 and seven days well it only took a few days because I had this heat mat um without the heat mat they would still germinate but it would just take a little longer but it’s so exciting and then this right here is a thermostat that’s this is stuck into the soil so the thermostat knows whether to make the mat hotter or colder and let me show you the actual ther thermostat this is the thermostat you see it’s from Johnny’s I have a set at 80 and it shows it being at 80 so that’s good so um this is what the side view of the uh the lights look like um the one light will plug right right into these are these are uh linkable so you could basically uh let me see if I can get this open you could plug the other light right into there so you don’t have to have cords all over the place mine just looks like a mess cuz I put it in here for a demonstration for you but um you could just run your one extension cord that that’s the extension cord I showed you um that’s my timer I’m going to go over that with you the cord comes up into a multitap and basically with a multitap it’s very helpful because I can start my light um chain and then I also have these fans each one of these fans I got two fans one from the top one for the bottom and they could literally uh let me get this here they could plug right into the multitap as well and I’ll explain the fansy to you in a second but I just wanted to show you the rest of the rack I also have on the bottom I have another heat mat um I don’t really use that one as much but only one needed sometimes I’ll put it on one of the other racks but like I said it’s it it moves really easy so you could literally move it to clean behind there or if you want to uh move it into another room so you’re having people over uh it’s really cool so anyway the timer I have I got these is a two pack on Amazon I’ll put that I’ll put a picture of that in there I forget exactly how much they weren’t they weren’t very expensive at all between that and then also I’ll put a picture of there for the fans and um it’s it’s really good to have a fan on because what happens is when these tomato plants actually let me show you these guys look how big those are these are almost 7 in now remember the other day they’re four so I’m actually going to make another video of me taking these out and putting them into a bigger pot it’s called up potting or stepping it up so anyway this fan will blow air directly onto this plant kind of giving it a little push like a constant push it’s called a resistance and that just imitates being outside when it’s windy out which it’s more windier than you think so the wind’s constantly pushing pushing this way pushing that way so that basically what the fan does I had my finger in the screen sorry what the fan does it gives it that natural resistance so it’s going to build a strong stock to this uh plant so the plant will be nice and thick and strong so especially for pepper plants or even this tomato plant you know when it fills up with tomatoes uh you don’t want it just to fall over just because it’s of the weight so that’s what that does and um the bottom rack here these are all marag Golds look how beautiful these look nice marigolds and then this is some more Tomatoes I got to get down here on my knees but this is some more Tomatoes these are hinat um that’s the one I was explained to you in the other video make big juicy uh tomato slices on your grilled cheese uh that’s the ones hinor from hos uh they’re amazing they’re they’re I would highly recommend them and the other ones are these are Roma tomatoes I like to use those for My Salsa kind of cover that in the other video but look at all these nice these are all going to be filled these are still kind of coming through they got to still germinate they they they’ll come through though um all right let’s go back up and I think I covered pretty much everything I got the lights I got the mat your extension cords your your heat mat and the timer the fans and I think that’s it and then like I said I bought these on Amazon these are adjustable but the the lights they come with chains so if you don’t want to spend extra money you could just use these and there’s enough links there to to lower this down even farther if you needed to so all these little things I’m setting you up for success and to get you going to basically grow all your own plants and your own seeds without spending all the money on one plant you’re going to spend $25 on a tomato plant and then next year you have nothing at least this way you have some equipment to grow the next season in the next season and so on and so on so all right all right let’s move on to the next part of the video thank you hey backyard gardeners I had such a great time making this video I hope you learned something new don’t forget to like And subscribe to my channel and tell all your friends see you on the next one [Music]