Making a Stand for Micro Greens

My wife and Ilke micro greens in smoothies and on our salads so we grow our own. I have been on the lookout for a stand that I could collapse and transport as we are retiring next year and are moving to be near family. Everything we saw was too expensive and was not that transportable so once again we decided to build our own out of PVC ¾ tubing. See the links for where we bought the tubing and connectors. The big box stores did not have the connectors I wanted (either the blue or the orange store) but I was able to get them from Amazon. The link for these is included in the supplies section. This entire build was around $60 which is on the expensive side but what I like is that you can extend it to any size you want and it collapses to make it easy to move.

SELLERS360 4Way 3/4 in Tee PVC Fitting Elbow

FORMUFIT F0343WE-WH-8 3-Way Elbow PVC Fitting, Furniture Grade, 3/4" Size, White

Charlotte Pipe 3/4-in x 10-ft 480 Schedule 40 PVC Pipe

BrassCraft Up to 1-1/2-in PVC Cutter

I bought 8 pieces of the 3/4 tubing at one of the big box stores. I am making three of these so in making the first one I bought more than I needed knowing full well I would have some left over for the next build.
In determining the size of your build I measured the black cover (see pictues of final build) and then added 3 inches to the overall size. Microgreens need to be kept in the dark for the first few days of their lives but that is another instructable. For my rack the sizes as follows. All the pvc is schedule 40 ¾” pvc tubing 10 pieces x 24” long 10 pieces x 15” long 16 pieces x 12” long 8 Pieces x FORMUFIT F0343WE-WH-8 3-Way Elbow PVC Fitting, Furniture Grade, 3/4" Size, White 12 pieces x SELLERS360 4Way 3/4 in Tee PVC Fitting Elbow 5 pieces on ¼” plywood cut to the size to fit into your particular stand.

I cut all the tubing to length by using a pvc pipe cutter but if you don’t have one then a hacksaw will do just fine.

Now comes the fun part putting it all together. I placed 4 of the three way on the ground in a square configuration. The shelving unit is 24 inches long so I inserted in the front and back 2 pieces of the 24” pipe and along the 2 sides in inserted 2 of the 15” pieces.
In each corner l then placed 4 upright pieces each of 12”. On top of these 4 upright pieces l then placed 4 of the 4 way joiners and then inserted two more 21” and two more 15 inch pieces of tubing. I continued this all the way to the top where I use the last 4 3 way joiners. This gives the whole unit a really clean look.

I then cut pieces of plywood to fit into the base and to make sure they stayed where I wanted them to I just drilled 2 holes ineach corner and ran a zip tie through and around the tubing. By doing this you will be amazed at how stable this whole shelving unit is.

Now our unit is done we can start to use it. Later on I will paint the plywood white to fit the overall theme and get small castors to roll it all around on.

The whole unit breaks down in less than 5 minutes and is very tiny in footage for traveling or storage . I plan on doing 3 or 4 of these units for my microgreens. The sizing of my unit is suited to my needs but the wonderful thing about building this unit is that you can make it as high or as wide as you like.