Bootstrap Farmer 1020 Trays

The Bootstrap Farmer brand in the gardening world is akin to Pelican and the protective cases they make that are trusted by the military, photographers, and first responders. If you’re looking for the strongest trays for seed starting and transplants, your search stops with these Bootstrap Farmer 1020 Trays.

UV light—whether from the sun or from grow lights—breaks down plastic, particularly the kind they use in the already thin trays that you see at hardware stores. Those are only going to give you a few seasons at best. Even most larger nurseries only carry the much cheaper and flimsier ones because they know most casual gardeners aren’t willing to pay the money for ones they could be using a decade from now. Why not get something that is going to last, provide stability for your seedlings, and cut down on unnecessary plastic prematurely going into a landfill—all while saving money in the long run?

I purchased my first box of these a couple of years ago to replace some cheap hardware store trays that were cracked and getting wobbly when full of transplant pots. Whether you’re moving trays in and out of doors to harden off your seedlings or taking them back and forth to your garden, the last thing you want is for your tray to flex and crack under the weight, causing your plants to fall and meet an untimely demise after all the work you put in to get them started.

These trays feature a thick bottom and reinforced corners to ensure rigidity under load. Even if you’re watering your seedlings from the top instead of from the bottom, I recommend using trays like these that don’t have drainage holes in the bottom. I aim to minimize how much water (that I sometimes add liquid fertilizer to) dripping onto the lights on the shelf below in my seed starting racks. You can always drill holes if you want a tray that drains or if you’re doing a bottom tray/top tray set-up for microgreens.

The ubiquitous 1020 tray size accommodates a variety of tray inserts. I use the 72-cell inserts that I reviewed here for the majority of my warm season seed starting. You can perfectly fit 18 of the 3.5″ McConkey nursery pots in one of these trays—this is my go-to size for potting up tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and for starting cucumbers and zucchini for quick succession planting. These Bootstrap Farmer 1020 trays barely flex when you’ve moving them even with all that weight.