This year I have had amazing success with germinating my seeds. While many factors come into play, the one thing I did was to try warming the seeding beds after planting. I use a seed starting mixture (one small bag is enough for almost all of my starts), peat trays, and Gro Lux type florescent bulbs. When I started the first "experimental" seeds (marigolds and peppers) during the first week of March I placed 100 watt bulbs under one of the trays to speed things up. As expected, the warmer tray germinated much faster. The problem was that the lamps did not generate a consistent temperature, and I was a bit worried about having a "jury rigged" setup.
I went through my junk collection and found two electric heating pads that I had salvaged years ago from an old instrument (I don't even remember what the instrument was!). I attached the two pads to the bottom of one of my aluminum trays, and hooked them into a rebuilt "Veriac" (variable voltage transformer).
A plywood board holds the heating pads securely to the tray, and a sheet of 1/4 foam underneath provides insulation to reduce heat loss.
A thermocouple was placed between the large tray and the smaller tray holding the peat pots, and the Veriac adjusted so that the temperature at that point was 80 - 85F.
Even I was surprised when many of the seeds planted on March 13 had germinated by March 18! I found a seed germination table that listed germination times based on soil temperature, and confirmed that this was normal. The germination rates were also excellent (nearly 100%). As of today only the peppers have yet to emerge.
No comments:
Post a Comment