Seed Starting Round 1, 2011

Introduction

With the thunderstorms last Thursday it seemed like it was a reasonable time to begin seed starting. I have been starting seeds the last 5 years in the New England (Boston) region with reasonable success.

Last year I had two problems that reduced the usefulness of my seed starting

1. Not enough heat to start seedlings, our average house temperature of 60 while environmentally friendly was not sufficient for many of the seedlings.
2. For the seedlings that did come up I rushed them into the garden, where many got lost or eaten by pests.

So for this year I have two changes in my procedure:

1. I got a heating mat, so that there would be sufficient heat for seed starting
2. I will transfer the seedlings to a grow-out container, a window planter liner, so I can keep track of them and make sure they get to a decent size

Since it is late February and we just got 2 inches of snow, I obviously don’t have anything to say about the grow-out container, but I have started a couple of the seeds.

Starting Dome and Temperatures

The seed starting dome and mat are from Hydrofarm, in particular the Hydrofarm CK64060 Hot House with Heat Mat. I selected this because it has a high dome, and can be reasonably priced. Note I said can be reasonably priced. Like several items on Amazon this has a very volatile price history $24.82 to $38.21. Now how do I know its price history? Well this is where a very useful website comes into play CamelCamelCamel. I love Amazon for the selection, but pricing can be all over the map (more or less expensive than buying local). Add to this you have products like this that vary more than 50% in price and it is definitely Caveat emptor (buyer beware). In comes CamelCamelCamel, it one quick click and a few steps you can check price history and setup a price watch.

So I setup the dome, added water, plugged in the heat mat and put the temperature sensor from the La Crosse TX-60 in. Are you wondering what a TX-60 is? It is a great concept, which may have some execution issues. Basically, it is wireless gateway (which plugs into your router) and sensors which can communicate with the gateway. At about $60 for the initial set Sensor and Gateway it is cheaper than building it yourself. With additional sensors available for $30 that measure temperature, humidity, and temperature and an immiscible probe it is very reasonably priced solution.

So, if I like the solution what are my concerns?

1. When I first got the webserver that stores data was down for a week. That seems to have been a one time event, but it is a reminder that if there server goes down so does your access to data (unless you maintain your own FTP server).
2. The gateway hisses (it makes an audible sound). That is not a huge problem, but technical support said this was due the radio frequency transmitter (which is just not even remotely plausible for a 2.4gHz signal.

Anyway, I set everything up plugged in the heater put the probe near the top of the dome and waited for the magic. An hour later temperature inside the done was 2 degrees F above the outside temperature, well that didn’t seem that impressive. After the shock wore off I realized that the temperature measurement I was making probably didn’t make much sense. After all the temperature at the heating mat would be highest, then the planting media, and the top of the dome should be about room temperature.

Temperatures

Enter my next recent purchase the infrared non-contact thermometer. A quick check of temperatures

		Left to Right
	Front/Back	Left	Center	Right
Mat	Front	72	113	88
Mat	Center	73	117	92
Planting Media	Front	65	75	68
Planting Media	Middle	65	78	69

The probe sensor reads similar bug a little low 70 degrees sitting on top of the media near the center (but it is partially in the air). Putting it down into the medium gets a temperature of around 80. Note the first year I used the expensive expanding plugs, the next year I compared those to seed starting medium and with no differences I am using the less expensive standard seed starting medium.

So lessons learned

1. Of course the temperature is not uniform in the planter, this is probably a good thing I can run the plants that need warmer near the center and cold near the outside.
2. Its probably worth trying the trick of putting a foam insulator under the unit, other users have reported that this helps improve temperature.
3. Until they germinate it may be worth using a smaller top, and putting some foarm on top of it to help with insulation.

We will see how the germination rates and days go. I have a variety of things planted and more to go

Row	Common	Scientific	Planted	Germinated	Number
1	Peppers	?	2/21/2010		0/3
2	Tomato	?	2/21/2010		0/4
3	Basil	?	2/21/2010		0/many
4	Peppers Lipstick	?
5	Columbine Double	?	2/21/2010		0/5
5	Columbine Mixed	?	2/21/2010		0/5
5	Columbine Purple White	?	2/21/2010		0/5
6	Foxglove	Digitalis thapsi
7	Jacob’s Ladder	Polemonium caeruleum
8	Cardinal Flower	Lobelia Cardnals
9	Spiderwort	Tradescantia x andersoniana
10	Mullein	Verbascum phoeniceum
11	Kenilworth Ivy	Cymbalaria muralis
12	Lupine	?	2/21/2010		0/3

Hopefully, we will see the first tomatoes in 7 days or less and the basil will follow shortly with the peppers last. For the flowers we should see the Lupine and then the Columbine the other flowers take a while and aren’t even planted yet.

A lesson learned from last year was even if seeds don’t come up move them to a tray outside and wait. The wishbone flower (torenia) never started indoors, but a weeks outside in the sun and I had seedlings. Hopefully, the heat will make the difference this year.