Heated Seed Starting Mats are Great

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Bob Bauer
January 09, 2017 (Last Updated: ) | Reading Time: 1 minutes

January 08, 2017

My lettuce seeds have sprouted already. I'll be moving the six packs outside in the morning and back in at night for awhile. Last year we had so much sunshine in January that I had to prop open the plastic dome covers so the sprouts wouldn't cook. This year there is a foot of snow on the ground and it's raining cats and dogs..

Every year is different which gives us the opportunity to be creative. I would like to have a skylight this year, but maybe I'm just being lazy..

January 09, 2017

Some of the spinach, cauliflower and broccoli seeds came up last night so I moved the whole flat outside this morning. The heated seed starting mat that they are on really works well. Back when we were "Po folk" I used to try to supliment the grocery budget by growing health veggies and didn't want to spend money doing it, so I would put the seed starting six packs, which I used over and over again year after year, in a broiler pan on top of the water heater..

The warmth started them more quickly, but not as fast as a heated seed starting mat. I used to put 2 -3 seeds in each cell because not all the seeds would germinate, but with the mat I only need to put one seed per cell..

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