Heat for seeds

scmelik 4/28/2012, 10:54 am

I finally got my seedlings under lights but the only place i have to put them is in the basement and its a bit chilly down there. Its okay for the peas and beans but for the tomatoes and peppers its to cool. Can I use a regular heating pad under them or is there something else I should use?

GWN 4/28/2012, 10:58 am

The problem, I found, with regular heating pads is that they now have an automatic turn off.
Peas will germinate at low temps.
What i did was put my seed tray ontop of my hot water tank and that worked better than my seedling heating pad
Cant you plant directly in the garden now?

scmelik 4/28/2012, 11:13 am

GWN wrote:The problem, I found, with regular heating pads is that they now have an automatic turn off.
Peas will germinate at low temps.
What i did was put my seed tray ontop of my hot water tank and that worked better than my seedling heating pad
Cant you plant directly in the garden now?

everything is already sprouted but the peppers and tomatoes seem to be at a stand still and I think its cause its so cool in the basement. The peas and bean are going great and I could put them outside but things here have been so rainy lately that the ones that are outside are looking alittle rough, so I am trying to protect the ones inside till the weather turns a bit. The peppers and tomatoes still have a few weeks till they can go outside.

quiltbea 4/28/2012, 6:27 pm

If your basement is too cool, it will stop the growth of the tomatoes and peppers, but they will pick up again when it warms up. Can you put a small electric heater nearby in the basement that turns off automatically if it falls over or gets too warm?

Ideally the temps in your basement should be between 60-64*F when under the lights. Germinated seeds may pop up on the heat mat, but to grow well they need a drop in temps to the range I listed above. Deviations will just make them take longer to grow.

scmelik 4/29/2012, 8:11 am

quiltbea wrote:If your basement is too cool, it will stop the growth of the tomatoes and peppers, but they will pick up again when it warms up. Can you put a small electric heater nearby in the basement that turns off automatically if it falls over or gets too warm?

Ideally the temps in your basement should be between 60-64*F when under the lights. Germinated seeds may pop up on the heat mat, but to grow well they need a drop in temps to the range I listed above. Deviations will just make them take longer to grow.

unfortunately I don't have any small space heaters to use. The temp down there is probably hovering around that 55-58 degree point. Unfortunately I am going to have to just deal with the situation as it is, maybe next year I will be able to have a little better setup down there to grow my plants.

plantoid 4/29/2012, 8:40 am

last night / early this morningi fell asleep thinking of your problem , this morning I had a solution ...if you have an electric slow cook pot nor consider purchasing one.

When on holiday as well as cooking an all in one pot stew for us to come back to we often use our slow cook pot sat on the caravan floor empty , set on auto setting to keep the caravan warm when at sites where there is electric hook up .

One of those cookers from the likes of freecycle ( where ours came from ) or even purchased and put under a plastic or cloth sheeet covering the majority of the bed would give sufficient heat that was retained and be very cheap to run as they only use between 30 & 40 watts .

Best of all is you have a slow cook pot into the bargain and they last years and years .

scmelik 4/29/2012, 8:54 am

plantoid wrote:last night / early this morningi fell asleep thinking of your problem , this morning I had a solution ...if you have an electric slow cook pot nor consider purchasing one.

When on holiday as well as cooking an all in one pot stew for us to come back to we often use our slow cook pot sat on the caravan floor empty , set on auto setting to keep the caravan warm when at sites where there is electric hook up .

One of those cookers from the likes of freecycle ( where ours came from ) or even purchased and put under a plastic or cloth sheeet covering the majority of the bed would give sufficient heat that was retained and be very cheap to run as they only use between 30 & 40 watts .

Best of all is you have a slow cook pot into the bargain and they last years and years .

I am not exactly sure what you are saying here. Are you saying to set my crockpot (slow cooker) under my grow light and put my seedling cups in the crockpot? I believe that would get WAY to hot and melt my seedling cups.

plantoid 4/29/2012, 2:30 pm

scmelik wrote:
plantoid wrote:last night / early this morningi fell asleep thinking of your problem , this morning I had a solution ...if you have an electric slow cook pot nor consider purchasing one.

When on holiday as well as cooking an all in one pot stew for us to come back to we often use our slow cook pot sat on the caravan floor empty , set on auto setting to keep the caravan warm when at sites where there is electric hook up .

One of those cookers from the likes of freecycle ( where ours came from ) or even purchased and put under a plastic or cloth sheeet covering the majority of the bed would give sufficient heat that was retained and be very cheap to run as they only use between 30 & 40 watts .

Best of all is you have a slow cook pot into the bargain and they last years and years .

I am not exactly sure what you are saying here. Are you saying to set my crockpot (slow cooker) under my grow light and put my seedling cups in the crockpot? I believe that would get WAY to hot and melt my seedling cups.

No ,,,,, make a tent like enclosure around the light fixture and growing plants and put the electric crockpot inside the tent it to bring up the air temperature. You might hit the mid seventies if your lucky .

If it got / gets too warm after an hour or so open one of the sides up a wee bit and experiment to get the temperature you are after and / or even switch it to the low setting and keep an eye on it for several hours to see how close it is to your target temperatures

This is how I've managed to keep my glasshouse above 40 oF this winter ..they are each 7 watt compact fluroescent bulbs and cost me about 20 pence a day to run . the power supply to ther green house is coming in via an earth leakage protection device . Heat above each bulb is barely 80 oF so they are very safe close to all sorts of things

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