I've been putting off starting any seeds this year until now because it's still really early spring here, and I didn't want the tomato plants to get too tall and spindly before I could get them planted. That's generally what happens if I start them to early in the spring.
I finally decided to get my seeds started about a week ago, on March 28. I had been wanting to try out a heat mat for starting seeds this year, I had never used one before. I had bought a heat mat and a new heavy duty starting tray and lid in the middle of March, before everything shut down around here.
This is the heat mat.
The clear lid that I bought for my seed starting tray is quite different from the ones that you normally get with the inexpensive starting trays, it's much taller. There's lots of room for the seedlings to grow up inside the cover.
I used up the last of the seed starting peat pellet that I had left over from last year to plant seeds for the Roma tomatoes and for the Amish Paste tomato plants. I had 16 peat pellets left, enough to start 8 seeds of each type. I only need 5 of each of those type plants for my garden plan this year, but not every seed sprouts, so I wanted to make sure that I would have enough plants.
I also filled some of my smallest pots with potting soil to start some other tomato seeds. I decided to make do with what I had available instead of going to the store with the way things are right now. I planted some Black Krim seeds and some Better Boy seeds in the pots. I was only able to fit 4 of the pots in the seed starting tray, so I put the Black Krim seed pots in there and left the Better Boy seed pots sitting on the shelf next to the planting tray. I was interested in seeing the difference in the speed and rate of seed germination between the heated seeds and the unheated seeds.
It took about 4 days for the seeds in the heated planter tray to start to sprout. By the fifth day, I had a pretty good germination and growth rate of the seeds in the heated area.
Yesterday and today were both sunny days in the 50s F, so I took the started plants out to the greenhouse so they could get the afternoon sun, and then brought them back in for the night. It still gets below freezing at night so I don't want to leave them in the greenhouse at night yet. This is what the plants look like after I brought them in for the night this evening. They seem to be doing pretty well so far. 3 of the Roma seeds and 1 of the Black Krim seeds have not sprouted yet, but the rest of them seem to have been successful.
Today, I put the other pots into the heated grow tray to see if I can get them to sprout. At this point, none of the seeds that weren't heated by the heat mat have sprouted. It would seem that the heat mat makes a definite difference on the speed of germination. I can't say if it makes a difference in how many seeds germinate as compared to not using a heat mat, but I think it probably does make some difference. All in all, I'm glad I spent the money on the heat mat this year.
That's it for this post! Thanks for stopping by to check it out!
