Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Seedling Heat Mat for Seed Starting

For my birthday last week I used a gift card to get myself a seedling heat mat.  I'll use it to warm my pots when they are under the grow lights but the main reason I got it is to start seeds using the paper towel method.  I like the paper towel method because you can get seeds going pretty quickly this way and usually within about 28 hours you will know if a seed is going to germinate or not.

Usually I start my seeds by putting them in a very lightly moist paper towel in a zip lock bag that sit on top of my computer.  The top of the computer is a pretty consistent 83-86 degrees so a descent spot to start seeds.  However this year I want to start about twice as many plants as in the past so I've purchased some additional grow lights and I'm going to use this heated mat to get the seeds going.  Doing it this way will give me more plants to choose some so I can hopefully have a better chance at getting some good plants going.