Is it Spring Yet?

As you might recall from my last post a few weeks back, my husband put together a lovely bench to use for gardening and seed-starting. To keep the area with the seedlings enclosed and (hopefully) warmer, he then attached a flexible plastic front to the shelving that could be opened or closed. With the help of some of our friends, he also attached special hinges that will hold the door open when we are working in the space.

My peat pellets arrived and I soaked them in water.  I also made myself a chart to keep track of exactly what was going into each cell of the gardening tray, and planted tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers, jalapenos, chives, and lots of herbs.  This is in addition to the worksheet keeping track of what gets planted 8, 6, and 4 weeks before the last estimated frost date, when it has germinated, and when it has been transplanted. Good to go, right?

However, as previously mentioned, the sunroom is not heated, and it is quite chilly in there this time of year. The weather lately has been, well...we've had some weather. And a foot of snow this week. Brrr.

But I digress. After a bit over a week, it became apparent that the plastic was not enough to keep in what little warmth the grow lights were generating. The seeds were not going to germinate. Nick made plans to buy insulating material for the edges of the plastic, as well as a latch of sorts to keep it flush at the edges, since it is bowing outward. We bought a heat mat on Amazon, which promised to keep the soil 10-20 degrees warmer than the rest of the room. I had read reviews from folks who said they'd been able to grow seedlings in their 40-degree garages with a grow light and a heat mat, so it was worth a shot, right? That arrived this past Monday (a day early, hurrah for Amazon Prime) and Nick set it up. By Thursday I had still not seen any evidence of germination, and we were starting to lose hope. My mother-in-law had reported her seedlings had started to germinate within 48 hours of using the heat mat and we were past that window. My husband had built this beautiful bench, but we feared that we simply would be unable to use it in the wintertime if the room was not heated. We were very frustrated.

I had just about given up and was in the process of moving the seedlings into the guest bedroom, where we grew them last year. The light is not good but at least it's warmer. However, as I did so I read the guidelines printed on the heat mat; they give germination times using the mat for common vegetables, and most of them are 5-7 days or so. Plus, when I checked the soil, it did feel comfortably warm, which is what we were trying to achieve. So I trucked the seedlings back into the sunroom, placed the heat mat onto a towel to insulate it from the cold tabletop, and vowed to give it a few more days. I went out there this morning to check on them, and what did I find?

Baby Heritage Hybrid tomato plants! It's working - huzzah! Next time, more patience and less panic.