Seedlings growing under lights

I started some seeds today in my “plant work room” and I thought you might be interested.  I start seeds in regular plastic nursery trays that I get from a local greenhouse – and that I save from store-bought plants.  I do recycle my plant containers from year to year -  If you reuse containers like this you really should wash them thoroughly in a weak bleach solution and dry them in the sun before storing them away for reuse.  Or so I’ve heard – I might try that some day.

just planted flat

This year I’m planting in commercial soil mix, because I just don’t have any compost that is ready right now to make into home made potting soil.  Anyway, fill your containers with soil and plant your seeds at the  recommended depth.  Most of what I planted today is in the cabbage family, and needs to be about 1/2 inch deep.  I just use a finger to poke holes about that deep, drop 2-3 seeds into each one and then sprinkle with more soil to cover.  I’m using pretty small divisions – 72 plants per tray – because I plan to plant out these cold season plants under row covers or in the greenhouse as soon as they are big enough to handle.  If I thought that I would have to hold them for a while I would probably start them in larger divisions to begin with.

BTW, I am also test germinating some seeds that I saved last year – by planting 10 seeds per container to see how many come up.  Assuming that some of them germinate I can just multiply the number of seedlings by 10 to get the success rate as a percentage.  Other than using 10 seeds per container they are done exactly the same way as everything else.

Using a spray bottle to water the planted trays gives good control.

I’ve found that the least messy way for me to water trays is by misting with a spray bottle – every other method that I’ve used results in muddy water running everywhere and only a little soaking in.  Check soil moisture every day until you’re sure that it has stabilized where you want it – moist, but not dripping wet.

Note that you need to label your trays – I use recycled pieces of plastic mini blinds.

A plastic seed starting chamber like this is very handy, but not absolutely required. You will have to remove it soon after your plants emerge, but until then it helps to keep the soil evenly moist and the air warm and humid. If you don't have one of these just lay a sheet of plastic right on top until you see plants starting to emerge.

Then cover with one of these plastic domes if you have one.  If you don’t have one of these you can simply drape a piece of saran wrap over the tray, but if you do that you will have to remove it as soon as you see plants emerging from the soil.  The cover holds the moisture in so that you shouldn’t have to water again until it’s removed.

My simple grow light setup uses regular 4' shop lights and bulbs - not expensive "grow" lights.

I use plain old 40 watt flourescent shop lights to start my plants indoors and it works great.  As you can see the fixtures are just sitting on top of props that I have made out of one by six scraps, but you can use whatever you have.  You want the lights to be as close to the plant trays as is practical or your plants will grow tall and leggy.   Now that compact florescent lights are widely available you could also use those in any lamp fixture that you have.  You can easily get CFLs which are equivalent to  a 100 watt incandescent light  – should be great for a smaller operation.

Last year I built a very simple bottom heat system which has made a tremendous improvement in my success rate for starting all kinds of seeds.   If you don’t have bottom heat, then try to keep the soil as warm as possible 24 hours a day.  On top of a refrigerator or an upright freezer is a good place or on a shelf right over your water heater or a heat appliance.  The regular average room temperature of your house is probably not warm enough for best results.  The lights also won’t really work to keep the soil warm because they won’t be on 24 hours a day.  If you look at this planting soil temperature chart you will see that most plants want the soil temp to be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit for best germination.  If at all possible use some form of bottom heat.

A simple analog light timer is all y0u need for starting your own plants, but you need one that is big enough to handle the load of all of the lights that you are going to plug into it.

For good results you must have a timer to control your lights.  Erratic lighting or 24 hour day lengths will be bad for many plants.  Be sure that you use a timer which is rated high enough for the total wattage of lights that you will be using.   Set the on period to correspond with or extend the  actual  daylight hours – in other words don’t try to have your plants day and night be opposite of the real day and night otherwise ambient light will interrupt their sleep just like it would yours.  I set mine to go on at sunrise and off at about 8 PM.  I currently have the day length set for about 13 1/2 hours, but when I start planting tomatoes and peppers in a few weeks I will increase that to about 16 hours of light per day.

Once I start this process every winter I love to get out in the plant room to visit and check on my plants.  The warm moist air and the smell of clean soil and growing things along with the sun light coming through the windows really takes the edge off of winter for me.  That and a cup of coffee is a great way to start the day.   Round up some seeds and soil, and see if it doesn’t lift your spirits as well.

My humble plant work room. Really just a small well insulated room on the side of my garage with 4 windows, and a concrete floor that I don't have to worry about getting dirty. The light bench is sitting on top of 5 steel barrels full of water for thermal mass which help to moderate the temperature. You can see the rope light that powers my bottom heat there at the lower right. On the far end of the bench I have just enough counter space to pot things up. I love it.

I always had problems starting seeds in our plant room, but these tomato plants were grown under shop lights in only 4 weeks from planting the seeds!

These seedlings were planted only one week ago. I used to wait weeks for germination that was spotty at best in my cool plant grow room.

Recycled rope lights turn out to be a great way to make bottom heat for seed starting under lights.

I built our “plant room” about 2 years ago – just a small well insulated room with a lot of windows and shop lights – and since then I’ve tried starting my own seeds with varying degrees of success.  The problem that I’ve had is that over night temperatures in the room routinely fall into the 50s which is fine for maintaining tender plants over the Winter, but makes seed germination spotty at best.  I knew that what I needed was bottom heat.

The thing is that retail bottom heat is expensive – I saw one “kit” at a local garden center that was big enough for 2 flats and was $79 – wow!  You can buy a lot of tomato plants for eighty bucks!  A low cost alternative had to be possible for a dedicated scrounger like myself.

Whatever I decided upon had to be:

1. Safe – neither an electrical shock nor a fire hazard!
2. Cheap
3. Simple
4. Big  enough to start all of our early Spring seeds.

Before proceeding – You the reader must agree that you will not hold the author or anyone associated with doorgarden.com responsible for your use of this information.  What you see being done in this article may not be safe (and probably isn’t), and could cause injury, death, destruction, mayhem, fire, dammage to your home, and prolong the economic downturn by preventing you from spending money and thereby stimulating the economy.  It might not even work.  In any event thou shalt not hold me responsible.  If you don’t agree with any of that then turn back now – don’t even look at the pictures.

After quite alot of thought I decided to use rope lights for the heat source – here’s what I did…

Rope lights going in over insulation board

I already had a section of shelf in the plant room that was about 2 feet wide and 8 feet long that I wanted to use.  I put a 1/2 inch layer of styrofoam insulation board over the 1/2 inch OSB (chipboard) shelf and then loosely fastened the rope lights over that. This took 3 20′ lengths of rope light.  Note – after using this for a few days I would say that 2 strings of lights would be plenty for this size bench – I might rework mine to make that adjustment.

These rope lights are rated for exterior use and are double insulated.  They are safe for wet locations and direct contact with flammable materials like wood because they only get slightly warm.  Neither a shock nor fire hazard.  They were used at one time for outside lighting but hadn’t been used in a couple of years.

Because they are double insulated they don’t even need to be plugged into a GFIC outlet, and in fact it wouldn’t serve any purpose to do so, because they don’t have a ground post on the plug.

The rope lights are fastened down using screws and wire ties that have holes for this purpose.

zip ties with the holes for screws like this are extremely handy - look for them in the electrical wiring section of the home improvement store.

Then I put in strips of 1 inch insulation board to act as spacers.  Looks kind of festive doesn’t it?

Then I topped that all off with a layer of 1/2 inch drywall…

Drywall going on top (I didn't fasten it in place at all)

Drywall is relatively fire resistant, and has good thermal properties so that the heat will be nice and even without hot and cold spots, but this kind isn’t at all water proof so I topped it all off with a left over sheet of vinyl flooring…

I already had this nice big scrap of vinyl floor, otherwise I could have used a scrap of vinyl or rubber roofing, pool liner, shower curtain, or plain old plastic sheet.

Here’s an end view showing the layers (except the vinyl floor)…

Most of the heat from the rope lights is directed by the insulation to go up through the seed starter.

From the top you have – 1/2″  Drywall, rope lights and spacers made of 1″ EPS board, 1/2″ styrofoam, and 1/2″ wooden osb (chip board) on the bottom.  It’s all sitting on top of recycled 55 gallon drums full of water which act as thermal mass to moderated the temperature in the room.  You could probably use wood for all of the parts and it would be safe and work just fine, but I didn’t feel 100% comfortable doing that since I’m using the rope lights for something that they weren’t really designed for.  I did not close up the holes in the end.

Here's the system with fresh planted flats.

The surface of the finished bench is just slightly warm to the touch, and the soil in the flats feels just like it would on a sunny day in May – should be just about right.  When I have actual results I’ll post some pictures.

In the planning stages I thought that an 8′ by 2′ starting area would be really roomy, but after my lovely wife commandeered 5 of the 8 slots for her flower starts I realized that it isn’t too big at all.  Barely adequate in fact.

• The bottom heat stays on 24 hours a day.
• The lights are on a timer which turns them on for about 17 hours a day.
• When using florescent lights for plant starting the lights need to be very close to the soil / tops of the plants to keep them from getting leggy – even then they are not nearly as bright as the sun.
• The air temperature in the plant room stays above 55° F.
• Once the plants are a couple inches tall (probably about a month) I intend to move them out to the garden, greenhouse, or cold frame depending on the plant.

Note that I planned and built this project with an eye toward utilizing materials that I already had on hand – didn’t buy a single thing.  You should taylor your own projects similarly to use the materials, tools, skills, and spaces that you have available to you.  Some alternative ideas that I considered:

• Light bulbs mounted under a shelf that would be like a shallow open bottomed box. – This could probably work all right but would be more likely to be a shock or fire hazard.
• Recycling a water bed heater. – This would probably work, but I didn’t have a water bed heater.
• Cement board tile underlayment instead of drywall.  – Good idea, but would have required the outlay of cash. I already had drywall scraps.
• Bedding the rope lights in sand so that it would be completely surrounded by fire proof thermal mass. – This would probably work great, and I almost did it like that.
• Bedding the rope lights in drywall joint compound or mortar for the same reasons of fire safety and thermal mass. – This would also probably work great, but if the rope lights died it would make it a huge job to replace them.  Also it would be a big messy job to put it together.
• Using a small space heater under an open bottomed shelf. – Everything would have to be made out of fire proof material for this to be safe.
• A lower level of shop lights to bottom heat an upper level of seedlings. – This would be a likely shock hazzard because of excess water running down onto the lights, and you wouldn’t be able to use the bottom heat 24 hours a day.
• If / when electric heat was not an option heat could be supplied by a layer of hot compost under a cold frame – This is called a hot bed.

After running this for a few days it has occured to me that something like this would make a really nice heated dog or cat bed.  Just a thought.

Update: I planted a variety of seeds one week ago tomorrow, and almost everything has already come up including some stevia seeds that are supposed to be hard / slow to germinate.  This works.

Update 2: A couple of things that I would do different and will probably change – My bottom heat covers an area about 8′ long by 2 feet wide which is great, but it would be getter if I could independantly turn it on and off in 4 foot sections, for when I’m not using all of the area. By the way, after about a month of use I’m astounded by how well this works!

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Cold weather and snow concentrate birds near food supplies in February.

What to plant in the garden in February – Cool Season Vegetables – February is not too early to begin planting the spring vegetable garden.  Take action now and your family will be eating fresh garden fare months before your neighbors.

• Cool season crops such as broccoli, cabbage, radishes, kale, turnips, Irish potatoes and onions planted now will yield their harvest soon.
• Arugula, lettuce, and other salad greens can also be planted out in the garden this month, but will do better if started under cover of a simple plastic tunnel, or a cold frame.  Plan on succession plantings every week or two to keep the homegrown goodness coming.
• Spinach – plant out in the garden around the middle of the February – cover spinach seeds with 1/4″  of peat moss or screened compost instead of garden soil so that the tiny plants don’t have to fight heavy crusty soil just to emerge.  Plant plenty to share with family and friends.
• Potatoes – toward the end of the month plant potatoes in trenches or pits leaving room to add additional soil as the plants emerge.
• Black berries, grapes, strawberries and other small fruit and hardy perennials can be transplanted out this month.
• Asparagus crowns can be set out or moved, as can almost any dormant hardy perennial.

In zone 6 our last frost date is usually about April 15 (tax day), and the ground is warming up by the middle of May.  A quick look at the calendar shows that sometime this month (or early March at the latest)  I need to start seeds indoors.

For an early start you have to prepare your soil whenever the opportunity arises. This picture was taken on February first, the next day it snowed.

February or early March  is time to start many seeds indoors under lights, or in the proverbial sunny window.  You might hear cautionary tales of  “don’t start too soon or your plants will be leggy before you can set them out”, which is true to a certain extent.  However our “reliably warm and frost free” date is a month later – too late for spring crops to get going before hot dry weather.  Weeks before you can safely transplant into the garden the weather becomes mostly sunny and warm with only occasional cold overnight temps – you can take your flats or potted plants outside, and bring them back in as needed to avoid low overnight temps.  This might sound like a lot of trouble, but if you don’t get an early start your garden may suffer from the hot dry weather that we’ve been getting in the summer time -  beginning in early June last year.  So I plan to start early.  This year I should be able to avoid a lot of that in and out by using the small greenhouse that I built last fall.

You can grow low light crops like this leaf lettuce all winter long under plain old florescent shop lights.

Start saving one gallon plastic jugs now to use for cheap easy chloches to protect tender tomato and pepper plants from the tail end of cool weather after you do set them out.

Leave mulch in place around emerging bulbs and perennials – periodic warm weather might make you think Spring is here, but it isn’t quite. As soon as you see growth out of your bulbs it’s time to start feeding them.  Bulbs do all of their growth and energy storage during a few months (or weeks) in the spring, and are dormant later.  Feeding during dormancy won’t help much.  However if you feed the soil with plenty of organic matter you don’t have to worry about it much – the nutrients will be there when the plants need them.

Bring in branches of forsythia, dogwood and other spring blooming trees to forced for indoor color. Make long, slanted cuts and place  in water – Change water once or twice a week for blooms in 3 weeks.

Prune – Now (Late Winter) is the time to prune many deciduous trees including fruit trees and Grape vines. Remove dead, or diseased branches, suckers growing at or near the base of the tree trunk and crossed branches.

Pruning fruit trees – Fruit bearing trees and grapes usually need to be pruned every year.  Educate yourself about the particular pruning needs of your fruit bearing plants or you might find that you’ve removed the parts that would have born fruit this year.

Do not prune Spring blooming trees and shrubs (Azaleas, forsythia, etc)   in late winter because their flower buds are already formed.  Prune soon after the show is over instead.

Apply Dormant Oil Spray – An early spring application of horticulture oil will safely kill over-wintering soft-bodied insects such as scale, whiteflies and aphids. Horticulture oil is not a poison and merely smothers insects -  so good coverage  is required.  Fruit trees will especially benefit.

February is also a good time to put out nest boxes for birds so they can have time to scope them out before the actual nesting season.

Keep March in mind – next month it will be time to plant  peas, fava beans and other cool season crops – start gathering seeds now!

As you plan your garden and place your seed order this chart might be helpful. Needless to say – your mileage may vary.

APPROXIMATE PLANTING PER PERSON

Table courtesy of Arizona State University Master Gardeners web site

That sweet corn inter-planted with pole beans (an experiment) is way too close together – the yield was very small, and much of it fell over after a big rain because of the shallow restricted roots.

Recommended Spacing for Intensive Planting  Methods

Arizona State University Master Gardener Manual: Intensive Gardening Methods.

How Close Together Can I Plant ???

This is a frequently asked question from people who are getting started with raised beds, deep mulch, square foot gardening, Ruth Stout, lasagna and other intensive gardening methods.  So far the seed suppliers don’t seem to have noticed that a lot of people are going to these highly productive intensive methods – and they don’t give this info on the seed packets.  I got this chart from the Arizona State University Agricultural website so it should be reliable information – and based upon my own anecdotal experience it seems to be about right.  By the way that’s a great article on the basic principles of intensive gardening – Arizona State University Master Gardener Manual: Intensive Gardening Methods.

I thought this info might be timely right now as the more obsessive compulsive of us are graphing out the plans for the coming season, and for the rest of us the chart would be a handy thing to have printed out and posted up in or near the garden.

Salad ready to eat in January

You might know that I built a small greenhouse this fall.  Unfortunately by the time I finished it in early November it was pretty late to get started – I have a few things going in there now, but I’ve not really been able to use it to full advantage.  Being able to enjoy the sunshine while I’ve worked in there out of the cold has been nice.  But the truth is that so far this cold frame has been at least as productive as the greenhouse.

While I built my greenhouse on the cheap ($50 out of pocket) building this cold frame actually cost nothing – 100 percent recycled materials.  Not only that, but the design is so simple that anyone should be able to build one in an hour or two once you scrounge up the few things that you need.  The glass for my cold frame came from a sliding glass door – it started life as double pane glass, but a lawnmower thrown rock converted it to single pane – it works great.  You could use just about any piece of glass – as long as it isn’t tinted  or too large or small -  just build the wooden parts to fit the glass pane that you have.  I must say that it is very convenient that mine has a frame around it instead of being just a plain piece of glass, but don’t let that stop you if that’s what you come up with.

The principle is about the same for a cold frame as it is for an unheated greenhouse – inside it’s like your plants are spending the winter 2-300 miles further south – maybe better.  They’re protected from wind, cold rain, low humidity,  snow, and many frosts.  It’s not like they’re in the tropics, it’s just that winter is a lot milder inside of a cold frame.  One particularly warm day at the beginning of January it got up to 87 degrees (F) in mine but even though that sounds really hot I don’t think that it’s the same as an 87 degree day in August – the ground is  cool and there just isn’t so much radiant energy. Anyway, it didn’t seem to bother the lettuce and spinach that was growing in there. You can probably treat it like it’s at least one zone warmer – Instead of planting arugula in March you can plant it in January – and you also get an extra month in the fall.

Wouldn’t it be better if the glass was at a steeper angle, the soil was in an insulated chamber, everything was weather stripped, the inside was a nice reflective white, and it had an automatic vent opener?  Maybe, but it works really well just like this.  The truth is that if it was all that complicated or expensive  I probably wouldn’t have built it to begin with.  Also the fact that it’s a bit leaky probably helps to keep it from overheating and might be more important than keeping out every possible draft.

This picture makes it pretty clear how this works - when it starts getting cold I put boards on the ends to close up the gaps. If you live even farther south like my sister in Mississippi you might just want to leave the ends open.

Isn’t that plain spruce lumber and chip board going to rot? It sure will, but 1) I try to avoid using treated lumber in the garden if at all possible 2) Rot resistant wood like cedar and redwood are uber expensive 3) Nothing lasts forever 4) It was FREE – scraps, culls, and reclaimed materials. When it does rot I’ll replace it with more scrap/recycled material.

Wouldn’t a plastic tunnel work just as well – maybe, but it’s a lot more trouble to open one of those to do anything – the convenience of being able to just tip the glass up means you’re more likely to take care, and pick food out of it. Then again if a plastic tunnel is what you’re up for then by all means go for it – it will get the job done.

Because of the simple design when the weather warms up I can move the whole thing out of the way, or I might move it over some strawberries and replace the glass with a screen to keep birds out.  It would also be useful like that for keeping vine borer moths off of young squash plants.

As you can see there aren’t any hinges.  The glass just sits on top, and the piece of wood where the hinge would be keeps it from sliding off when the lid is propped open.  The 2×4 just elevates the back so that rain drains off  -  The glass comes off to make it easier to work in – The whole thing just sits on top of the ground – I pushed a bit of soil around the bottom where needed to fill any gaps.

On a sunny day it can get 20 degrees warmer inside of the cold frame than the outside temp.

Where to put your cold frame – In a place that gets as much sun as possible, and remember that the sun will be lower in January than it is in September.  I set this one right over an existing raised bed that already had very good soil, and if you have a choice try to put it close to the kitchen  so that it’s handy to pick a fresh salad for supper.

Try to put your cold frame in a place where it gets sun all day long instead of being in the shade for a couple of hours like this. It wasn't like that in October.

Other Resources

Cold Frames and Hot Beds – Cornell University