These are the seeds planted on 1/31. From left to right are Pinetree lettuce mix, winter density lettuce, bouquet dill and genovese basil. They all came up quite quickly. I had a heat mat under them until they germinated and then shut it off. In past years I've done this in my chilly basement. Even with the heatmat, I had very slow germination on everything. This year they're in my schoolroom, which is still relatively chilly, but better than the basement, by at least 10 degrees.
I'm really curious to see how the peppers do. In years past, they've taken weeks to germinate and then were very slow to do anything. I typically start them in mid February for that reason. With the new setup, that may be too early, but we'll have to see.
In this tray are my onion. Yellow sweet spanish and red bull. The yellow sweet spanish came up 2 days before the red bull, but both seem to be coming along quite nicely now. The heat mat was turned off on those as well.
My plan for next weekend is to start peppers, and eggplants. It's still ages until anything can be done in the garden yet. The ground is frozen quite solid, with snow in the forecast for midweek. The month of February is always the month I decide that I want to move somewhere warmer. It will never happen, but I wish it every year.
6 comments:
Beautiful!
Chard lady, welcome and thanks!
Got some dirt and some peat pots last weekend, so hoping to get some stuff in the dirt pretty soon.
Sbensink, it's so exciting to get into the dirt!
Peppers definitely seem to be slow starters. I always start them at the end of February or first part of March. They are less cold tolerant than tomatoes and so I do not rush to plant them on the first average frost free date - rather I shoot for a few weeks past that point. I find later planted peppers actually do better longer term then ones that were put into the ground earlier and were stressed by cooler conditions.
It's amazing how much of a difference adding a heat mat makes and having a warmer room for the plants to reside in. Warmth really is a big part of the equation for early growth.
Kitsap, I'm certainly seeing the difference with the added warmth this year. I think I'll wait on the peppers until 2 weeks from now.
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