bottom heat for germination

[johno]

It's a little early for this unless you have a greenhouse, but here's to thinking ahead already...

I was perusing the 'Garden Experiments' section at Gardenweb and came across this link in a discussion on cheap bottom heating:

www.gardengrapevine.com/BottomHeater.html

They show how to use cheap outdoor rope lights (plus a few other odds and ends) to make an effective bottom heater to speed and improve germination. Sounds better to me than the $70.00 setups I've seen in catalogs.

There were other ideas on the thread, but this sounded like the safest one to me...

What do you use? Anything inventive besides the top of the refrigerator?

[PatrickW]

I have a couple of cheap heated trays I bought from a garden center about 10 years ago, I guess I paid $20 each or so for them then, and they still work.

If you want something really quick and dirty, you can always take a small desk lamp and put it in an enclosed space, like a cardboard box or something plastic if you want it to be a little fireproof (don't burn your house down just because I told you to do this). It's not true bottom heating, but should work as well. You'll need to put the seeds under a proper light source after they germinate, but then they won't need the heat anymore.

[nightmist]

Hey cool!

I wouldn't have thought light ropes generated enough heat to make a difference.
Certainly cheap enough to try though.

Considerably safer than my current plan of hacking the thermostat on a heating pad from Big Lots too!

[canadamike]

A simple light bulb will also do the trick . Enclose the whole thing and it is done.

[plantsnobin]

I have read that waterbed heaters work well. I am lucky in that my husbands great uncle used to raise plants to sell. He had old zinc heating cables that are probably 50 ft long, he buried them and planted vegetable plants. Back in the day when they sold tomato plants 'bare root'. He didn't use anything to cover them, just the heating cables buried. His family gave them to me almost 20 years ago, and they were a good 30-40 years old then. I only have two left, and they still work. I sold the rest years ago when I didn't need them, shouldn't have.

[grunt]

Johno: Check out picasaweb.google.ca/TVgrunt/2008SEEDSTARTING for what I do now. If you want a cheap and easy livingroom setup, put a couple of chairs a couple of feet apart in front of your livingroom window. Put a couple of slats across the seats for your trays to set on. A small lamp or trouble light under the trays and a sheet of plastic over the top, and you have a small bottom heated greenhouse/starting chamber.
Cheers
Dan

[michaeljohnson]

The cheapest form of bottom heaters I have ever seen is a large flat box made from wood, about six feet long by about three foot wide by a foot deep and then lined with thick plastic sheeting, the box is then filled with raw cow crew yard manure/or horse manure and watered well, with a thin layer of hay put on the top,plus a plastic cover sheet, a thermometer is then inserted into the mixture and watched the temp will build to well over a hundred degrees within the next few days and when it starts to drop again and reach about eighty the seed trays are then placed on top-as many as possible- the seeds germinate like mad within the next four or seven days.

[houseodessey]

All good ideas. I built shelves over my hot water heaters and that works well, too, if you just have a few flats to germinate.

[Jim]

I started seeds on a folding table in my garage with a space heater under the table. Works just fine. I'd think that the heat tape you wrap around pipes in the winter could be used well but its a bit spendy.

[orflo]

The best method is the one Michael described, the horse manure system. British gardeners used to grow pineapples during wintertime (!) on horse manure heat.
Some other energy-efficient ways are: if you know a tree surgeon, contact him in order to get some fresh wood cuttings, they have to be very fresh, the tree or better, branches,shouldn't have been cut for over a week. Make a big pile with the fresh cuttings, water them thoroughly, and the heat will start within 2-3 days. An other alternative is freshly cut green grass, again make a big pile from this, water it, (it doesn't need as much water as the cuttings), and within a day the heat will start to build up. Of course, freshly cut green grass in areas with harsh winters ... The grass pile should be really big, it shrinks quite fast, and it gives a good heat, but it doesn't last for a long time, maybe 2-4 weeks. The wood cuttings last for about 4-10 weeks, depending on the amount, watering, green material included,...The horse manure method lasts for 8-12 weeks, or even more. Make sure, if you use the horse manure in the greenhouse, to open up the windows during the first 2-3 days, gasses are formed during that period and they should evaporate.

[Alan]

Most of my family in Kentucky and Indiana still use the hot box method only with a mixutre of horse and cow manure, it actually works really well and creates some nice little seedlings for garden use.


Water bed heaters work well and sometimes you can find them at yard sales cheap or get them from folks who are getting rid of their water beds. As a matter of fact, something I tried earlier this year with my old water bed mattress was to refill it with water and place the heater underneath it in the greenhouse, then you can use the entire surface area of the mattress to grow and start your seedlings, greatly increasing the number you can germinate at any one given point in time.

I also use some the heating pads that are sold through garden shops and they work pretty well. Probably the best bet is heating cables, you can set them up to heat a relatively large area and get your seeding chores done much faster.

[canadamike]

The problem with horse manure and us married folks living in a suburban house is the wife... ;D

These creatures are quite particular about whatever we put in the living room....

[MikeM]

The manure method has always usually worked well for me. I just put seed trays on top of my (3m x 1m x 1.5m-high) compost bins. The only failure was once when I cooked the seeds when compost temps hit 70C ;D

[grungy]

Even I would draw the line there, Michael, I think that they meant outside in frames similar to cold frames only deeper.

[bluelacedredhead]

Bottom heat, huh? Couldn't you just sit on them until they, like, hatch??