Many Seeds - Grow!

 More seeds started today:
6 purple basil
6 U of HI Sweet basil
6 Fl Broadleaf Mustard
7 Burpee Picklers Cucumbers
2 Florence Fennel
6 Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato

More potato slips, sweet onion sets, and red onion bulblets

4 or so Cilantro v Santo to replace the poor smooshed babies.

I was reading up on starting seeds under lights, ours came up nicely, but are leggy.  That is because I had the lights too high.  So I have lowered them.  I probably don't have enough lights, but that is OK, this is only for a short time and there is the lovely east facing window.

One site I was reading showed illustrated pictures of the benefits of bottom heat.  Now, I know that some seeds; such as tomato, pepper and eggplant start much better with bottom heat.  That is why so many are started on wet coffee filters in an incubator.

If you continue bottom heat after the seeds have germinated, you get bigger, happier and healthier plants.  Which is important in the case of something like cucumbers where you are racing the season before the bugs storm in.  Heat mats are expensive though, no matter how you try to find something economical.  And, its not like we need it all that much in Florida anyway.  I've been using the top of the hot water heater, top of the fridge, and now I've rearranged a bit I can use part of the top of the upright freezer.  I noticed though that both the fridge and freezer must be insulated fairly well. 

Then I experienced a eureka!  There is a darn good reason why Pickles the neighborhood block captain kitty cat likes to hang out on the electrical box - it puts out a lot of warmth.  So the Wando Peas that were on top the frig have been moved out; as well as some other seedlings.  Tomorrow I'll move out the 4" pots of tomato and eggplant, as well as the germinating 1 gallon pot of winged beans and honey mango.  Some I'll put on top for bottom heat.  The pots I'll just hug the sides at ground level I think.

Lights lowered; check.  The celery I separated apart into individual seeding cups have been planted out in the NE salad bar.

It is forecasted to rain Monday, then be warm after.  So, I think I'll move the black nursery cell trays out to sunshine and bottom heater aka atop the electrical box after the rain.  That will let me get the newest seedlings directly under the lights.

And make room for more cucumber and eggplant seedlings.