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seeds Cooking Seedlings?

Maligator

Maligator

Bear with me as this is my first year growing peppers, or anything really for that matter. So I have been using a seedling heating mat under my lil guys and put them in a grow tent a few days ago. I finally put a themometer/humidity indicator in there yesterday. Well, ambient temp was 81.5F with 78% humidity.

This got me to thinking: if its 81.5F in there and the heat mats are adding 10-20 degrees more heat, am I cooking the seedlings? I took out the heating mats tonight for fear that I was cooking them. I noticed that a few of the plants that weren't on the mats were looking much more healthy, but I wasn't sure if it was the soil as I grew some in different mixes to see which produced the best for me.

So what say you? :think:
 
I only use my heat mat for germination. You can still use the heat mat after that but keep the cover off because your humidity will get too high and cause fungal problems and possibly damping off disease, which kills young seedlings. Once the seedling is up, light is more important than heat.
 
I agree. If it is already 81F in there, you don't even need a heat mat for germination. Heat mats can get up to 110F if they are not regulated and that will cook the roots for sure. I know they say 10 - 20 degrees above room temp, but the higher the room temp the high the temp it heats it up to.

jacob
 
jjs7741 said:
I agree. If it is already 81F in there, you don't even need a heat mat for germination. Heat mats can get up to 110F if they are not regulated and that will cook the roots for sure. I know they say 10 - 20 degrees above room temp, but the higher the room temp the high the temp it heats it up to.

jacob
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Thanks. It just didn't seem like the ones on th heating mat were doing very well. I hope I didn't mess up a whole tray of seedlings. They seem to have slowed growth waaaaay down. Lets see how they do in the next week. I'm tempted to transplant them into an actual soil mix instead of just the "sawdust like" seedling starter mix so they have more aeration in the soil. Am I over-analyzing this? :think:
 
Your first post was slightly confusing...what is the location of your thermometer....just put the thermometer in the soil and read your soil temps while the heatpad is on and that should be about 80F give or take a little. But Diabolus is right, once they've sprouted light is much more important than heat, get them close to a window that gets a lot of sun and don't worry if they're down around 70F which is what most people keep they're homes at anyway. And don't transplant them until you see the first true leaves!
 
hotenuff4u said:
Your first post was slightly confusing...what is the location of your thermometer....just put the thermometer in the soil and read your soil temps while the heatpad is on and that should be about 80F give or take a little. But Diabolus is right, once they've sprouted light is much more important than heat, get them close to a window that gets a lot of sun and don't worry if they're down around 70F which is what most people keep they're homes at anyway. And don't transplant them until you see the first true leaves!
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To clear up any confusion, the ambient air temp was 81.5 inside the grow tent. I have since removed the heating mats and placed the probe inside the soil and now have a soil temp reading of 82.4 with 78% humidity.

Thanks for the heads up on NOT transplanting the seedlings until they have their first true leaves. I know I know...patience. It's just that my peter peppers and Bhuts in other containers with a soil/compost mix have really taken off and look much better than the ones in just the seedling mix.
 
LOL, awesome! and yes, patience, haha....they will all catch up with each other very soon, before you know it you'll be looking at a bunch of adult plants remembering the days of their seedlinghood
 
I germinated mine at 85-90 and it went up to over 100 several times, almost all my seeds germinated so I think you need MUCH more than 100 to cook them, that and I soaked them in steaming hot water for 5 minutes before I planted them.
 
that's not a bad idea...all species are different, but rule of thumb is higher temps(above 90F)=faster germination, lower germination%yield; lower temps(75F-80F)=slower germination, higher germination%yield

If you have a lot of seeds always go for the above 90F to speed things up!
 
hotenuff4u said:
that's not a bad idea...all species are different, but rule of thumb is higher temps(above 90F)=faster germination, lower germination%yield; lower temps(75F-80F)=slower germination, higher germination%yield

If you have a lot of seeds always go for the above 90F to speed things up!
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Sure sure...now you say speed things up? Ur killing me! :doh: To make things worse to me, the Tepin seeds and a few others I planted have yet to pop through! Oh the agony of the wait!!! :mope: LOL, I think I'll go with the initial advice and keep temps right around the mid 80's for the higher yield.
 
last year was my first year growing with peppers, and I only had a small amount of seeds to work with, so I only used 1 seed for every starter pot, and kept the temp religiously at 80 with about 90% germination through all of my peppers. Some peppers sprouted after about 6 days, some took over 3 weeks to show a sprout.....so this year......

this year i have more seeds to work with, i will be keeping it religiously at 80 for 1 week, and removing any sprouts from heat as after 1 week I will crank 'er up to about 92F and see how fast I can get these up, but expecting less than 50% germination after i hit the high temps
 
I remember an article that I think Alabama Jack posted which showed a temperature/germination graph. Once you start getting the temp. up past the 90's the germination rate rapidly decreases. I think the sweet spot was between 75 and 85 F.
 
Diabolus said:
I remember an article that I think Alabama Jack posted which showed a temperature/germination graph. Once you start getting the temp. up past the 90's the germination rate rapidly decreases. I think the sweet spot was between 75 and 85 F.
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That was part of my fear. Since this is my first year at this I have been kind of "learning as I go", so to speak. This all started off as an idea of " Hey, I want to grow my own peppers and have the ones I want instead of getting stuck with what the stores carry".

I bought the recently published book "The Complete Chili Pepper Book". It's a good read. They also claimed the best germinations somewhere between 75-85F with temps not getting below 70F. I had already purchased the seed mats and I can say they do speed things along, however, after buying the grow tent I began to wonder if it was to hot for them so I bought the thermometer / humidity indicator. Oops, inside ambient temp was in the 80s. Time to remove the mats! :doh: Ya ya, so I'm a nerd. :P

I've learned alot in the last week just reading through old posts here and yes I use the search function as well. Seems like most people here are more than willing to help out with quesitons and are pretty friendly, which I appreciate. Thanks for taking the time to respond and help out a newbie everyone! ;)
 
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