Quote:
Originally Posted by FarmerCathy
Very informative thread. I'm planning on selling tomato seedlings among other things next year and this method most certainly will help with space efficiency. I do have one question though. Where do you put your seedlings you have transferred into 4" pots? Do you think it would work to put them in a cold frame set-up or do they still need the heat pads until time for sale?
|
Cathy, I'm obviously not Craig, but heat mats are mainly used for germination, and leaving germinated seedlings on them overly long would tend to make them lanky.
From what I can gather, he germinates on heat mats (when he bothers to use them for tomatoes) inside, then once they are germinated, he puts them in his garage under lights. He also takes them outside a little bit during this stage to start hardening off some. Maybe just an hour or two those first couple of days, depending on the weather, with the rest of the time under lights. Then, when they get their first true leaves, he starts the potting up of individual seedlings to four inch pots. After he does that, he tends to put them back under shop lights in the garage for 2-3 days so that they can recover from the stress of potting up. Lastly, they go back outside to complete the growing on/hardening off.
Also, he has a sort of rotation going, where not all the seeds are started at once.
As for success with a cold frame setup, I guess you'd need to monitor the temps (by keeping a thermometer inside) to make sure it stays in in a good range for seedling growing, and close/vent as necessary.
If you germinate in the cold frame, or get the seedlings out into it as soon as they germinate, there should be little/no need for hardening off from the sun. The wind, however, might be a different matter.
Hard to say if you'd even need a cold frame in your climate if using the same method, with you being in California and all. I guess it depends on your avg temps at the time you'd normally start seedlings there.
Another option is to have a multishelved metal rack(s), and just wheel seedlings into a garage at night if needed. That's what I do after I am done with the lights, but then, I only grow a few hundred seedlings a year, not a few thousand.
Hope that makes sense.