Heat Tray To Germinate Seedlings
Last year we invested in a heat tray to try to assist us to get better germination rates of our fruit and vegetable seeds. Unfortunately last year we bought it a little too late (in October) and we didn’t get the best benefits from it’s use but this year we have been going full stream ahead. For us in South-eastern Australia it is great to get our seeds germinating from about mid August onwards.
We currently don’t have a greenhouse but have it as a project on our to do list, so the heat tray is the best way for us to warm the soil and get germination happening ahead of nature. The main reasons that we use the heat tray are to increase germination rates which in the long run means less effort in raising seed (and thereby in seed collection also), extend the cropping time by allowing an early crop and also to allow us to grow fruit and vegetables with long growing seasons which may not reach maturity using nature (seasonal temperature) alone.
We get the best early cropping results with tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, squash, corn, pumpkins etc.
We really need the heat germination tray to allow us to grow melons (rock melon, honeydew, watermelon etc) and also it really helps for capsicums, eggplants, chillis etc as these foods all have really long growing times to produce the fruit / vegetable some well over 100 days. So without the head start we found we just ended up running into autumn and the weather cooled just as the fruit / vegetable was coming on line and we didn’t have much success.
Heat germination tray for germinating seeds. Speed seedling growth for planting out.
We sprout many of the seeds in toilet rolls on seed trays and then transplant them into larger pots and keep them indoors during August and September. Usually by October the soil is warm enough and the chance of frosts really low so we can begin planting out our large seedlings into our vegetable plots.
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