"Ralph D." wrote in message
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"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
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"dps" wrote in message
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You don't describe exactly what happens to your plants. Is it damping
off?
You can reduce damping off dramatically by just putting a fan in the
room
where you're starting your seedlings. The air circulation will remove
humid air at the air-soil interface where the damping off fungus takes
hold of the plants.

Along with air circulation, it helps to add some bottom heat, using
heating
cables made for this purpose. It doesn't eliminate fungi, but it
accelerates
sprouting. If the seedlings reach a certain size more quickly, they'll
often
"outrun" the fungi.



I've tried to think up a poor man's solution to bottom heating for a while
and never really came up with one. The new area would have a gas heater on
the floor with the market packs sitting in foil trays so that the rising
heat might warm the metal faster and that's about the best I can think of
at
this point.

The poor man's solution also happens to be the cheapest way and the best
way. Check your yellow pages for some nurseries which sell seed planting
supplies. There are inexpensive heating cables made to be placed in the
bottoms of plant trays. You install them in the trays with duct tape. You
put a layer of gravel on top to diffuse the heat, and your six-packs on top
of the gravel. The cables are waterproof. The trays I've used for years are
light green, thick plastic, not the floppy ones that garden centers
sometimes let you take when you buy six-packs.

If you call around and get teenagers who put you on hold and forget you, go
to plan B: Call this sto
Harris Gardens
585-45-1985
Ask them if they have the long green trays in stock, and heating cables. Ask
if they'll ship you some. They're nice people, so I'm sure they will. I only
glanced at the cables last time I was there, so I can only guess, but I'll
guess you'll pay $12.00 per tray/cable combo, plus the cost of duct tape,
gravel, and perhaps a timer.

Or, you could go to www.gardeners.com and spend an arm and a leg on heat
mats, which start at $38.95. They look nice, but.....try the above, first.