"Dan L." wrote:

In article . net,
"Dave" wrote:

"sherwindu" wrote in message
...
I kind of figured it would affect my electric bill, but a recent increase
from
ComEd
in the Chicago area has made it more evident that raising plants from
seeds can
be
very costly. For about one month, I had two double flourecent shop lights
and
about
six small heating pads going to germinate my seeds. My electric bill
almost
doubled.
Guess there is no way around it, but makes one think twice about growing
veggies

and flowers from seed.

Sherwin D.



Have you considered a small hothouse, size to suit your needs? Shoebox to ?
in size. Sun does the primary warming. Airtight.
Dave

In some areas of life I just feel fortunate (this is one of them). I do
just fine without heat pads. I put my seed starting kits on folding TV
trays above the floor heat registers and all of my south side windows
have heat registers in front of them. Seems to work just fine.

Unfortunately, I have no floor head register, but wall mounted forced
air ducts. I am going to be stingy about using my heating pads next
year. As soon as I see sprouts, I'm either going to turn down or turn
off the heating pads. It never gets that cold in my crawl space.



I do not have grow lights just designed for plants. What I do have is
two ott natural reading 18w lamps. I just love those lamps, so much
easier on the eyes when reading. So on cloudy days I puts the lamps over
some of the seed kits. Unknown If this truly helps the plants?

I use two shop lites each with a regular florescent and a grow light, to give
the most broad spectrum of light.



I usually end up killing my plants during transplanting

Now there I have no problem. You should carefully pry up the plants trying
to retain as much original growing media, as possible. Plant your spindly
seedlings
deep, as they will generate new roots. Not sure exactly what is your problem
with transplanting?

Sherwin



As for the high cost of seed starting -- I am finding the cost of just
driving my car to the supermarket cost as much as a good tossed salad.
I cant wait until I can get a good meal from walking into my own back
yard.

Enjoy Life ........ Dan

--
Email "dan lehr at comcast dot net". Text only or goes to trash automatically.