Solanaceae, the heat lovers

Finally time to break out the heat pads and start tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos.  

I use just regular old heat pads (the kind used for human injuries) instead of seed starting mats.  As long as it isn't a sunny day (in which case, I usually don't need the heat pads), the medium setting generates a toasty 80-95 degree temp range that will germinate the tomatoes and tomatillos usually within 3-4 days time.  Peppers take about a week.

I make a sort of "mini greenhouse" out of used, plastic, salad green bins with lids.  Lids are off or ajar during the day (again, depends on how sunny or cloudy it is under the skylight) and back on again at night to keep heat in as temps drop into the low 60's in our house.

This year, in anticipation of providing for 4 families, I've started 24 tomatoes, about 15 peppers and 8 tomatillos to be planted out, weather permitting (and fingers crossed) mid-late May.

Most of the above method is fairly old hat for me.  However, the new twist is that instead of using coco grow pellets, I've made mini "cow pots" (see February post) out of paper towels.  These will be up-potted into the larger "cow pots" as soon as they get a set of their true leaves.

Here's to making tomato sauce, using hopefully our own tomatoes, green peppers, garlic and onions, come September......