Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 5 Entries. Monday, March 10 View Page IT HAS BEGUN! Alright so no pics, but upon seeing someone else doing test seedlings, I figured I better do so as well because I've had issues the past couple years starting my plants. So I used of my 746 seeds from two years ago, promix BX, and one of those cheap heating mats from amazon. Now, based on last year, this seed takes a couple more days to sprout than some others and this one was no different as it was a solid five days before I saw anything. That doesn't deter me from wanting to grow it, but I may start this one a couple days earlier than the rest. My two issues have been heat and the intensity of the grow light. Last year I believe I overcooked the plants with both. So I've backed the light off to about 350 ppfd after the cots were fully out. I've also just put the heater on the floor of the garage and the plant up on a cardtable with no mini or anything. Turns out, my heater is heating the garage air to about 80 degrees when set to 75. So that tells me last year when I set it to 80 or higher in the mini, it was probably too much. Also I believe I had the grow light much closer to the plants than necessary. My meter was over 500 ppfd at that distance as I recall, and it would seem that's too high. So....so far I know I won't be using a mini, and the light will probably be at a greater height so I can get 300-400 on the meter.   Tuesday, March 11 View Page Here's the test seedling. It's a little taller than I'd like but that's because there were a couple nights I didn't have the light on it. Everything looks good so far! In the meantime, the patch has been tilled and I'm getting the soil sample ready to send off. Also my 2493 Wolf arrived that I won at the auction.   Wednesday, March 12 View Page FYI - I have found two squash bugs in my garage. Both in the past two early evenings sitting right on the plant. When I start my actual seeds I'm going to have a bottle of peppermint oil spray on hand as a repellent and I would recommend others in areas where these little b*st*rds are known to be do the same so your season doesn't end before it begins. They can carry the yellow vine disease and if your plant contracts it, it will not set a fruit. Whether or not they pose a threat to seedlings I don't know, but I'm not taking any chances.   Thursday, March 13 View Page It would seem I'm getting conflicting readings when using the ppfd meter on my phone with the built in sensor. I'm now considering that method useless and I would have to get a bluetooth sensor for more accurate readings. So I have gone ahead and resorted to the grow light's manual, which probably should have been the first method. It says that the light should be 24-30 inches up with seedlings so I have moved it into that position. This is higher than I've had it and so we may see some light burn symptoms on that first true leaf coming out. Also I'm using a temp probe to get a better reading on the actual temperature of the garage. Setting my heater to keep it around 80 is proving difficult.....haha. BUT, that's why we do these things. Definitely a good thing I've run this test to find out what doesn't work.   Saturday, March 15 View Page Leaf is looking much better now so it looks like I may have nipped this issue in the bud before it got too bad. This is a 2000 watt light after all so I suppose it shouldn't come as a shocker that it doesn't need to be right in the plant's face to be effective. I'll do another test seedling here in a couple weeks after I get back from spring break.