hey everyone welcome to digging deeper this week on the channel I'm showing
you how to make a simple affordable DIY heating table see the heating table there
and the heating table is important because it allows me to get perfect
germination I'm showing you how to build one and then we'll talk about the impact
and the results that it has I'll show you some of my seating trays you'll see
for yourself it's definitely a worthwhile investment check it out [Music] [Applause]
thank you so first of all a lot of folks have these common uh heating mats there's no really big
drawbacks with them except that they're expensive and if you have a lot of seedlings it becomes to
be a lot of mats and a lot of AC plugs connected together and at one point you know you can't have
20 of those connected together which you know 20 of these is is 40 Flats so that's not a lot and
so that's where the heating table comes in really handy because what it is it's a simple DYI table
made it myself I used Cedar so that it would last for many years but it could be whatever
material you have and then you simply have a bed laid out on styrofoam so that it has a really nice
r value and then you just add one of these These are gutter a heaters and one wire is 80 feet and
that's going to be enough to wiggle back and forth an eight feet long table and so you know the cost
of that is about the same as one of these heating mats perhaps a bit more but it's not expensive and
you know they're simple there's only one AC plug for the whole bench the whole table and then the
other piece that you'll need is this thermostat and this thermostat what's great about it I got
this one from Johnny selected seeds it's an it's a Hydrofarm thermostat and then you have this probe
and you put the probe inside your tray into the soil of one of your of your seating mat and then
you'll set it to the optimal soil temperature and so by doing it that way you have soil that's going
to warm up to Optimal germination temperature and that's going to pretty much ensure that you have
perfect germination in your trays and then from there you know I move them inside my Nursery or
on my my benches in the nursery and then the temperature is at ambient air usually we set
it to 18 degrees Celsius at night the whole idea with this table is just to save a lot of AC plugs
and most importantly to make sure that you have perfect Germany germination in your seedlings
beep beep beep beep beep beep I know a lot of Growers have germinating Chambers or you
know they use old refrigerators that's also pretty cool but you know for me for watering
and to make sure that everything is like really Speck on I like to be able to see
them and you know I've used these tables for a long long time I'm not the only grower using
these tables and they work and they're economical and it's just a great simple economical strategy
and so I'm covering the cables making sure that it's all nice and again the reason why I want
to have wet sand is because it's gonna it's gonna be more conductive to the Heat [Music]
so my last thing is just kind of creating inside again the same same strategy as in here where
I have the greenhouse inside a greenhouse and that's how I I get the extra heat for my Nursery
even though I'm I'm planting uh you know winter greens that don't need to be at optimal
temperature I still want my seedlings to be at optimal temperature so that's why I have the mini
Greenhouse inside the greenhouse and I'm doing the same thing here like on the table I'm gonna set up
like a greenhouse inside the greenhouse save energy this way and these are wire Hoops that
come in a kit for single bed mini tunnels I did a bunch of videos about them you can check it up on
YouTube they're really cool they're really amazing and that just fits really nice and then I'm just
going to put floating row cover over it and that's going to be that's going to be good to go
all right so you see the result of where we're getting with this when you buy seeds especially
if you're buying them from a good seed company like Johnny's or others you'll you'll have the
germination rate of of that seed and so that's what you're aiming for and that's what you should
get and that's what the heating table will allow you to get like we see here in these
trays these are 128 plugs and there's about four or five that haven't germinated in all of them
and that's because we're doing we're you know we're heating we're heating the soil and we're
making sure that it's all moist all the time so that's it for this week and remember there's a
workshop coming up next week on all seed starting strategies I'm showing you all the steps of how we
do it here in the nursery it's free it's online you can check it out on the all the information
the registers on the link below I hope your seedlings are growing well I hope you're getting
perfect germination if you're not this is helpful and if anything I'll see you next time Jay I'm out
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