My seeds have germinated. (But not all)

Here you can see the inline vent fan.

I added a little electric heater to keep things a little warmer for the nightshades. The little orange thing in the picture is the thermostat. It turns the vent fan on at 78 and off at 70.

This shows the temperature at ground level.

After 19 days the soil temp at 4 inches is 95 degrees.

 As you can see I have had good germination. The chard, scallions, pimiento peppers, tomatoes, and egg plant have done the best. I am running the air temp close to 80 which is causing, so far a failure with the leeks and Cole family plants.  The bed soil temps have run much warmer than I expected. Next year I think I will start about February 15th. That would allow me to run the bed at cooler temps closer to 70. Then later on I could bump things up to 80, or have a separate bed for the night shade heat loving plants. The outdoor soil temperature is 31 and next week we should get a night of 18 . I am still covering it at night with a blanket and it looks like the night temp inside drops to about 65. So far purchased tomato seeds have not sprouted, but the ones I have saved have done great.

2013 HOTBED PLANTED

I battled wind, rain ,cold, and sleet to get my seeds planted today. It has been 12 days since I put in the manure, packed it down, watered it and put compost on top. The soil temperature has been 110 degrees until it finally cooled down to about 80 degrees today. It was 38 degrees air temperature at the time of planting. It is supposed to warm up this week, but until then I have placed an insulated blanket over the top. I also have a thermometer laying on top of the soil so I will know what the temperature is at ground level.  I planted about 50 linear feet of seed.

I would have liked to have gotten some seeds in a week ago, but it was too hot. It might be a little early for the tomatoes and peppers, but I put them in as well.

Hot bed prepared and ready to go. Ready to plant seeds.

Here you can see I removed the manure I had been storing in my pit. Then I began to fill , water and tramp it down as I went. The hot bed is 3 feet by 12 feet. It took three pick up loads or three cubic feet of manure. Then I took compost and screened it through hardware cloth. It took about half a yard to fill it with 4-5 inches of compost to start the seeds in. I raked it smooth and put the covers on top. What I have read is that in 7-8 days the weed seeds will have sprouted. The bed will have heated up and cooled down to a temperature suitable for seed germination. After the weed seeds sprout, they can be killed and the garden seeds planted. So some time next week I should be able to start seeds. Today it is snowing very hard and we might get 8 inches, so I finished just in time.

Hotbed/Hothouse progress

We have an ice storm coming and I wanted to build the hotbed structure before the lumber got covered with ice and snow. Right now the ground is dry here but it was about 25 degrees outside. The official soil temperature is 26 degrees, and next week it is supposed to be pretty cold. I covered both sides of the windows with plastic to have an insulation layer. I still want to run electricity to it, and have a vent fan to keep it from overheating, and a little electric heater for back up heat. I have an insulated blanket to cover it on real cold days or nights. The insulated blanket is what concrete workers use. About February 26th is when I want to fill it with manure and soil.