New sprouts, more planting, new toy

I had to pick up some more seed starting soil and they had a bunch of indoor starting sets with heat mats, so I decided to pick one up.  Having the Venus Fly Traps, the banana plants and the Birds of Paradise, plus the canna lily seeds, which all would grow best at 25°C or so.  Since I am using regular fluorescent lights and plastic covers, not enough heat is generated and stored to really get the trays above room temperature, and I'm also a little impatient waiting and hoping for some sprouts from the tropical plants.  So the heat mat should help.

Just a little thin mat to put under the tray and plug in.

I have been using it a couple days now, and I put a thermometer in there this morning for about an hour just to check how hot it gets.  The thermometer picked up an ambient temperature of about 30° so I unplugged it for now, and after less than an hour, the temperature is back down to about 20° again.  So I will probably just run the heat overnight and then maybe let it sit at room temperature during the day.


Also, I finally am seeing sprouts from the hostas that I planted in the new year.  I had originally just planted one seed per cell, which was a mistake.  On average, you should plant about six seeds in expectation that one will grow.  So, two weeks ago when the daylilies sprouted, I had planted a bunch of hosta seeds into the tray after none had sprouted.  Seeing sprouting after two weeks now means they are growing well, and right on schedule.

This picture is a little poor because of the light refracting off all the water, but it shows
pretty well how many hostas are sprouting.  It also shows how erratic they can be:
Some cells are sprouting several plants, others literally have none.

Here you can see the hosta sprouts as well.
I planted the remaining stock of canna lily seeds too.

 Those little sacks are Jiffy pellets.  they are compressed dry soil in little sacs, and when they are exposed to water, they soak it up and expand and become self-contained little cells for planting.  I planted my remaining canna lily seeds into those pellets, at 2 per cell.  The seeds required some preparation because the coat is so strong.  I used pruning shears to nick the shell and scrape an opening for water to penetrate.  I played around with a few seeds by completely stripping the shell, or by cutting it in half in a way to not damage the embryo.  I'm curious to see if they grow or grow faster or anything.


 The daylily sprouts are doing well, and I'm hopefully that the seeds I had planted last week will have sprouted by this time next week.  This goes along with a lot of seeds I had planted last week.  I have the two trays of daylilies and a container full of hosta seeds.  At a two-week standard rate to sprout, I'm going to check on them probably everyday this week to see some growth.  I'm also going to pick up some styrofoam cups, as they were recommended for growing the sprouts once they get big enough to split off.

A week after they had sprouted and needed to be moved, here are the daylilies.