start to sow indoor but outside...

[Sarico]

hi everyone...
i have a big problem... last year was the first week of January when i start to sow the first seeds of tomato, pepper, aubergine, etc, but i start them indoor in a nice and warm windowsill....that room now is a baby romm that we had in September and of course my wife don't want that plants, seed tray and compost in that room... so the only place that i can start indoor is the politunnel (that's what i meant outside).. now i know the politunnel give few degrees extra and protect the seedling from the wind but still jack frost can get in there at night... so when can i start to sow all this delicate plant? can i chit the potato in there aswell?...i know i can start with broadbeans and peas in there but for the rest i have no clue...any suggestion is great
thanks a lot

[bearded bloke]

Could you get one of these & use it inside your polytunnel,make it's own micro-climate type of thing ..

[BertieFox]

Buying an electric propagator can be absurdly expensive but building your own out of timber is very easy. Make a box base and buy some soil warming cable, or one of the heated mats that you can get from places like Two West and Elliotts. I fastened my cable with thick sticky tape to the inside of the base and then placed old surplus floor tiles over them and a shallow layer of sand. Ideally you need a thermostat but as a 60w soil warming cable uses very little power, you can leave it on most of the time. The top part you can either make with polycarbonate sheets stuck on to a wooden frame, or I have actually used old pieces of glass cut to size and glued on to the wood framework. The top cover is a sheet of polycarbonate. This works perfectly in getting the temperature up to the 25 to 30C you need to germinate aubergines, peppers and tomatoes with ease. Such a propagator in a polytunnel will give you a good start with seedlings and you can keep a good number of them in small pots until it is safe to put them off heat but still in the polytunnel. I have a second 'propagator' which is just a box with hoops made of alkalene water pipe bent over and covered with plastic sheet which is put over the top on cold nights.

p.s. Seeing the other suggestion above, the trouble with any greenhouse within a greenhouse type of thing is that while it will add a degree or two of protection from frost, with a succession of dull cloudy days the temperature will fall as low inside the inner one as on the outside. You really MUST have some form of heat, and the cheap heat inside a closed propagator is the easiest way to get things going.

[Kristen]

Still got to grow on the plants, once they have outgrown the propagator, and they will need Heat and Light ... I doubt you will be able to put them in polytunnel until April.

Bight the bullet and buy plants, in April / May, from garden centre and let the growers do the first 6 weeks growing for you?

(I think January is early for Tomatoes. You can start much later than that and still have great plants. But Peppers and Aubergines I too like to sow in January, and mid Feb would be my last-sowing date.)

Do you have a garage? Another route is to insulate a box / cupboard of some sort and put grow lights in it. Its probably cheaper to light the box than to try to heat a greenhouse - and allowing for the cost of getting electricity any distance to a greenhouse down the end of the garden its a lot better! and in a lousy, low-light Spring like 2013 the light from a lighting rig is a big help.

Going to cost £100 or so for the lights, and they may be as much as 200W (T5 tubes, LEDs would be less) for a 2' square lighting rig. 200 watts for 18 hours a day (doesn't need to be that much, but that WILL make them grow well!) is about 60p a day I think

[Kristen]

One answer to heating in a greenhouse-inside-a-greenhouse is Tee-lights. Only need them on cold nights, and you need ones that will burn for long enough. Put an upturned clay flowerpot over them to act as a "radiator". I recommend using a Max/Min thermometer so that you know how many candles you need on a cold night!

Worth looking at a small greenhouse fan heater too (and putting that inside the greenhouse-in-your-greenhouse). If it only comes on for a modest number of nights then its relatively cheap (compared to Paraffin or Bottle gas).

Cheap greenhouse fan heaters have lousy thermostats though, and waste energy overheating (or worse, kill plants under heating before thermostat comes back on), but for something as small as a 4-tier jobbie it is probably "not that expensive"

Lots of guesswork involved in guessing the cost though.

[RaptorUK]

Buying an electric propagator can be absurdly expensive but building your own out of timber is very easy. Make a box base and buy some soil warming cable, or one of the heated mats that you can get from places like Two West and Elliotts.

I've been thinking of doing this recently . . .

BBC - Gardeners' World - Toby's 30 minute fix - heated propagator

[SlugLobber]

I definitely wouldn't be trying a polytunnel alone at this time of year. You could possibly get away with straw over the seed trays to insulate them, but that's just an idea, I haven't tried it. Not sure how much fungus you'd get, either!

To give you an idea of vulnerability, one year I left my potatoes in the shed and lost about 70 % to frost. I think you'd lose the lot in a polytunnel.

[Veggielot]

It comes down to the temperature, unless you have someway of raising it I would leave it for the moment. It is difficult to resist the temptation though.

[Sarico]

thanks for all the advice.. i think i wil start at the end of march in my electric propagator then move them in the small blowaway that i will move in the polytunnel... in case of frosty night i can move the seedling in hte kitchen at night considered that at that time we don't need to cook any dinner lol...in the morning i'll move them away back in the tunnel... unfortunally my boss at the restaurant has throw away a fridge display where he use to put all the desert.... that was good considered the white light and putting a heating rod could make a giant propragator... ii will see to make something next year considering all the busy stuff that i have in my life at the moment...this year i think i will spend more time as a daddy with my baby then in the plot....