Hi bmbrown88! Welcome to the Winter Sowing Forum! You may not know it yet, but you have stumbled into one of the greatest gardening places in the world! The On Topic discussions here as the WS forum are about starting seeds outdoors in milk jugs, no heat no lights. Really! We let mother nature be our guide and do the work. There are lots of members who start their tomatoes using the winter sowing method. I'd like to invite you to read the FAQs and join us. There are lots of helpful friendly people who will get you going. If you are really focused on growing under lights, I'd like to introduce you to the Growing Under Lights forum and the Seed Starting forum. Their discussions focus more on what you've mentioned. If you're not sure, take a look at a recent winter sowing thread called "New and Addicted all in One Month!" I'm glad you walked through our doors and hope we'll be seeing a lot more of you! Seedmama Here is a link that might be useful: Winter Sowing FAQs

I'm going to keep my potted brugs in my attached garage. Even tho I'm in a mild-winter area, it does dip below freezing most winters and once in awhile will go to the mid-20's. I'm going to tent off an area adjacent to the house wall, using plastic sheeting...sort of a room within a room. I'll put a lamp with a low-wattage (40W if I find one)light bulb inside the tented area and turn it on whenever the temps are going to dip to low 30's or less. I'll have a small electric heater at the ready, just in case. I might add, I'll keep a couple of ends open on the "tent" to allow for air circulation, completely closing it only when I need to hold in heat. If I see any signs of spider mites, etc., I can close things up to spray effectively within the tent. I would try to make sure your temps in the garage don't go below mid-30's (F). If a set-up like mine would achieve this, you might give it a try. Weigh the cost of maintaining heat in this manner against another storage method. An unheated basement is often recommended..or an unused room in the house where you can reduce the heat. It also sounds like a number of people have been happy with taking cuttings and keeping them over the winter using the Bucket-O-Brugs method. Good luck! Patrick

Forgot to mention the varieties: 1 brown turkey, 1 Chicago hardy and one no-name get from a local grown fig tree (owner generously gave the rooted branch but he doesn't know the name either).

We have a tankless heater mounted outside on the wall. I wrapped the pipes below the heater with a heat tape and insulation. Typically I plug it in around the first freeze and unplug it now-ish (March usually being last freeze in GA). The tape is only about 5 feet long. You want to use a self-regulating tape. Basically, the higher the temperature, the less heat it puts out. The concern is that a non-regulated tape (aka "constant wattage") could overheat and start a fire. When I specify heat tracing for industrial plants for work, my company's standard is to use both a thermostat and a self-regulating tape. It's a belt-and-suspenders approach, but it also minimizes the power usage when you have lots of heat-traced pipe, as well as the potential for a failed cable to cause a fire. Personally, if you have a pretty long run through your garage (thinking 10 to 20 feet, not sure if both hot and cold water), I'd get a thermostat too. It will cost more, but that's what I'd do for a longer run of piping. McMaster Carr and Grainger are the two places I look for off-the-shelf parts. McMaster will provide the cable to the length you want, and a quick look made me think Grainger had a less-expensive thermostat. That said, Amazon seems to have most everything too. FWIW, Raychem is the typical heat trace cable manufacturer. On draining your pipes, it depends on what the pipe arrangement is. My house has a crawlspace, so the water line comes in there and then distributes up to the house. There aren't any up-over-and-down runs like it sounds you have. There's a chance you could cut in one or more drain valves and get all of the water out, but it's pretty specific to your layout.