I have my shelves in an unheated pantry. Granted we don't usually have southern temps this low (high 30's, low 40's) in our part of the country, but for the past several months they have been. As most of my seedlings are started in this unheated pantry, I noticed that the fluorescent lights themselves produce a goodly amount of heat. I raised the temps under those shelves recently to 70 degrees - not because of the seedlings, but because I wanted to heat up some fermenting sauerkraut - which needed that heat to continue to ferment. Anyway - I also use this approach for my seedlings. I enclosed the area around the seedlings with a cloth to further harness the warmth - and noted the thermometer registered near 70 degrees. Certainly warm enugh for broccolli and cole seedlings. You might try putting up some shelves, attaching fluorescent lights underneath, and see what the temp reading is. Bet it would work - unless your temps go way down - but another trick yet - I usually put my sprouted seedlings into yogurt sized cups, about 8 in all, which are then placed in a plastic shoe box (mostly to catch water). These boxes are easily obtained in various variety stores. A 2nd box placed over the top will create a greenhouse effect. I'll bet your little tads will be as cozy as a bug in a rug with this approach - and won't upset things in the OTHER nursery. Just my 2 c's. Bejay

If it ain't broke don't fix it. Few people are using spot lights so what we say for lights doesn't necessarily apply to you, and nearness to windows, walls, and even the color of your furniture and carpet make a difference.

Congratulations on your sproutlings!! May they live long, bloom-heavy lives and grow to be colorful additions to your flowerbeds. It's easy to get impatient when you provide the best growing medium & optimal growing conditions but it's best to stand back once that's done and let the seeds do what they do best...sprout when the time is right. Tomorrow I'm going to be planting ornamental dogwood trees I grew from seed via winter sowing--they're nearly 3 ft. tall and well branched so it's time to get them in the ground and let them do their thing. It'll be bittersweet in some ways--I'll be planting them beside the stumps of mature dogwoods that snapped off 12 ft. from the ground back in the October snowstorm and had to be cut down.

It could be. What you haven't been told is sometimes seeds can take a year or two, sometimes longer, to germinate. Much depends upon the condition of the seed when planted. Yes, you want the containers opened. Think about it. In Nature, the hips fall and rot, exposing the seeds which sit on the ground in the litter mulch. They frequently germinate all by themselves. Or, some critter eats the hip, digesting the pulp and fibers, passing the seeds encapsulated in "guano" where they fall to the ground and germinate. Sometimes, if the conditions have been appropriate and the plant in good shape, they sprout quickly. If the plant has been stressed enough, the seeds dried out long enough and conditions sufficiently unsuitable, they wait. I was sent fresh seed from R. Xanthina two years ago. I planted half last year with no seedlings resulting. I'd transplanted the seedlings surrounding them in the seed table and knew which were neighbors to the Xanthina seed. Suddenly, there were Xanthina seeds germinating in the other seedlings, the second year after planting. This year, I planted the second half of the Xanthina seeds in the tables. There are two seedlings from those seeds right now in the tables. Banksiae seeds are known to usually require two years to germinate. Several years ago, I had one germinate from freshly collected seed after only four months under soil. None of the others germinated before I reused the soil. This year, I planted a large amount of fresh Banksiae seed I collected in the garden. There are three seedlings right now from seed which has been planted only three, nearly four months. Bottom line is, you can set the stage for optimum germination in attempts to stack the deck to get what you want, but they are going to do whatever they decide to do based on a variety of factors. Fortunately, many do as we expect them to. Good luck! Kim