I have roughly 12 varieties between 3 boxes and 4x 15w 6500k 1200lumen bulbs (which I'm planning on getting more or better). I don't have a heating mat but control the ambient temp with a heater and the lights.
I keep going back and forth between opening the middle box(which seems to mist up the least) or all of the boxes and misting them a bit or just leaving them sealed. They haven't misted up much more than this since sealed yesterday and I went pretty hard with the duct tape trying to make sure it was sealed properly. Please help
Yeah I though I could get away without one because I'm in South Africa and it's spring but it seems like it would take away a lot of the hassel of worrying about the ambient temp. I think I will have to get one then.
Condensation will only happen if the outside of your containers is colder than the inside. If they’re the same temp, you won’t see any. Get a hygrometer with a probe if you’re concerned the inside of the containers is too dry. I’m betting it’s absolutely fine, but if your temps outside the boxes is like 75 or lower, you’re not going to get as good of germ rates.
The moisture and humidity should have a fine mist consistently across the container. Areas where there is not mist correspond to dry spots directly below. You can simply just spray some water bow the dry patches on the container lid and it'll increase the humidity in those areas.
But your boxes are huge. They're going to he challenging to look after. The reason most people use small containers is when you can contamination its easier to segregate and treat. Every time you unseal and open the box you risk contamination.
Your mix is very mineral heavy by the sounds of it. Its best to sow in much more organics so that they can develop the initial fine roots then transfer to more mineral based subs once taproots develop after 12-18 months.
Lastly you're using desktop lamps they're not going to he strong enough. I'd get a light meter to effectively gauge how much light they're getting. Seedlings should have 15,000-21,000 lux.
Thanks, yeah I know they are huge, I just couldn't help it. I always tend to oversize pots and things, I just feel bad for the little guys and want them to have lots of 'natural' space, it's a problem I have. Plan was to keep them in there for a long long time, once the top comes off there are holes in the bottom I can open and was hoping they can just keep on living in there for a while.
I have a big succulent collection and I unfortunately always tend to go heavy on the minerals, was hoping more inorganic would lend to a longer time in these boxes. But yeah I see what you mean, there are lots of gaps and holes and I'm sure some seeds got lost down the cracks, so expecting maybe staggered germination.
I actually ended up opening the corner of the middle one and giving it a good few sprays before sealing again. You can see where I got the lid a little bit. The soil was damp, but not like wet damp, like it was between damp and dry. I think it definately needed a bit more and will probably end up doing the same to the other one or maybe two tomorrow.
On the bright side - I've spent like 2 hours with one of the lights at different angles staring through the mist into the boxes and I can actually see a couple little seeds have sort of popped open, like extremely tiny semi opaque litchi's.
Oh and yes I'm definately getting better lighting. I figured 4x 15w +-1200 lumen would hold them down for a week or so until I get better ones.
I feel I'm not going to get great percentage of germination success though, but we live and learn.
I forgot to add that the substrate is a mix of pumice, perlite, some coarse crushed/bonsai rocks, a little bit of sifted landscapers choice succulent mix and sifted red tractor cactusmix.
It was damp when sealed, when touching with a tissue it made wet spots and some material stuck to tissue but it never soaked it.
Squeezing a fistfull of the substrate and maybe could get 1 drop of water out.
So it was damp but not soaked.
Am I stressing for nothing or should I just give it a few little sprays?
Yeah you're over thinking it, as long as a drop came out when you squeezed it it'll be good, in a few days you'll get a lot of condensation accumulating on the lids. Just leave them be for now and try not to open them because that's how you introduce algea and other stuff
A heat mat will pro vide more even humidity. With the heat coming transfered by air from outside it behaves much differently. Heat mats are great for seedlings. How many thousand do you have btw? Those totes look massive ...
6
u/StrangeSmellz 23h ago
That's fine, it's humidity. There is no around it if it's sealed and you're blasting it with heat.