When to leave the hydration dome

[enchant]

With six fresh inches of snow on the ground, it's planting day!!!

One thing I'm not sure about is when to pull the seedlings out of the heated hydration dome. The problem is that they don't all come up at the same time. I've got them segregated in 9-each cell packs, so once a few have sprouted and the rest are still underground, is it best to pull them out of the dome at that point, or can I leave the sprouts inside to keep growing taller, giving the late-bloomers more time to hatch?

[brownrexx]

I don't know what a heated hydration dome is, but I have a plastic dome on top of my seed starting trays and I take it off as soon as the sprouts emerge so that it does not stay too moist around the seedlings and encourage fungal growth.

I make sure that I only plant like items in the 6-pack cells so that they germinate at approximately the same time.

I never plant tomatoes and peppers in the same 6-packs because the peppers always take longer to sprout.

[enchant]

Originally Posted by brownrexx

I don't know what a heated hydration dome is

I have your typical plastic container that looks like this:


I have the bottom enclosed in a cardboard box with a heating pad in it. I separate the pad from the bottom of the plastic with some spacers. I'm calling this setup a hydration dome.

I make sure that I only plant like items in the 6-pack cells so that they germinate at approximately the same time.

I also segregate like items in that way as well, but reading in my past years' logs, even within the same species, I'd have a few sprouts coming up after three days and others not coming up for four days after that.