Our Seed Germination Room

So we needed to start our seeds, a lot of seed, like 4500+ seeds.  How to do it one might ask.  First the problem of "bottom heat", heating the soil from below.  Like I said we're planting 4500+ seeds that's a lot of room to heat.  Our friend Dick Larsen came to our rescue.  Dick is the Chief Engineer, Receptionist, Assembly Foreman, and Mascot of The Vegetable Revolution (contact info at the end).  Along with a little help from my less than mechanical brain, we came up with, what we think was a great solution.   First off I must let you know that our mantra through out this process was "we don't want to spend much money" It was great walking through every home improvement store and hearing Dick say "Michael! We don't wanna spend a lot of money!" I grew to love the way Dick got gruff every time I wanted to spend a little of the money I didn't have. 

In case you were wondering what the two clowns that attempted this project here is a visual that you might want to forget.



First we started with a 4x8 sheet of plywood and cut it in half.

After we cut the sheet of plywood in half we framed in the outside edges with 2x2s. We did this with screws and a screw gun. 

After we had it all framed up we added the tubing for the hot water. 

We used 3/8" tubing, We started with 25 feet per table.  We later added 25 more feet for better heat disbursement.

We created a weaving pattern to move the heat around evenly.  We anchored that tubeing with standard electrical wire anchors.  We had to cut out an opening at the end to run the tubing out of once the cement had been placed in the table.


















After construction we moved them into my basement where we had a special room set up.  When I say special I mean that we had 6 brand new buckets to place our tables on.

Next is our pump and heating units.

This is what we started with.  A 120v hot tub heater it was out of a hot tub that someone was getting rid of.  FREE!

We added the FREE pump that came along with the FREE heater. To come up with something that looks like ET.











To taper the large out flow out of the heater to our 3/8" tubes out friend Craig (whom we gave a hard time every time we went in to Ace on Central) helped us find a solution.  Some pipe caps with some 3/8" hose thingies tapped in to them.

Next it was time to put it together.

Once it was put together is was time to add the cement

Roscoe had to help too!

At this point w actually added 25 feed more of tubing to the tables but we were in such a hurry to get it done we took zero pictures.

Now the pictures stopped completely.  We hadn't really planned on blogging about this.  But we hooked everything up and ran the system and the hot tub heater stopped working.  Dick came to the rescue and built a small water heater with a thermostat.  We have been maintaining a consistant tempeture of around 85 degrees.  We started our seeds and they are on their way.

Dick Larsen is a local Minneapolis foodie and he is the future of sub-irrigated container gardening.  he can be reached on Facebook @ The Vegetable Revolution

You can contact Buchanan Street Farms of Mike Smieja at: Facebook or Twitter or Email