My Christmas Present

Eugene asked me a few days ago if I wanted to know what he was working on for my Christmas present and I said no, I wanted to wait until Christmas to see the surprise that should have been built years ago (and I must say when he said it was something that he should have made years ago that did get my curiosity up).

So yesterday (Christmas Eve) we were in the barn and Eugene told me to follow him into the seed room. I had kind of forgotten about the Christmas surprise he had been building and thought he wanted to show me the onion progress (as we had just been talking about the onions). So I followed him into the room and lo and behold there was the big Surprise-A heat table so we can start more seedlings and get better and quicker germination. I am so stoked!

The heat/seed starting table. You can see it is a table with sides and has sand in it. The sand is a wonderful medium to grab heat and spread it out (i.e. an insulator). Plus it will absorb any water that gets on it. There are a couple of layers of plastic (which are 6 mil greenhouse film remnants). the flat with soil cones is there just to check temperatures ranges, there are no seeds in that soil

The Thermostat. I believe there is now a thermometer involved which is important as these heat tables can cook seeds and seedlings if not properly monitored.

A heat cable under sand and plastic