| |
|
Entry Date
|
Nick Name
|
Location
|
|
Saturday, December 28, 2013
|
|
Princeton Joe
|
Princeton Kentucky
|
 |
Entry 449 of 449 |
|
|
|
|
|
Heres something I did a few weeks ago. Found a couple electric blankets for $5.00 ea. at a consignment shop and tore them apart to harvest the thermal wired units from them for growing in hot beds. I have the cable unit in the pic here in soil in the basement set on a setting 5 out of 10. Soil is in the mid 80's. I've got the connectors 6" out of the soil up off the surface to keep them dry. Unit will shut of automatically after 10 hrs so I have them on a timer that shuts off for 20 minutes every 8 hrs to make the units reset on their own timer. Theunits are thermo controled theirselves so its not like they run 24/7 anyway. Both units have 60 ft of cable loop rated at 180 watt 120 volts. Again they are from used electric blankets. This is not written in stone and I am being very careful as not to submers any controls or connector parts in moisture. The cables themselves are very well made to put up with moisture if you get my meaning. So far the plants are doing well with them. I have two double rootstock AG plants going into a single Carolina Cross scion growing very well. I think my lighting could be better but so far so good on the fusion of the grafts and no splitting or desease at this point. I'm not saying these stripped electric blanket units are better than regular ground cables, their not but so far what I'm using them for is working. Also with the other set I direct germed some seeds using just the cables in the soil and every seed germinated fine. My basement soil box set up is 8ft x 6 ft, small but good testing. The plants are growing in 5 gal buckets with no bottoms sitting on the 6 x 8 12" raised beds and the roots are far out in the lower bed areas which is good and I have had minor root surfacing issues. With the help of 1/4 round trim laid across the soil surface and plastic of that the soil stays warm but yet air can flow across. Will be a pain when time for tap roots come along,lol. All in fun and learning.
|
|
|
