The greenhouse I help at lost all its seedlings in one night, heres what changed

I walked into the community greenhouse last Tuesday and every single tray of peppers and tomatoes we started six weeks ago was completely dead, wilted and brown. Turns out the new volunteer accidentally left the heat mats on full blast overnight without the thermostat connected and it cooked them at 105 degrees. Has anyone else dealt with a sudden temperature swing killing a whole batch of starts like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

ramirez.sage3d ago

Oh man that is brutal. Something really similar happened to my buddy Carla last spring with her home setup. She had this DIY heat mat thing she built herself for her pepper starts and the temp controller glitched one night while she was asleep. Woke up to find the soil temp was pushing 110 and all her little seedlings were basically steamed in their trays. It was like a hundred little plants all wilted over at once and she said the smell of cooked roots was awful. She tried saving a few by watering them with cool water and trimming back the dead leaves but none of them made it. She was so mad she threw the whole heat mat setup in the trash and bought a proper one with a digital thermostat that has an automatic shutoff. Now she triple checks the connection every time she plugs it in.

felix1553d ago

Wait did she have like a temp probe in the soil or was she just guessing based on the mat temp? I've seen those cheap inkbird controllers fail in weird ways where they lock on full power and dont even respond to the probe anymore. Also what kind of peppers was she growing cause some varieties are way more sensitive to heat stress than others. My habaneros can take a beating but my jalapenos get all droopy if I look at them wrong.