Seed Starting without electricity

I haven't read any of the responses, so someone may already have said this, but in your place, I would be figuring out what I could grow without starts.  What will grow from seed planted into the garden?  You may have to only use some of the really early tomatoes, but it is possible to grow quite a lot without starting seeds for transplanting, you just have to make some adjustments.  My mother gardened in growing zone 1 in the middle of Alaska without transplants (and without traditional warm-season plants such as tomatoes and cucumbers); I gardened in growing zone 5 in the middle of New Hampshire for years with only a few transplants, and could have managed without those.  You may have to find other varieties than what you are used to and adjust your expectations, but it can be done.

We watch David the Good's videos on gardening in Florida and the Deep South (I've learned a lot from him even though that's not the climate we live in), and one of his motivations is to try to reeducate northern transplants so that they will grow what is suited to that climate, rather than trying to garden the way they used to in the north.  Someone may need to start doing videos on how to garden in the north without the modern technology that so many people have come to rely on.  

I am in a zone 4b myself. We have long winter nights and very cloudy days most of the winter, so it is not a great environment to start seeds even with a good sized window looking South.
On my seed packages, it always indicate when to plant the seed and also if it can be planted outside directly. For all those that can be planted out directly, I don't try to plant them inside. I have noticed also that the time gained ,if any, is negligible, and definitely not worth twisting myself into a pretzel to make it happen. To get those early potatoes, you might consider planting potatoes in the late fall and place a very thick layer of mulch. I was surprised to find that a number of potatoes that didn't get harvested but were covered deep actually survived our winter. I gave them no special treatment other than adding a good layer of dead leaves on the entire garden beds.
I start making sweet potato slips at the end of March beginning of April and reserve the flats and growing mat and grow lights for tomatoes and peppers. I know that attempting to do this commercially would be quite a challenge and I feel for you. [Customers want what they want when they want it, irrespective of possibilities.]
Things such as squash, pumpkins all the cucurbits germinate quickly, so in my shorter season I select cultivars that can mature faster: They will not need to be grown inside if they can fruit in the time allotted outside.
I have changed from growing a lot of garden veggies to emphasizing fruit trees.
We have to make tough decisions sometimes, and what you had to and still have to deal with will make it a challenge this year: I would love to grow sweet cherries, green gage plums, figs, persimmons and bananas but it just can't happen here and now with what I have so I put a cross on those. I do have a persimmon that is persisting though, so I am not completely giving up. The local wild cherries may be grafted with scions of sweeter cherries or non clinging plums, and I have to try that too, but on a minimalist scale.

Speaking of hot beds, with the cold frame on top, brings to my mind Elliot Colemans Four-season gardening (and he is from a very northern very cold region of the United States). It would probably be a great resource.

What I remember out of it is layer upon layer of different heat conserving materials, added as fall progressed into winter.  

So hot bed with a cold frame over it inside a greenhouse is what I mean by the layering.  Row cover also included, or hot bed frame over another hotbed frame….

Seems like a person could devise enough heat retaining layers germination.

Another thought to keep in mind:  heat speeds germination in some plants, retards it in others.

Desmond Sharpe wrote:It boils down to your budget. A kwh costs about $0.27 a heat mat uses about half a kwh a day.

Also from western MA here. A kwh is now $0.41 $0.31 as of Jan 1. That may be going up even more shortly. Non-electric options like the RMH are probably what ill be implementing this year, for next years crops.

We just had a geothermal heatpump put in to get off oil, and its still leas than half the price of oil to heat the house, but we will likely put a RMH in the basement gaming room to help offset the electric bill, and make that room cozy for game nights too. I will likely start seeds there and then make a makeshift one in the greenhouse once thats up and running too. Wood is free here, just gotta get it. Some people will even deliver for free, so thats about as cheap a heat source as you can get!

Edit: corrected electric cost

I recently put my bell pepper seeds In a wet paper towel folded over and I put it in a freezer bag and keep it in the sun during the day and in no time they start  sprouting.  After that, I put them in an egg carton with soil to grow so tall and then transplant them in a pot.

I don't know if you have any idea who your customers are?
I was thinking if you sold to grocery stores, or restaurants, or even individuals, you might be able to reach out to them with a proposition for future sales. A bunch of silent partners that would insure your success, and their future purchases.
I think many people would be glad to help, I don't even live near you, but I would be willing to help. It wouldn't be a lot, but how do you eat an elephant?Maybe a crowdfunding endeavor?
I was driving through northern Philadelphia one time, there was a place called Victory Gardens. Little plots rented for city folk without their own place for a backyard garden. Maybe you could rent out some of your big hoop house?

I'd focus on two things myself...

1 - I'd be looking at solar thermal solutions.  I recently picked up four solar water heaters on our local digital market for something like $150 for the lot of them.  Plumbing them in to something to warm seedling trays wouldn't be hard and doesn't have to be expensive.  builditsolar.com has some great plans and you could make some for cheap or free depending on how creative you are and how close your proximity to a town with resources.

2 - Insulation.  Doesn't have to be good.  Doesn't have to look nice.  Doesn't have to be new.  Doesn't have to be permanent.  Put things on the walls that incorporate air gaps of 1/2" at minimum and 1" at maximum.  The flimsy ass plastic window coverings you can tape to your window are actually almost as effective as a second pane of glass because the insulation value is in the air space.  Bubble wrap works well too, and you can add multiple layers of either.  

Possibly you live near enough to a town that has a junk shop at the local dump.  They will frequently have great supplies for this - possibly even cheap bags of insulation offcuts.  Used carpet from a digital marketplace could be great because often free and, thanks to the rigidity and heft, it wouldn't be too hard to develop a system to hang them from the roof to the ground and maintain an air gap between layers.

Also, I can't find it with a quick search, but not terribly long ago I watched a video on YouTube where a guy built a structure around the non-sun-facing side of his greenhouse that he filled with leaves and they just composted down over the winter and gave him some usable heat - which is just another take on what many people have already suggested.  

Oh, and what's your heat source inside your house?  Could you heat stones or bricks or water for water bottles to take to the seedlings knowing that you'll never want to do it again but if it gets you through this winter you'll have time to adapt?

I looked up some of your posts, (not all of them though) but haven't found the way I used to employ, before we installed 10 kW of PV panels, having no problems with shortages of increasing prices of electricity. All you need is a glass pane, old window or a sheet of bubble plastic, some wooden planks or some OSB, plywood or other boards, straw bales and AN (ammonia nitrate). Build a simple box of whatever materials you have on hand, place it in a dirt dug up to 50-60 centimeters deep, place tightly straw bales in it, pour AN all over, a couple of pounds per bale, and wash it into the straw with a lot of water. The straw has to be soaked with water. Then cover straw with a layer of top soil and wait a couple of days for it to heat up.
At the beginning the temperature may be too high for vegetation, but steadily in reaches the right level. Then you can seed whatever you like. The process lasts for a couple of weeks, long enough to grow proper seedlings. Of course, you need to cover the box with transparent material to let the light in during the day. You can use some blanket  to cover everything after dark, to keep the heat in.

Where I live has a short season, and I have definitely found that starting seeds early makes a huge difference in the amount of produce I get from long-warm-season plants like squash, melons, peppers and tomatoes.

I usually direct seed a couple of winter squash plants at the same time as I transplant out the month-old seedlings, and I get 5 (or once even 7) large fruits from each transplanted plant, but usually only one mature fruit (or rarely two) from the direct seeded ones. Similar with the muskmelons. Both of these don't ripen until soon before or right at the first frost, and a couple weeks of head-start makes a huge difference in numbers and volume, though not much difference in time of ripening.

I spent nothing on my seedling set-up. Cucurbits start in tetrapaks with holes cut in the bottom, and tomatoes, peppers and other smalls start in yogurt cups with holes cut or melted with a hot nail. For seed-starting medium, I mix finished worm compost with coarse sand from nearby, and rinse it through with fresh water a couple of times (catching the leachate to use as fertilizer in the greenhouse).

I have several large tea trays that hold seedling cups in spring, and serve as dehydrating trays in summer and fall.  I put the seedlings trays on a small patch of electric radiant heated floor in my house. As soon as they germinate, I move them to sunny windowsills in the daytime. I have an attached solar greenhouse that heats my house so I move them to the greenhouse for the day if I know I'll be around in the afternoon to bring them back in, or windowsill if I might not be home in time. As things warm up, they stay in the window or greenhouse continuously. I start tomatoes and flowers earlier, so by the time I start the cucurbits, the tomatoes and flowers are out of the way.

I'm thinking of setting up a table in front of a big sunny window in a different but colder part of the house. I could use the electric mattress heating pad in March when it's no longer needed in the bed. This might reduce the lugging around. But I have to devise a way to moderate and store the heat, since I won't want to cook the plants!

Rebecca Norman wrote: I have an attached solar greenhouse that heats my house so I move them to the greenhouse for the day if I know I'll be around in the afternoon to bring them back in, or windowsill if I might not be home in time.

I'm thinking of setting up a table in front of a big sunny window in a different but colder part of the house. I could use the electric mattress heating pad in March when it's no longer needed in the bed. This might reduce the lugging around. But I have to devise a way to moderate and store the heat, since I won't want to cook the plants!

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Rebecca,
I would love to see your greenhouse and how it is attached to your house for heating it. Any pictures?
I think it's great how you explained the difference in performance of seed starting inside vs direct sowing.
Your mattress heating pad's heat storage is an interesting dilemma. I know there are temperature controlled plug-ins that shut-off the electric, figuring out where to place the sensor to keep a good consistency would be the key. I imagine covering the pad with plastic and using water filled jugs of some sort, we have cats so I thought of the cat litter containers.
Here is one of those electric temperature controls, it has a turn on temperature and a shutoff temperature.
https://a.co/d/7e6lrdV

Mike Feddersen wrote:
Rebecca,
I would love to see your greenhouse and how it is attached to your house for heating it. Any pictures?

Here's a recent photo, when we were putting on the plastic this fall. This plastic is in its 6th winter now. We take it off and fold it up indoors out of the sun from May to October every year.

About moderating the temperature on the heated mattress pad, I've collected a lot of scraps of marble and granite from construction sites (they're popular here in India not only for kitchen counters but for floors) and I think maybe a layer or two of that would hold heat and be a level surface. I guess I'll try it this spring.

John Indaburgh wrote:Nissa - Horse boarding facilities usually have lots of manure they need to get rid of. You can find them by ,[42.335545594484174,-72.35501346240234],null,googling. They don;t very often do any agriculture; so don't have a use for the manure. They give it away to anyone who will haul it. Some of them will load your truck; also for free. Try to find a source that has hay or nothing used for bedding. These days most are using wood chips or wood shavings for bedding; which will give you the least heat.

Hauling is a problem if you don't have a pickup truck. Finding someone with a dump truck for rent isn't easy, probably easier if you hire the truck with a driver which would be prohibitively expensive and only possible if your manure source will load it for you. You can possibly find free pallets at a storage facility. If there's any laying around they are usually free.

Some other ideas are fire wood; which would require a chimney, stove, and lots of labor plus an interruption of sleep.. Also I knew a fellow near here that hauled free used motor oil from garages all year and used it to heat his commercial green house every season.

I wish you luck not losing the coming season.

edit the link...... No luck!

That's a great idea.  I just saw a similar idea using wood chip.  Those are both really doable, I think.

Nissa, beware the wormers, herbicides, antibiotics, fungicides  and other pesticides in free manure.  It may or may not have these components, but if they’re there, you may be struggling with their effects for years.

They may destroy or disrupt the composting process which generates the heat, survive the composting process and then kill soil insects like dung beetles, and destroy soil food web.

They may or not be present in the manure available to you, but someone earlier in this thread suggested a few simple tests.  My impression was try to grow plants in it (after appropriate “dilution” if it’s fresh), see if it kills fungi and or insects.  

I receive free horse manure and bedding from my neighbor, and I have asked her to not bring me any manure produced by her horses within a week of worming.  I still feel at risk, because she doesn’t see a problem with worming, thinks I SHOULD worm my goats) and it would be easy for her to forget…

We all have to decide what to do in our circumstances, I just want to provide the alert where ever free manure is discussed among permaculturists and organic farmers and gardeners.

Good luck to you 😊

Carla Terry wrote:Would you be able to use a heating pad. I have done this before. I don't believe it uses much energy and may only need to use for a few hours a day in a sunny window with maybe a plastic top over it. You would need to water daily with a good spot of spraying.

They use a TON of energy actually.  We've used them for several years here - mostly for our microgreens.  The heat mats use way more than the grow lights.  Way, way more.  That's why I don't want to do that anymore.

I realize this thread is 2 months old now, and you've probably figured out a plan for this season. But a couple things to ponder- It seems like given the high cost of electricity, it might be a good option to separate heating and lighting. Low cost (to operate) LED grow lights (maybe with solar panels charging batteries to run them at night? I realize that's another capital outlay though), but waste oil or Rocket stove/RMH heat. Have you considered (or would it be a possibility) a walipini style greenhouse? I know a full on Walipini doesn't work well that far north, but the earth sheltered concept is still valid, and especially so if you can incorporate some passive solar gain during the summer to keep the ground from ever freezing. Any chance you have a south facing slope?
Another (maybe or maybe not doable for you) option is introducing a heat source like chickens or rabbits, that could also be a profitable 'crop'. Or maybe team up with someone wanting a space to raise them, giving you free heat and them a needed location?
Anna Edey, who wrote Solviva, was/is in Massachussetts, that book may have some useful info for you. It's a neat reference about stacking functions to grow a lot of crops in a smaller space.