As of this weekend everything is off the heat pad and under the lights. I added a second light fixture to what you see in the photo. It turns out that some things germinate readily, like tomatoes. Others require the help of heat, like hot peppers. I transferred two of the tomato plants to an Earthbox self watering planter on the front porch. The rest of the tomatoes will be given away Monday. Some of the peppers should be ready for the garden in a week or two, some might take a little longer.

The potatoes are growing like gangbusters. Hopefully I will have plenty of spuds this year.

My success at seed saving potatoes has thinking about saving seeds from peppers and tomatoes, but first I should see how they turn out.

As an aside, I've been reading about expanding on the self-watering planter. The same concept has been applied to raised bed gardens but probably not well suited for large scale or commercial applications. A few articles can be found with a google search. I haven't seen much in the way of published books though except for one Kindle. I'll wait for that one to be a free download. I did find one undergraduate capstone project touching on the subject but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Self-watering raised bed gardens, also called wicking gardens, is a neat idea when one has room for more than just a planter like an Earthbox but not enough room, need or desire for a larger garden. I think they would be well suited for small space and urban applications.