Humidity - To cover or Not to cover

You followed the seed planting instructions and gave them a home to get started in. Now what?

Seeds need moisture in order to germinate. This moisture is what softens to protective cover and allows water to get inside and tell the seed it’s time to wake up. So how do you ensure your seeds home has the right amount of moisture to get things going? Depending on how the seeds are planted, you have several options. The easiest are seeds that get covered by 1/4” or 1/2” of soil. You can mist the tops to ensure they don’t dry out. This may have to be done on a daily basis. With seeds that are surface sown (pressed into the top of the soil and not covered), this can be quite difficult. depending on your specific environment, the seeds may not get enough consistent moisture to soften the cover so no moisture gets in to tell the seed to wake up. The other potential issue is that you provide enough moisture to soften the cover and wake up the seed but then right after is wakes up, you miss a day and the seed dries out.

The best way to ensure your seeds have just the right conditions for wake up and grow is to use a humidity dome. A humidity dome is a cover that does not allow moisture to escape or slows the rate at which moisture reduces. You can buy a purpose made humidity cover for you seed trays. You can use plastic wrap over the egg carton, you can use just about anything that will keep the moisture inside your container.

Once you see that your seeds have woken up, it’s time to remove the humidity dome. You don’t want to leave the humidity dome on after germination as it could prevent your newly germinated seeds from growing. It could also introduce other issues that could cause your germinated seeds to die. Once the seed has germinated, that is an indication that it now has a root system developing and it will be looking for water below the surface and high humidity levels are not needed anymore. Now it will be time to bottom water your new born plant.