On March 25th (I know, I know - a little late-ish), I started a few seeds indoors. I started them in eggshells - some giant bell peppers, Sweet 100 tomatoes, and miscellaneous other tomatoes.
They are in a seedling flat, with a plastic dome, with a warming matt and a single flourescent gro-lite bulb (28" long) that has the plastic cover on it. Planting mix was Schultz's starting mix.
My house - and especially the room my plant shelf is in - stays in the high 50's to low 60's this time of year, and the actual temp in my little "greenbox" hovers around 80 degrees F.
As of yesterday - March 28th - almost all of my seeds have sprouted. One of the Sweet 100's has a sprout that's 2" tall!
I don't remember sprouting this quickly ever before. Is this crazy?
-T.
Three days to sprout. Is this normal?
I think you are leading a charmed life. :) Congratulations!
If you haven't already done it, you need to remove the dome.
Tomatoes also like it cooler than peppers so they no longer need the heating mat, either.
I have the dome propped open now; there are other things that haven't sprouted yet. It's much cooler inside with the dome open like that; I'll remove the mat when most of the things have sprouted.
If it was me, I'd take that 2" tomato out and pot him up, directly under the grow mat. And I agree - that was FAST!!! My seeds are sooooo slow this season. I'd about given up on some of them, but each day a few more stand up to be counted.
As a comparison....My broccoli started coming up in about 2½ days and now the first tomatoes came up in 3 days with most not up yet. Lettuce took about a week.