Hi Janet, I wonder about using a heating mat during the winter to germinate and grow seedlings from California and (I assume) the Cape Province area of South Africa, in California, especially since you live in San Jose where it very rarely drops into the mid-20s °F, maybe once every few years. A lot of S. African, Californian (and Chilean, SW Australian, and Mediterranean basin) [the 5 mediterranean-climate regions in the world] bulb plants don’t really want it to be warm at night during the winter. They kind of expect it to be as chilly as the mid-30s °F and even low 30s on occasion. Because that’s how it is in their native locations. And I know there are some mediterranean-climate bulbs that won’t even bother to germinate unless it gets much colder at night than during the day—which is a characteristic of autumns in the 5 mediterranean-climate regions. I’ve germinated lots of different CA and S. African bulb seeds over the years here in inland S. Calif. and for a few years when I lived in the Bay Area, and I never used and never needed to use a heating pad to either germinate them or grow them during the winter. They also like and expect the winter rains—which is another characteristic of the 5 mediterranean-climate regions. There are only a very few bulbs that like to grow in California winters that are harmed by temperatures below 32°F/0°C, and they either come from places like Peru where it never really gets temperatures that cold, such as Paramongaia weberbaueri, or from some of the Canary or Madeira Islands off the coast of N. Africa, such as Scilla madeirensis or Canarina canariensis, where it gets really cool in the winter but I suspect never actually drops below freezing because the islands are surrounded by ocean water. I have had the leaves of all three species get killed or damaged by frosts in the low 30s °F. Nothing else from those 5 regions seems to care in the slightest about 32° frosts. Anyway, that has been my experience. Good luck! Your setup sounds really nice. --Lee Poulsen San Gabriel Valley, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a Latitude 34°N, Altitude 340 ft/100 m > On Nov 25, 2023, at 12:04, Janet Hoffmann via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: > > I recently built a bulb bed in my San Jose, CA backyard based on information from this group. > Hopefully my growing collection of S African and CA bulbs will do well there. > It is not heated and our night-time temperatures are getting into the high 30’s F so I have the starter flats set on a heating mat with a timer set to run from 10pm to 7am. _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…