Behind on Your Spring Gardening? This Smart Seed Starter Kit Sprouts Seedlings Faster Than Planting in Pots

This year has flown by so far and I, like many other gardeners, have fallen behind on my seed starting. It’s easy to do with so many other spring gardening tasks on my ever-growing to-do list. If you still haven’t started any seeds for your garden yet, don’t worry! It’s not too late.

I discovered a new seed starting setup that speeds up the whole process. The SS-Pro Smart Seed Starter Kit from LetPot helps seeds sprout faster than planting them the old-fashioned way either indoors or out in the garden – even slow-germinating perennial flower seeds.

Of course, there are some drawbacks with this high-tech gardening gadget. But this seed germination station is still a wonderful way to start your spring garden fast – especially if you're getting a late start. I’ll share my favorite parts of using this product, the difficulties I experienced, and what I’d do differently next time for better results.

Stop Waiting Weeks for Seeds to Sprout

If you feel like starting seeds indoors is an endless waiting game, you’re not alone. It can take weeks for certain slow-germinating seeds to sprout. That’s especially true with many perennial flowers, like lavender and lupine, both of which I wanted to try starting from seed this year.

I chose a couple other slow-growers, California poppy and columbine, to test the SS-Pro Smart Seed Starter Kit and I was impressed by how quickly they all sprouted. The flower seeds I chose to start typically take 2-4 weeks to germinate. I figured I’d be waiting at least a couple weeks before I saw any signs of life in my LetPot seed starter, but the first sprouts emerged after only a week.

SS-Pro Smart Seed Starter Kit comes with a 40-cell seed starting tray, water reservoir, vented humidity dome, and soilless seed starting pods. It also has a heated base that you can set to your desired temperature – I set mine to 71°F (22°C).

It comes with a 24W full-spectrum LED grow light panel with a height-adjustable stand that’s attached to the base as well. That way you can move the light up as your plants grow.

The combination of the handy humidity dome, water reservoir that keeps the seed starting pods consistently moist, and the heated base is what really helps seeds germinate quickly.

Watch Out for Mold & Algae

One of the drawbacks of the LetPot SS-Pro Smart Seed Starter Kit is a concern with traditional indoor seed starting as well. My soilless seed starting pods began to form algae and white fuzzy mold on them after only a few weeks of growing.

This is a common seed starting problem because the ideal environment for seed germination, ie. warm and moist, is also the ideal environment for mold and algae to form. Ultimately, damping off – a common fungal disease in seedlings – did kill a few of my sprouts before they got big enough to transplant.

It’s important to allow for good airflow to prevent fungal issues like this. Once your seeds sprout, remove the humidity dome to allow for more air movement and keep mold at bay.

This wasn’t enough for my seedlings sadly. But still, most of them are fine and almost ready to transplant to bigger pots, then finally move outdoors in the garden.

I wonder if using a traditional seed starting mix, like this one from Miracle-Gro, might help prevent algae and mold next time. I’ve had a few issues with damping off in the past when I’ve used similar soilless seed starting pods like the ones provided with this kit. It also said in the instruction booklet to use soil in the seed starting tray, but the kit came with soilless pods so I chose to use those instead.

The other reason I’ll use seed starting mix is because many of my seedlings’ roots struggled to grow into the soilless seed starting pods. The roots started coming up out of the tray looking for somewhere to grow because they were strong enough to penetrate the pod.

Eventually, most of them were able to grow into the soilless medium. But I think it set them back in forming strong root systems for several weeks.

Keep an Eye on Your Grow Light

Another issue I had with the SS-Pro Smart Seed Starter Kit was the LED grow light. After about a month or so, it started going out or turning blue. There are three different sets of lights on the LED light panel: blue, red, and white, which provide a full-spectrum of light to help plants grow stronger.

However, something started going wrong with the light and only the blue lights would turn on or the entire light panel would turn off on its own, even though the control panel said it was on. I’ve been able to fix this by either turning off the entire device and then turning it back on or by pressing down on the light panel.

I’m not sure if it’s a problem with the wires connecting to the light panel or the internal electronics in the device, but it’s not great to walk in and find my seedlings sitting in the dark. They won’t grow very well that way.

All in all, the LetPot SS-Pro Smart Seed Starter Kit helped my seeds sprout much faster than expected – several weeks faster than some of the seed packets said! But it does have a couple fairly important flaws.

Maybe I just got a kit with faulty wiring, but the LED grow light not consistently staying on is a pretty big issue to overcome with a seed starting kit like this. As for the mold and algae, I plan on testing if using a regular seed starting mix will solve that problem.