Mexican Hat germination

Hello everyone,
I've got two flats where I put lots of Mexican Hat seeds in, laid the seeds on top of the soil, put domes and set them on a heatmat. This is something that I was hoping would give me enough established seedlings by May or so. Instead of direct sowing them or wintersowing them.

my question: Has anyone tried this method?

One year I did the Maximillani perrenial sunflower like this and then just cut the pieces off in chunks and planted those and they did great.

Can you guys share what you did?

Just updating: one flat has almost fully germinated (what a shock).. this would be the ones with red and yellow colored flower. Fresh 2007 seed.

The flat with the solid yellow cone flower has not shown any signs of germination yet. It has only been two days though. This seed was very old seeds, about 5 years old.

update: the flat with the yellow coneflower seeds has started germinating sporadically (surface sown also).
A.

Gourd, I sowed some Mexican Hats pretty much the same way, seed starting soil in a flat with a dome, on a heat mat, set to about 91 degrees. I only turned it on for about 3 hours twice a day and I had sprouts in 3 days. The ambient temp in the house right now is about 70 to 75, so the seeds were never cold- I don't like like cold, so I don't want them to be cold either! These are fresh seeds I just got a couple of weeks ago.
Cathy

That's good to hear, these little plants are now about 1 1/2 inches tall, going on their third set of true leaves... I used a diluted fert of Kelp and poured that in the bottom tray, so far, so good.. I don't know when I'll pot up though, that is a whole lot of seedlings.. the 72 cell tray has about 5 plants per cell, so I've got to come up with something pretty soon. I didn't think that many would germinate. I want to plant them in clumps outside in a large area.

here are both trays.. the one on the left are the red/yellow Mexican Hat, and the one on the Right are the solid Yellow color ones. I plan to use several in pots as fillers too...

Your seedlings look great! Wowee, that's a lot of filling...and planting!

I was thinking of filling some of the ceramic pots we got for the courtyard.. with these and some echinacea plants.. and whatever else I can grow by then..lol..(we got alot of pots, urns, and more pots)