So you want to lower the heat with a resistor? That's a waste of energy and the resistor should be a very high power one.
You should use PWM to control the heating (or just turning it on and off to get an aproximate temperature). The temperature could be measured by a cheap linear sensor amplified and connected to your MCU ADC. The program is simple; when the temperatures is lower than the one you want, you turn on the heater, and you turn it off when you reach the required temperature. I don't understand why you need different resistor values.
About the timing control, you can use the MCU timer and some variables to count the time (use crystal oscillator if accuracy is required). Then the temperature range can be modified with one condition: Day or night. You must define those conditions, I mean you have to put a determined time (hours and minutes).