My NEW Favorite Seed Starting Method 🌱🌱🌱

There's so many different ways to start seeds that it's impossible to say that there's a best, but there is my favorite. And that's what I'm showing you in today's video. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb, which starts with starting your own seeds. Now, again, there's a million and one ways to start seeds. You don't need to buy anything at all to start seeds. There's very low budget, very creative methods. This method, this product and this sort of technique I really like for the small to mid-scale gardener. Because unlike buying a tray that has 72 cells, a hundred cells, and you kind of have to either plant similar things in that or just prick everything out, these little microcell trays, these sixers will fit in a standard 10-20, but they will also be modular. So if I was to plant, I don't know, spinach and then basil and then lettuce right here, well basil is going to germinate way slower than the spinach, which will germinate slower than the lettuce. And so I can just pluck the basil out when it's ready, pluck the lettuce out when it's ready. There's a couple other benefits on these particular ones that I really like, which I'm going to talk about in a second. But without further ado, cultivate that Like button for an Epic Seed Starting Spring 2021 lesson. And let's get into the video. First things first, let's talk about this tray here, this mini tray. Remember there's a lot of them over here. Now, what is it? Well, it's a standard plastic, but it's a black recycled plastic and it's much more heavy duty. It's polypropylene. So I can squeeze this and it's really not going to go anywhere. I've stood on these before and nothing happened whatsoever. And what you can see also is you've got these holes here on the back that my finger can actually get through. So if I wanted to, I could pop out a tray or a seedling very, very simply. Now you can even see my finger here in this corner. So what are these? Well, these are side cuts that are cut in. There's four of them on each cell to allow for better oxygen and better root development. So we're going to test that out and see if that's true. Certainly seems to be. And then we need to talk about the tray right here. So our tray is a standard 10-20 size propagation tray, but it's an inch deep. It's not two inches deep, which I personally like a little bit better. And why I like it for this application, first of all, 12 of these will fit perfectly in the tray, which is really nice because then you get a standard 72 cell propagation tray, but you can also bottom water, which I find to be a little more effective for seedlings to prevent damping off, to prevent all these different things. So you just plop these in, you're good to go. And again, when you germinate, you can pop something out and supplant it with something else, whatever the case may be. So let's fill this up with soil and get going. For seed starting mix, I think it makes a lot of sense to just grab a bagged mix. That way you don't make any mistakes trying to concoct your own potion of soil. And this is what I would recommend personally. This is Espoma Organics Seed Starting Mix. I've had fantastic results with it. Espoma, we've been working with them for over two years now. Family owned company, great people, great product. And that's why I'm proud to work with them. They're the sponsor of today's video. So let's take a look at the mix and let's fill up these trays. And then finally I'm going to talk about what I'm actually planting. Got our tray and we have our mix. So take a look at this mix. Very fine grained. Got some perlite in there, you can tell. We've got some peat in here and we've got some other additives. There's some mycorrhizal fungal inoculants as well. But I know I'm being a little sloppy here, but just for the sake of example, you want to fill up your trays. When you fill it up at a larger scale, you can just dump it on top and then brush it off. But what I like to do is just get it in here. You do want to make sure that you don't leave it too fluffy. You can compact it a little bit and then we're going to sow our seeds, moisten it up and get going with the rest of the process. So here, I like to give it a little tap just to make sure that I got everything in there. You can see it's a little bit lower than I would want it to be. We'll top it off just a tiny bit and we're good to go. I'm going to fill up the rest of them. Next up we have the actual seed sowing process. So let me start out with this beautiful one right here. This is Romanesco cauliflower, which will germinate much in the same way as a normal cauliflower just ends up looking a lot cooler. So the reason again, why I like this is flexibility. I'm not going to plant 72 of, let's say one variety of lettuce or even one variety of crop. And so let me just go ahead and do six. I'll do six here. You really don't even need to depress the soil or depress the seed starting mix. Two to three seeds a hole, just to guarantee germination. I have a full video on that. And what I'll do now is just gently cover this up. Now there's two options. One that I'm actually favoring these days. Instead of depressing the soil like I just showed you, another way you could do it is to just sow the seed directly on top here and then sprinkle more soil on top and then water that all in. You can also just do something like that to cover the rest of it. You don't have to brush the hole over like this, right? You don't have to do that. I like to pack it in just a little bit. You're not slamming it together. That's why you're choosing the right type of seed starting mix that you don't have to do that. But there you go. We've got our broccoli in, two to three seeds a hole. And then we're going to moisten this all later. But let me just talk about some of the other things I'm starting. For now, I'm going to put the label on top, just so I remember to label it later on and we know which ones we've done already. Next up, we've got spinach. Spinach is the quintessential cool season crop. It works really well in the spring and the fall. It does not work so well in the summer. So you can get it in the summer. I would just say as long as you have relatively mild summer temperatures and you potentially shade it out, you'll be in a good spot. But otherwise, I really recommend just growing tons of spinach in the spring and in the fall. And in many places it's going to survive a nice little frosty frost as long as you cover it up to some degree. So two in on that per hole and we'll keep on moving. Now here's a really fun one. This is actually from one of my friends who got it from Thailand. So this is kailan or Chinese broccoli. You eat it mostly for the leaves and I'm really excited. I mean, I eat this a lot in my Thai food that I don't even cook. My friend cooks it and I eat it, but it's really fantastic. And so I wanted a broccoli style green that I could eat instead of having to wait for the heading up, which of course, I'll also probably plant some heading up broccoli. But let's go ahead and get some kailan in the garden. Next up, we have some basics. This is going to be lettuce in this zone. Again, we're doing this for spring 2021. So we're talking leafy greens, leafy greens, leafy greens. This is Lucid Gem lettuce. Really nice variety. Interesting seeds. These seeds are a little bit fuzzy and larger than your typical lettuce seed. Still a great one and still one that will produce quite well in your garden. With lettuce, what I've found is if you don't have a spot that will support its growth very well, you can just do a half sun and it'll be okay. So if you're in a climate that's quite warm, like my own, I put this in a semi-shade garden as we get closer towards the spring, the late spring and summer because it's going to need that heat reduction to keep it from bolting. Even though typically lettuce is probably going to want at least six hours of sun, you would want to favor heat reduction over sun exposure in my experience. Now we're going to go with the flowers. I've been really having a great time with Cosmos. Does quite well across almost the entire year where I'm at. And so I'm going to sow some. This is potentially slightly early here. This is Candy Stripe Cosmos. You can see why they name it that. This beautiful white to a sort of magenta on the exterior of the leaf. Again, don't need to do anything fancy. Seed starting is really more about not making mistakes than doing really fancy and crazy techniques. Just surface sow these guys. We'll cover them up with a little bit of soil and we'll be good to go. Cosmos is a relatively easy germinator. I find a lot of beginner flower growers, myself included, we could have some struggles germinating some of these flower seeds cause it's just quite different from our annual vegetables. But I haven't had a bad time with it, especially when you grow these easier ones like a Cosmos, Zinnia, a Carnation, a Bachelor Button, a Sunflower, pretty easy germinator. Also a great microgreen crop. This one here is Great Lakes Lettuce. It's a good all around variety. I wouldn't say it's like a showstopper as far as its appearance, but it'll work in most climates and honestly, just sort of a staple to have in the garden. Sometimes I get the urge to grow wild varieties, crazy looking varieties, et cetera. Sometimes you just want a workhorse that's going to perform well and Great Lakes Lettuce is certainly one of those. I like this method. I just like gently depress the soil and just to get the seed to adhere and then I'll stick this in and cover it up with a little bit more. Find that the germination success goes slightly up that way. You guarantee you don't bury it too deep. I would say burying too deep is one of the problems that a beginner seed starter will run into. Now here's an interesting one. These are snow peas. So this is the Mammoth Melting Snow Pea. A lot of people will say you have to soak a pea seed before you put it into the garden, before you sow it. It's really not true. Peas, I mean, just think about it. If that was true, they wouldn't do that well naturally in the wild. They do perfectly fine. You do not have to soak them. You can, it's really up to you. Now this is a bigger seed, so I'm going to plant it at least one pea width deep and then we'll cover. And just make sure you water it in well. If you water it in well, you're not going to run into an issue with germination. The reason people say that is because the seed hole is quite thick and you want the water to penetrate to start the germination process. But again, if you have the right seed starting mix, if you've buried it deeply and you've watered it well, it'll still germinate and it'll germinate almost as fast. I would say you might be a day or so slower, but that was the day you spent soaking it in the water anyways. So you're really not losing too much time in my experience and you're skipping an extra step that just slows you down. As you can see, I've got five more trays to set up. I'm going to do those really quickly. And then let's move into the next step. Our seeds are in. It is time to hydrate the mixture. So what you want to do here, at least for me, what I like is I like to hit it with a mist spray first just to hydrate the top layer. Because sometimes you'll find it might be a little hard to rehydrate just at the start when it's bone dry. And then I will come in, and this is the benefit of the bottom watering. You can just fill the bottom of the tray about maybe halfway or so. And what that'll do is that'll rehydrate upwards through the holes in the bottom of each of these little micro trays. Now you don't have to do that. You could just mist over the top the entire time. Wait till the water starts to run out of the bottom, drain off the excess and you'll be well watered. But this is really key. I mean, you do want to make sure you water this perfectly well, because otherwise the germination process just isn't going to start. So what you'll see here, see how it's a little bit glossy? You just want to wait for the water to actually sink in, which again, when you're just starting can sometimes take a little bit of time. I mean, I can just show you right here. If we do this one, it looks like I just dumped a ton of water on that, right? Like, let me do that. It looks like I just absolutely blasted it with water. But even if I just move it to the side just slightly, I will see, and it might be a little hard to see here, but you'll see that it's not really wet even halfway down. And so that's why you have to wait. Water, wait, water. Make sure it all hydrates up and you'll be in a good spot. Now let's assume that I've watered that up. After this, what you'll want to do is a humidity dome of some kind. Now, I like this little guy right here. It goes right over the top. Low pro. You can pull it off. Anything will really work. But you just want to lock in the moisture for a while because it'll dry out if it's sitting out here like this. And then boom, as soon as the seed germinates, it starts to dry out. It starts to die. You're in a bad spot. It's been a few days now, more than a few days, probably about five or six. And I just want to show you what's going on. So what we have here, these are radish seedlings. You can see some really beautiful root development here. These are actually what are called root hairs. That is not a mold. You can tell because of the way that they emanate out in sort of a cylindrical fashion out of the main taproot there. But I mean, take a look. The root growth is really solid. I'm going to show you a couple of different plants just so you can see. We've got red Ursa kale right over here. Again, really solid root development. You're seeing it also come out of these side slits. These are a little young. So what I want to do is go outside and also show you some of those. But just to touch on, I mean, look at that. That is just fantastic, fantastic development for these plants. Before we go outside and I show you some more mature seedlings that I've grown in these very same trays, just a few little thoughts here. When you're starting seeds indoors, number one, this guy right here, this is an oscillating fan. I highly, highly recommend you use something like this. This one's just a standup fan so it can hit a couple different rows on this system right here. And the reason why is because you're starting your seeds indoors in a windless environment. So not a lot of environmental stressors. When you're blowing air over them in a very gentle way, you're going to strengthen up the stems a bit more. They're just going to be a little bit more hardy so that when you do bring them outside and hard them off, they're going to stand a lot better chance of surviving and in fact thriving. Now the other thing I will say is you really want to make sure that you don't mess up your lighting at this point in time. Now I've done two separate full videos on seed starting misconceptions and seed starting process A to Z. So check those out if you want to. But what I would say is general rule of thumb on indoor seed starting is getting a light as close as possible to your plants without burning the actual plant. So in this particular case, I think I have two 42 watt full spectrum white LEDs. I actually typically bump it up just slightly closer. I'll bring this tray up to about there or so because that's closer, full coverage and it's not too hot for the plant. So especially at this young stage, I will do that. I will typically leave it on for at least 16 hours a day. Although you could get away with going full 24 hours for these seedlings. It's really not a big deal. So if you boost them up with a little bit of extra sun, in fact, eight hours of extra light per day, you can get them growing a little bit faster. So maybe you started your seeds late and you want to speed them up. That could be one way to help do that. But that's enough said about the indoors. Let me show you kind of what's going on outdoors and how easy it is to get them out of these trays. We're outside on the makeshift seed starting array out here. And just one more time, take a look. These are some Lucid Gem tomatoes. A little bit wet cause I just watered them. But things are doing really well. Ratt's tail radish, again, a little wet, but doing very well. So I want to show you how to take them out of these trays now. In this case, we're going to do one of these tomatoes, which it's just not ready to go in the ground yet, but it's ready to get potted up as we call it, into a new pot. And so what I'll do is I'll take this guy right here. And the big finger hole has been really, really nice for this because as long as the soil is wet, you can just stick your finger right in like that. And again, take a look at the root structure. There's no pooling at the bottom, no circling or anything like that. And so now what I can do is just slot it right up and we'll put it into, this is a mixture of native soil and compost. Now here's an actual little trick with tomatoes that I think most of you probably know, but what you want to do is actually go quite a bit deeper than you normally would. So what I can do there is I could bury it like that, right? And that's fine. It actually will do perfectly fine that way. But the real hack to get better soil and better root adherence, and in fact, even grow more roots in the first place, is to bury it a lot deeper. Because basically anywhere up to this point, roots are going to develop from and actually even above that point. But for the purposes of this, you wouldn't want to do that. So let's go ahead and do this. We'll put it in somewhat low, just like that. See how now the top matches roughly. And then we'll just fill around like this. And we're just potting this up because it's still spring. These aren't going in the ground yet, but they do need a little bit more of a home to spread out and develop a little further. So I'll just grab a little bit more soil and we're good to go. And there we have it. A lucid gem tomato is ready for its new home. What I'm going to do now is transplant some of these into the actual beds. So we're here in what I'm calling the back garden, hanging out in the medicinal flower herb bed and, oh, I just saw a worm right there. Nice. That's a good sign for life. But I've got another one of the Epic 6L trays. We're going to pop out some Violas. And again, you can go straight into the ground with these as well. The tomatoes are just a good example for potting up. What I find is really cool though, is you have this almost commercial nursery level plug, which is what the nursery term is for what you're looking at right here, because you don't even need to do much. You don't need to tease the roots out or anything. You can just clear your space out right here and just match it at the soil surface in the case of this plant. We'll probably thin this slightly and compress around the edges. And voila, we have our Viola in here. But what's cool is, for example, let's say you were growing lettuce as I'm transplanting in here. Say you were growing lettuce and you wanted a decent amount of lettuce on a per week basis, let's say six per week for your family or something like that. Well, then you could just plant one of these trays every week on succession and have it rotating through your seed starting system. So like the form factor of the tray for the home gardener who actually wants to grow a decent amount of food, but isn't a farmer, is actually quite nice, I find. And so that's been another reason why these have become my, my favorite sort of system for starting seeds. So as this last Viola goes in, I've got some thoughts, final thoughts on updating seed starting for 2021. Let's rinse our tray out before we reset it for another round, which I will show you right now. One thing you have to do whether you're starting seeds for the first time or restarting seeds as a succession sow is you need to make sure you disinfect and sterilize your seed starting trays. And so the first thing I did was just rinse it in my little makeshift water collection system over here, get all the big debris out. So it looks pretty clean, but again, you want to make sure that there's no problems going forward. So wash it with warm soapy water in a bucket or a basin, which again, is another reason why these smaller form factor trays are nice because you can fit way more of them in a smaller area for a small space gardener when you're washing them out. After that, hit it with some hydrogen peroxide, just a light spray, and then let that completely dry out. Then you can stack them up and store them or reuse them. Now here's just something kind of interesting I want to show you. This is the original sort of industry standard, so to speak, 6L, right? Almost feels like paper. I mean, it's, it's so thin you can see through it. It's not going to last you more than a season, if that, honestly. Whereas exact same size, you've got the slits in the side, you've got the little bottom hole, or actually really kind of a big bottom hole. And then on top of that, it's extremely solid. So I'm going to show you something. Not very safe, don't follow me, but I'm not a very light human being and I can completely stand on this tray with one foot. If I can balance here, let me make sure. Yeah, there we go. So look at this. Look at that. No hands, no feet. That's just staying there completely. So it will last you pretty much your entire life. And that's why I like it. That's why it's my favorite new seed starting system in 2021. It's BPA free, UV stabilized recycled plastic made in the USA. Again, this is not meant to be the full guide for starting seeds indoors and outdoors. I have a video on that already. It's sort of just an amended update on a new system that I really like. So hopefully you enjoyed it. Good luck in the garden, get starting seeds and keep on growing.