Start Seeds With Us: Seedling Mixes, Varieties, and Special Tips

We are here, we're chilling in the backyard. What we thought we would do, grab something to drink, make yourself a cup of tea, make yourself a little toaster strudel and start seeds with us. Or just chill while we start seeds. It might not be time to start seeds in your area, but this is going to be effectively us starting and chatting about what we're both starting this season and why we're starting it now. All the different varieties that we had talked about in a prior video, we're just going to do. So let's go ahead and get started. What is our sort of starting stack here? A lot of people are going to be like, what are you using to start your seeds, right? So we're using some of our own products, actually, the Epic six cell trays. And actually we have come out now with the Epic four cell trays, which we'll show you in a second. But Jacques, why don't you tell us about your magic hermit approved seed starting mix? So what I like to do is just basically get a high quality potting mix. And then I usually will sift it to like a quarter inch hardware cloth just to get big sticks out. And after that I like to throw in a little bit of worm castings and some azomite. The idea being that worm castings and azomite will give that little bit of nutrition. Like it's not really an NPK level nutrition, but just a little taste. Just enough. Yeah. Basically to give that seed that little. It's kind of like the, um, the LaCroix approach to starting seeds where you just give it that taste. You know, where like LaCroix pomplemousse is like a grapefruit once was thrown through the air near this factory. And that's how minimal the flavor is. But anyway, so that's Jacques' mix. We have our famous seed starting boxes here. They're certainly not our idea. A lot of gardeners have propagated this method of storing seeds. But from the video we did recently, we have, some of those seeds are in already. So I have my stuff in from Johnny's Selected Seeds and then we've got a special delivery from our friend Brigette over at San Diego Seed Company. I'm still waiting on my peppers from Jim. Refining Fire Chilies or Super Hot Chilies. He has a special package coming out to me cause I wanted some and he said, no, you're getting double the amount. And so I'm not going to say no to pepper seeds, but let's just go ahead and get started. What are you going to start with? So right now I'm going to play it safe and guess that it's going to be a colder spring. So I'm actually going to, I guess not say. A little risky. I mean, so last year I kind of went a little too hard on the tomatoes, peppers early. And it was a very chilly, not chilly, but like overcast, not very warm spring up until like June. We both did that actually. Cause I had a crop of tomatoes. My second planting of tomatoes did better. Exactly. And those are the ones I started when they should have been going in the ground. But I was starting them then. I had a huge crop of those. And the ones that I planted in February to season up for March planting or a little, maybe early April planting, just, they literally, I mean, so they were in the cells and they just sat here doing nothing. Yeah, straight up. And then when it warmed up, they're like, Oh, it's time to go. So. Yeah. So I'm going to, I guess it's not safe cause I'm going to go for more Brassicas and we've been getting these little Santa Anas. So it could backfire. I could lose everything. But I just got these new varieties and I want to try them. And most of these are heat tolerant. So I'm going to do some of that. I'm going to do one tomato to kind of start me off, like a paste tomato, something easy. So I'm going to do a bunch of flowers. Yeah, I'm going to do a lot of flowers, but I'm coming in with the Allium King as I've dubbed myself. I'm coming in hot with a Navachan F1 hybrid bunching onion. Very, very ecstatic about this one. And the way I'm going to do it is my own way. It's my own propagation method here. No, it's not. It's actually akin to a Charles Dowding sort of module sowing method where what he'll do is there. Let's let me grab my own tray here. What he'll do is he'll come in and he'll put like seven to 10 in one spot. And then he'll either harvest them out or he'll just plant them out like that. And they'll kind of bunch out this way and they'll harvest them as it comes. So that's probably the way kind of thing. Something like that. Yeah. It's a lot of flowers actually. You're going a lot of flowers there. I need some color in my life. It's getting a little boring over there. Jacques has been going through a depressive episode. He needs a little color in his life. Yeah. I need that little boost. Well, we got Epic Chickens at the house now. They're actually inside right now hanging out. So the color has returned to my life as well as I am now a father of six, soon to be six. Soon to be six. A lot of you might be wondering, how do you label your seeds? Make sure that you don't lose track of them. I'm actually not in love with this method, I will be honest with you, because we are using single use plastics here and these are just little, you know, whatever labels from whoever. Very flimsy. Not very proud of these. But we are developing a label that we think will last forever and actually will laser etch with some of the important things that we think you should write down. So for example, Jacques, you're writing down, it looks like you've got some parsley going on here. Or no, that is Ivory Princess Calendula, excuse me. Yeah, sorry, that's my handwriting. So what I like to write down personally is the species, the variety, the date of planting. That's sort of your minimum. Yep. But I also sometimes will write like the zone I'm planting it in the garden, like back or front or raised bed one. Yeah, that's if you want to get a little bit more fancy here. The other thing I like to add in is I'll actually go through and put the initials of the seed company on the tag so that for instance, if I have like a spotty germination or something like that, I'll know exactly where I got it from and then I could troubleshoot a little bit. Maybe it's old seed, something like that. That's a great call. Yeah. Cause I will say there's some seed companies that I've used a lot in the past that I won't name names, but I don't use anymore because I've seen the germination rates just become so poor. And so sometimes it's like maybe you'll notice that like six out of 12 of your flats are perfect and the other six aren't. And you could trace it back to that seed company by just looking at the tag. Yeah. So it's just a nice thing to keep track of. For these onions, Jacques, I'm doing a little sprinkle over the top play. And then actually something you can do is you can not fill these all the way up and you can just fill them maybe with like a quarter inch gap and then just sprinkle over the entire top. It's actually something I learned from Bridgette at San Diego Seeds. She's like, don't poke holes anymore when you're starting seeds, which is why I just didn't. Just do this, tap down and then add some soil on top and you don't even have to worry about that. So that's probably what I'm going to do here. Yeah, that works really well too. I really like doing that. It's also just faster honestly. When you're starting as many seeds, yeah. When you're starting as many as we're starting, the crows have come in. You hear that? Hopefully you guys can't hear that. But sometimes a hundred plus crows will be in the backyard and I have to like guard them off from my potatoes and my koi and maybe my chickens in the future. We'll see. I don't think they eat chickens. But anyways, let's move on down the line here. A hundred's not an exaggeration, by the way. It's not. No, it's actually an understatement. Sometimes there's 200. It's pretty wild. I will run out. Sometimes, I thought there was like an earthquake because they were coming on my roof, sitting on my solar. And it was making this noise that sounded otherworldly. And then I realized it was a hundred crows on my roof. That's so funny. So I came out and I screamed at the top of my lungs and they all flew away. I've also seen him do this. It's not an exaggeration. Yeah. I mean, if you're coming at me, if you come at the king, you best not miss. You better come correct. You better come correct. And they didn't. So anyways, coming up next for me is certified organic lettuce from Johnny Seeds. This is Dragoon OG, which I have to be honest, doesn't sound like you're growing lettuce. If you know what I'm saying. It doesn't sound like you're growing lettuce, guys. But I am. Okay. And it's not the devil's lettuce. It is lettuce. Straight lettuce. Dragoon. So what I've done this year, Jacques, and it sounds like you've kind of done the same, is you've gone a little bit more towards hybrids instead of heirlooms. Not all the way, but you're, you used to be exclusively heirlooms. I used to, I had this like dogma, right? That I had to go heirloom seeds. But when we're dealing with limited spaces, um, it's nice to have some of the extra protections you get from hybrids a hundred percent. And it's, it's not to say that there isn't an heirloom out there that'll do really well in your area, but it's a matter of finding them. So my play now is to basically do a mix of hybrids and heirlooms. And if I find that heirloom that's just fabulous and works really well, then I'm going to keep doing that. Yeah. But for instance, this year I'm doing more hybrid tomatoes, but I'm only selecting ones that are described as having good taste. Yes. Yeah. If I'm growing a tomato, if it doesn't taste good, then why am I growing a tomato? What's the point? Yeah. Well, so we're a little different. I mean, I'm certainly coming around to your, uh, way of being where you're growing for. The hermit life. The hermit lifestyle is a real lifestyle, guys. And I'm building so much in this place that I pretty much am a hermit already. I don't leave this house that much. But Jacques grows for flavor. I grow for uniqueness and variety a lot and intrigue. Um, but now that I'm consuming a lot of this food, I am growing for flavor too. So I just put in ivory, ivory princess calendula from Johnny's. And then I'm coming in with a zeolites calendula. And I'm coming at you with Pacific beauty calendula. That's a really good one. This is a very, very pretty one. Um, and calendula, if you don't know, it's not just beautiful. You actually can use it for all sorts of different uses. Now, am I going to say it's medicinal? I'm not going to go as far as to say that personally. I don't have that expertise, but a lot, a lot of people do use it for those purposes. Um, and so it's something you should certainly look into and, you know, hopefully we'll have a grower here on the channel soon that is a little bit more expert at that kind of stuff and can speak confidently on that. Cause, you know, guys, we're not, Jacques and I, I certainly wouldn't call us expert gardeners. We certainly love to garden and we do it a lot. So we probably know more than the average person, but, um, you know, we're always learning. Yeah. I don't think you could really be an expert anyway. There's so much to learn. It's not possible. It really isn't. And that's comforting. I know. Honestly, once you accept that in your life, then you're good. Yeah. You will never be an expert. You will never learn everything. And that's the beauty of what we're doing here. Yeah. And then so I, the calendulas, uh, like, like Kevin just said, like I've picked them and put them in tea before, just, just because I heard that you can do it. And it has like a nice flavor. It's sort of a, it's very light, but when you mix it with other things, it's nice. It gives a nice color and it looks cool. Yeah. So a lot of the stuff I bought this year, I'm actually putting like a sort file over here. I can't plant it yet. So, right. You know, I've got, um, a popcorn. That's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Some of these tomatoes, I actually think it's, I'm just not going to start. Um, it's probably a little too early. I will show you guys how we'll start those. We're going to start them in the Epic four cells, not the six cells. And Jacques has a bit of a different method there. I think both are probably valid. Um, but I've got another corn. I'm not going to start American Dream. So while I won't start most of my tomatoes, I actually will start these guys here, these Sungolds. So Sungold is an F1 variety. It's a hybrid variety, but I think many growers would agree it's probably one of the better cherries you're ever going to have. I mean, that's a tasty little, little baby boy. I mean, these guys are very delicious. Jacques actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you overwintered a Sungold, right? I've been picking them and they're still delicious over the winter. They're not as sweet, but they're great. And I'll tell you what, my dog Tefra is a connoisseur. She won't eat store-bought tomatoes, but if I give her a Sungold, she's going to be back at some point. You have a bougie dog. Yeah. Your dog is bougie. She's also eating for flavor. Yeah. So here's the thing with these. Sungold F1, this is a bit of a pricey seed. So, I mean, I looked in that package. It says minimum 40 seeds. I would say probably maximum 40 seeds in there. It's definitely not many. And so I'm not going to overseed here. I'm going to go two per hole. I just want to guarantee germination. But, uh, you know, these were, I forgot how much, but certainly weren't the cheapest tomatoes that I bought. So you really want to be conservative with some seeds. And then there's other seeds where they are so inexpensive, even if you're buying a good quality seed, that it's fine to kind of broadcast like with carrots. Oh yeah. They tend to not be super expensive. And also there's a lot in the packet. Just let them, let them rip. Yep. You know, and we did that in the front yard this year and over the winter. Yeah. Absolutely incredible carrots. Incredible carrots. I just did a Hungarian bluebread seed poppy. Wow. And, uh, when you do the poppies, it's nice to, you want to sprinkle it just on top and you don't really want to bury them because they need the light to actually germinate. Yep. So don't bury, sprinkle on top and you're good to go. So I grew, the first poppy I ever grew, went into the deep end, grew the amazing gray. Oh, that's such a nice one. I got that one from Baker Creek that year. I think it's everywhere now. Yeah. And it's a beautiful poppy. Really? And I learned that is, the poppy seed is so tiny. I mean, think about lemon poppy seed muffin. That's what you're growing. It is so small that you're right. Surface sow and like barely sprinkle anything on top. Maybe just enough to kind of make sure they don't blow away almost. Yeah. I kind of just mush them down. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Actually an interesting thing about the sun gold is that a lot of people think that the genetics for it are actually kind of going out of control and that the true sun gold is actually getting harder and harder to get cause they've lost the lineage that they're using. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it's interesting. It might be something that's not entirely a true sun gold at some point. A lot of people are copying it now. Well, I'll tell you this. I went on a tour, top secret tour in 2019 of seed companies in California. And that is a thing that happens is you create, if you create an F1 hybrid, there is a time at which you can't really propagate the mother and father line enough or the mother line's enough. And the genetics of the mothers, or the parents, excuse me, the parent line starts to degrade. So you can't actually make the F1 anymore. It's not going to be like a guarantee. And so what they end up having to do is find new parents that they can restart that on. And so maybe the sun gold, it's either that or you stabilize that thing all the way down. Right. And that's equally difficult, equally difficult. Okay. So I'm planting right now, easily my favorite zinnia, potentially of all time forever. And this is the queen lime zinnia. So this, this guy, it's absolutely stunning. It really is. The structure is great. And that's the crazy part. The structure is incredible. And they, they almost have two life cycles. What'll happen is you'll get that initial, right? And you're like, Oh, it's kind of this flat top little thing. And then it goes, nope. And underneath there's tons of petals that come out and bush it out to like this big, big head. Like that big or something. Yeah. And then the color is on another level. So these guys I will slightly depress, but nothing too crazy here. I'm actually also doing a zinnia. This one's from San Diego sea. It's called a dahlia mix. I guess they're bred to look more similar to a dahlia. They have more of that kind of intense ruffling. I would say they kind of, I mean, I don't know if I would call it dahlia-like. Yeah, we'll see. Kind of, kind of. Um, it says it has double blooms of every color in the rainbow. We'll see. I'm sold. Sometimes with the zinnias, I'll either lay them down flat or since they're pointy, I'll just point like poke them right into the soil, pointy end down. Why don't you do the poke and I'll do the flat? Cause I already committed to flat. So let's see what happens. It's kind of nice cause then you don't have to do anything. You just push it right in. And that's a good depth. I would say guys, don't stress about starting seeds. There are some things that you really can mess up. Like for example, I don't know if you guys know this, but Epic Gardening, we've had a podcast for five years, every single day. We just had Regine who has a YouTube channel, 150,000 subscribers, Asian Garden to Table. 100 plus Asian vegetables she likes to promote and talk about. Of course, luffa is one that she grows. And what she was saying is, you know, a lot of people say a luffa is hard to transplant, right? She's like, no, it's really not. And she also said that what you should do is basically break the seed coat every time you germ it. Otherwise you're going to have to soak it way too long. And it might not come up in like 10 days. Yeah, exactly. So she's like, just, just break the seed coat a little bit, let a little moisture get in there. You get a three-day germ every time. So, you know, there you go. Yeah. So I've got some interesting stuff. I don't know if I should start my sunflowers now or not. I think I can do some, but I'm going to go in on some Cosmos right now. Ooh, actually let's talk about this. Yeah, yeah. Getting a little heated over here, a little excited. Candy Striped Cosmos. That's a classic. Dwarf Sulfur Mixed Cosmos. Common milkweed from seed. We're putting that in 100%. Actually the thing that's interesting about milkweed is there's, there are some different varieties and actually there's many that work really well in one region and not another. That's right. In our region, actually the one I should be planting is narrowleaf milkweed. That's the one in Southern California that is the true native. This one is at least not as bad as some of the others. Like tropical milkweed is the one that you kind of want to avoid here. It doesn't really work. It doesn't die, um, quick enough. And so the Monarchs think that it's still time to feed from them. Their migratory pattern is disrupted. That's what I've heard. So I've switched off that completely. Or if you grow that tropical milkweed in an area where it doesn't die, like a high zone, then you have to kill it yourself. That's, that's your play. Yep. I haven't heard that one before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually putting in some, um, early bronze, Opus, early bronze F1 hybrid Snapdragons. So some of these, some of these flowers, um, they get like very protected. Like this one actually has a trademark for Opus. So it's getting a little intense, but in the cut flower game, it's all about unique like colors, structure, how well it's, how well it works for cut flowers. So this isn't something I would traditionally do, but I'm kind of curious in playing around with some of this stuff. I think it's important to have an open mind about what you decide to and to not grow. Um, because yeah, certainly like there are things that are patented cause they've been developed. And it's hard to, you know, it is somewhat hard to argue against that because you're putting in research. Now I met a guy who spent 20 years planting potatoes to get one type of potato that you can actually plant from a true seed, not the seed potato. And it's like this, this guy put in 20 years. You can't just immediately copy that. It's, I can see the argument. I want to try that actually this year. I forgot about that. Fantastic potato. So I think, and I'm not a geneticist in any stretch, but I think potatoes have like triploid genetics or something like that where the crossing of them, it's very unlikely to, to get something super stable. And so even this potato, which is called the Clancy potato is more of a pop like per capita, almost like per 100 potatoes. The characteristics are somewhat similar enough to be called one variety, but they're, they're technically not. The genetic diversity is like still kind of big. That's interesting. Yeah. Okay. I'm putting in dwarf sulfur mix cosmos. Oh, those look great. I have something similar to that and they look really nice. And I'm going in with a scarlet flax. This year we learned what flax looks like. Okay. We did. Okay. You know what? This is how, so like I said, we're no experts. This is one of the dumber things we've probably done. We're learning on the fly. This is one of the dumber things we've probably done is we put in flax in the Epic six cells like this, which I'm doing right now. Yeah. Which I don't know. And I don't know why is as single seeds and then planted them out like that. So the new strategy is I'm putting in four. Sure. And even that, I don't know, but basically, I mean, you'd rather scatter flax, right? And just scatter it over a plot and let it, let it be. It actually says it on the packet, but I'm a little bit of a rebel. So this guy, I'm going to go for it. And the reason why is because basically it grows as like a straight vertical stock that has some flowers on it. It needs maybe like four inches of space. Well, you would need, I mean, not even, I mean, you would need a field of flax. I mean, that's how it would be grown, right? So if it's a grainy type of crop, you're going to grow it like that. Much like our spring wheat that's right over there. You would want to grow it that way. This is for fun. It's for me. Hey, it's for laughs. It's for laughs. I think it'll work. I think so. I don't know if it works well, but it'll work. It will certainly germinate and that's probably about it for you, my friend. All right. So that's how many? Eight cells of flowers. So now I'm going to be moving into some of these, uh. So I got some flax. Oh boy. Oh, I'm going floweries. I'm doing some floweries. Look at this polka dot cornflower. So bachelor button, AKA cornflower is edible. I wouldn't say it really tastes like much of anything, but it doesn't harm you at all. Yeah. I've seen it in like garnishes on salads. It's really nice in a garnish. It's really nice if you take the petals, the dried petals off, you can store them in like a little spice jar, spice up whatever the hell you want. And then also, um, it's really nice if you just pop one of the flower heads off, pop it in a bottle of champagne, a little glass, a little toast. A little extra touch. Toast to you guys. A little fancy. It works. So, and honestly, these guys are very simple to grow. And if you grow in a more natural way, like where you're just like kind of scattering things around, these will self-sow over and over and over again. You'll never run out of these guys. So I'm going to throw in a little bit of herbage right now. I think that's how you say it, fancy. Are you trying to, is that a variety or are you just trying to be bougie? No, these are just herbs. I got flat leaf parsley, the classic. Yep. And then the Long Island mammoth dill, another classic. That's a good one. Yeah. That's actually a really good one. So I forgot, I could have sworn I ordered it, but I guess I didn't. I totally forgot. Um, I recently kind of realized that when it comes to dill, most of the varieties that we buy like this one are bred for the, um, the large flower heads and the seeds because the seeds and flowers are used for pickling, all sorts of things. But what they have is something called the leaf dill. So it produces more of just the leafy foliage. And in our house, we actually prefer that for the most part, like for daily cooking. It's a good tip. Yeah. Grow varieties that accentuate the feature of the plant you actually care to eat. That's a great tip. So I'm still, I mean, I'm still in flower world here. I got to put, Oh, have you seen this? Sweet dwarf pink alyssum? Maybe I'll save a fella over here. I don't know about that. I think I might be using all these seeds. I'm sorry. But I will say this. I'm a big fan. You know, honestly, and to your credit, you introduced me to alyssum. Um, specifically Jacques' technique was to interplant with tomatoes. Um, but I've noticed, first of all, that works. Yeah. As does interplanting many things with tomatoes. We're actually going to do a full guide at some point on planting just the things you should plant, you know, in between your, your tomatoes this season. Yeah, that's a great idea. But alyssum is really, really good for bringing in like hoverflies and these smaller beneficials that end up having a really good effect on that bed in general. So I would almost say start a bunch and just pop them into little corners of your beds or your, or your rows. However, your gardening works really, really well. Only caveat is that it self-seeds easily, but it's also very easy to get rid of. It has like almost no root system. And, um, the hoverflies are great with tomatoes specifically because those little parasitic wasps are the ones that actually get the tomato hornworm and like kill it basically. Yep. Yep. The bracketed wasp I believe it's called. Yeah. So if you ever see a tomato hornworm, it looks like it has a bunch of little baby little cotton swabs coming out of its back. Actually don't kill that hornworm because it's going to kill many hornworms in the future because once those hatch, they will also do the same thing and voila, you have no more hornworm problems. I still haven't seen that in my garden. I have actually yet to see it in mine, but I've seen it in a garden. Yeah. Not, not mine, but I've seen it in person. So it definitely works. So I'm going to do a couple of different types of alyssum here just to have them. The thing I think about, dude, starting seeds is, look, we just busted out all the gear, right? We seeded all these up. We put some soil in, we have our trays out. We're sitting here enjoying it. Just plant a lot of stuff. What's the harm? Just plant more than you think you'll need. Just give it to your friends if you, if you can. Exactly. And if you're not ready, just pot it up. Yeah. Just pot it up. No big deal. Okay. I think I, I'm just going to keep on going with these three. I'll do one tray here. It looks like you're almost done with your tray. We got a four cell in. You're going to put anything in the fours right now? I'm thinking about it. I kind of didn't bring a lot of the bigger seeds that I have. Yeah. Like for instance, the four cells, what I would use those for is all my squash seeds. So anything like a squash that's a bigger seed, it's going to love that space. It's going to be able to grow a lot bigger, a lot faster. So I didn't, I forgot to bring those, but I would definitely be putting my squash seeds in there over a smaller one. Man, that crow is really agreeing with you. So I'm going to do the unthinkable. I'm going to plant a turnip in a six cell tray. Why? That sounds insane. Don't you direct sow turnips? Don't you direct sow root crops? You actually don't have to direct sow anything if you don't want. That's true. You can do anything you want in your life and I'm going to do this and here's why. As long as you do not disturb the root structure when transplanting, how would the plant really know what you did? That's true. Actually. It actually won't at all. And here's what I learned, actually, again, from Regine, Asian Garden to Table. She actually does not direct sow almost anything in her whole garden. She grows a lot of root crops, a lot of huge radishes, right? And so what I like is that the six cells are going to have that huge bottom, right? And they're going to have the slits here. So you just pop that out, no disruption whatsoever and pop it right in at perfect spacing. And she also told me, tip for you root crop lovers, you really want a little more space than you think you do. So if, you know, if you're growing like a one pound radish, which exists, certainly even a 10 pound radish exists. But if you're growing that, you want like a, like six inches on either side, you know, which is a lot closer, a lot further apart than you would normally think. So just something to think about guys. I guess I just don't like radishes enough to commit to that. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But yeah, that's, that's interesting. It's like anything like that, as long as you transplant it soon enough, it doesn't matter. You're totally fine. People even transplant carrots. I wouldn't, but. I wouldn't, but you certainly can. I also wouldn't though. Yeah, I wouldn't either. Next up for me, I've got two more for you. One was from our 22 Seeds for 2022, the Minuet Chinese Cabbage. This is an F1 hybrid, nine inches. I'm actually quite excited about this because I'm going to buy a wok. Oh, nice. I'm going to buy a wok and I'm going to start becoming a wok God is my new goal in the kitchen. And you'll probably see that over on the Epic Homesteading channel. So if you haven't subscribed, you really need to. I'm going to do a little bonus shout out. Kenji Lopez-Alt has a new book coming out called Wok. So I've actually been eyeing that. So you just gave me that idea. Well, maybe you'll get a little treat. Maybe that's your birthday. Maybe Santa's coming early for you. I'm going to actually go for a sunflower. We were just talking about it. I think it might work. This one, I really like the way it looks. It's called the Valentin Sunflower. So I'm going to just go for it. Why not? Yeah. Really a thing I think a lot of people forget is like, it's actually completely fine to make mistakes in the garden. Actually it's encouraged because you need to learn quickly and you only learn through experience. Right. And so that's why I say over-sow, over-plant, learn a lot, try things in different areas. And you'll get way better at growing your own food way quicker than the average person. I mean, it really is true. And the other thing is like, just because there's a recommendation out there, everyone's little microclimate is very different. And not everything is one-to-one true. So until you try it, you don't really know whether it works for you. We've found weird things that work. Really weird things that work. Like, you know, trees that have a chill hour requirement, chill hours being like the time that it needs to experience cold for, accumulating those amount of hours per year that are much higher than what we'll get here in San Diego. And we'll still get fruit. Right. And actually a decent amount. So that's a thing that happens, right? You never really know. In our area where we are, it gets cold enough at night in the winter, where especially in the low part of the ground, there's this breeze that comes through. It's quite cold. And to the point of frosting. And so that, what does that mean? Maybe it's a little easier to grow brassicas here than it might be somewhere else, right? That doesn't have that. Even if it's a mile down the road. You never know. Yeah, actually like literally. And so here's my one of my seeds for 2022. It's the Spigarello Lucia. It's an Italian kind of broccoli. I talked about it a little bit, but basically it just makes these very thin spirally broccoli leaves, which I had at a restaurant and I was sold on the spot. So here I am. He hunted it down. I'm telling you, this guy grows for flavor. I really do. He really does. So my tray is done. Obviously there's much more to go here. Just wanted to give you a little hangout session with us, thinking about how we think about seed starting, why we're growing the things that we're growing, all this different techniques. If you want more just from Jacques, cause I know we have some Jacques fanboys and fangirls out there. He does have his own YouTube channel, Jacques in the Garden, which he'll be putting out more content on this year. If you want to see what we end up making with this stuff, as well as the life of the chickens in the coop, et cetera, go to Epic Homesteading. That's our other channel. And until next time guys, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.