Seed Starting: My self-sustainable journey in 2021 and lessons learned #self-sufficient

Hey there, it's Amy and on today's video I'm going to talk all about my journey doing seed starting for the first time and I'm also going to share my lessons learned. I set a goal back in September of 2020 that in two years I would be self-sustainable and self-sufficient and essentially for me that means I can grow my own food I can survive on what I grow essentially like what's the purpose of growing your own food if you only grow like cucumbers right like you have to have an assortment of things that you can eat in the event of empty grocery shelves and so not only growing my own food but in order to be self-sufficient I would like to be able to go off grid if need be in the event of power shortages and I know this is sounding sort of you know apocalyptic but it's not just if the end of the world comes it's really just to be less dependent on supply chains and the world around me essentially so that I have more freedom in my life and I'm taking you along on this journey I'm going to do a video series highlighting all the different things that I've learned in 2021 and not just learned but applied I've taken action on these things I've learned lessons from them and I'm gonna impart that wisdom right back to you make sure to check out the playlist I'll add this video to it and it'll be my self-sustainable journey so yeah let's get into it now this time last year I was taking my permaculture design certification class and that really kick-started my education on seed starting and soil health and but I definitely needed to learn more I took an additional online class from urban farm school it was actually one of the instructors that I had it was sort of her offshoot class and so that's where I learned more about timing so I spent quite a bit of time in the winter month of January I would say month because by February I was ordering seeds I was you know getting my supplies together but January I definitely spent planning laying out my garden space planning where I wanted my kitchen garden and my pantry garden which is sort of like the a little further removed from my back door like your kitchen garden is going to be right outside your back door my herbs I'm going to do a separate video on my herb spiral and so I laid out my garden I had plans I had spreadsheets uh that's you know my nature I love to over plan so I planned the heck out of it but you can also just identify what you want to grow get the seeds for it you don't have to put in a big order at Johnny's seeds which is what I did but you know collect your seeds from your local hardware store or big box store or order them online like there's so many resources for seeds and I wanted heirloom seeds or open pollinated seeds or organic so that was sort of my criteria open pollinated means that it's not a hybrid they didn't mess with the genetics it's just you know naturally pollinated by like a bee so then once I was ready to get started in February early March I got my trays I had some freebies from a new job that I had started at a plant farm which was very helpful and I got my seed starting mix like that's the dirt which is basically a soil less medium I didn't know that um you know but what you start seeds in doesn't have soil it has a whole combination of other things um so I got all that ready I went to Menards and that's where I bought my shelving unit and I also bought my lights and each shelf had lights directly above it here's a video of me checking on my little seeds they're still in the trays and they have clear plastic lids over them to help keep in the humidity but what I was doing is attempting to take the lids off with one hand on the camera um so I had several shelves and lights directly above my my seeds and you really want those lights to stay in close proximity to your seeds so that they don't stretch too much and and reach I planted way too many things that I wasn't necessarily going to use I started a whole plug flat which is like 96 plants of cherry tomatoes when it came time to actually grow them in the ground they took the entire row of you know my kitchen garden and that's prime real estate and I don't eat that many cherry tomatoes and they don't I mean they can okay um I did freeze some but essentially my chickens ended up eating them which is a nice treat for my chickens but a little bit of a waste there you know basically after I seeded everything and it was in my basement growing then as it grows you can transplant it to a bigger pot here is a video from when I started transplanting my seedlings from the little plug trays to the bigger um cell trays and actually in hindsight I don't think I would start with those little tiny plug trays again it was just way too many of one type of plant and I don't need that unless I'm you know that's overkill and these ones are lettuce and they are way less fickle than the onions that I was transplanting in the last video so I just popped them out and stuck them into the dirt um but you know this this is essentially the process you start the seeds indoors you transplant them as they get bigger so you need to be able to have that space in your basement you know be kind of expandable and you need to keep them watered during the winter months as you're growing them so they grew inside my basement essentially from March all the way through March all the way through April and then into May our frost date here is May 2nd um but you know May 15th to be certain for um Northeastern Ohio this was a really great learning experience for me I also got a job working at a plant farm which is essentially like a greenhouse but all they do is grow the plants and sell them to other people to plant them in their garden you know once everything is planted they shut down so it was only a couple months long but I learned a lot there as well that really just added to my current experience learning permaculture and doing my own seed starting so um the whole thing I actually put on my website a blog post that identifies roughly my cost for my seeds and my soil and my supplies and then um you know also some lessons learned about irrigation how I set up an irrigation system that did not it basically got clogged after the first couple of weeks because I didn't have a from my rainwater harvesting and um I also didn't have a pump so there was no pressure for the water um but that's you know probably in the rainwater harvesting video which I will probably do next because in the progression of how you want to think about like the spring to summer transition is you know making sure you have planted what you want planted making sure you have water and so yeah that was my that was kind of a recap of my 2021 seed starting journey and in 2022 I will definitely be more selective about what I plant I will prepare the ground and the soil better which actually starts now so I'm covering the soil with cardboard and wood chips so that it can really get the earthworms going and um and I'm just gonna have a lot more area planted whereas last year I really only had two main rows in my kitchen garden so that's the plan for this property I also have an urban farm that I'm starting this spring and I will hopefully have a hoop house on there so that I can move some of my seed transplants over to my in my hoop house greenhouse and onto my farm property so watch for videos on that in my 2022 seed starting adventure um but yeah thank you so much for being here and make sure to subscribe and share I would love to know your feedback if you're doing seed starting this year I know a lot of people after the pandemic hit have we have all started gardens and gotten a lot more serious about growing our own food so you know there is never a better time than now to begin have a great day I will catch you on the next video bye for now