We Tried The Viral Seed Snail Technique & This Happened

Well, just when you think you've heard it all in the world of seed starting, in comes a new method Jacques. What is it called? The seed snail. Crawling along on the internet. So what we're going to do in today's video is try all the different seed snail methods that we've seen. And as gardeners of 13 years and six years, we're going to see what we think of it. This method actually caught my eye when Ben over at Grow Veg demonstrated it. And it looks like it actually works really well. Yeah, I saw this. We had the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. We had some amazing creators who've been doing a lot of content on seed snails and they encouraged us to give it a shot. So what we have here, Jacques, are some very simple materials. How could you possibly start seeds with an old soil bag, bubble wrap, burlap and or cardboard? It doesn't look right. It doesn't look right, but this is how we start seeds normally. This is our Epic 6L tray for the moment I saw it and the moment you saw it. We love the tray and now we've built it out into this entire seed starting line. It works really well. It's not the only way to start seeds. So there's other ways that you can do it. So we're going to put this aside for now. How do I turn this into a seed snail? So the basic idea here is that we're going to get one of these materials, whichever we'll do, maybe all four here. We're going to prepare it in a way that we're going to add all the soil to it, roll it up into a snail and just throw seeds on top. So basically we're making a cinnamon roll. Yeah. So why don't we start out with perhaps bubble wrap? I think it's probably the easiest one to get going. This seems to be the most popular one. And the alleged reason for that is that by having a bubble wrap, you're also insulating it a little bit. With the bubble layers? Yeah. I mean, I don't, I mean, maybe that's something. There's logic to it. What I've seen is that you could either do skinny ones or like a short seed snail. As long as you can roll it, you're fine, right? Yes. So why has this become so popular? Just because it's very space efficient. You can grow a lot of seeds in a little, little snail pocket. I think that's the big thing. It's extremely space efficient with how much soil you're getting into that. And it's also really easy to like pot up or move things around. And of course it could be from free materials that you already have. Next up, we've got just an old potting soil bag. Yeah. So let's go ahead and cut all these into strips. They're all going to be roughly the same dimensions. The only thing that's special is that with the cardboard, we're going to do a little pre-treatment on it. And that's just going to be basically rolling it into a snail with no soil. So you can actually bend it. And then once we get all this ready, we'll get the soil prepped. And there's a little bit of technique there as well. So Jacques, we have our four materials. Looking good. And I've got us a cute little soil trug and something special. A little special? A little something, a little treat I cooked up. We have some Bush Doctor Coco Loco from Fox Farm, which is of course the official soil of Epic Gardening, but you need some kind of soil medium. And I think anytime you're doing seed starting, you want something that's nice and fine, even if it's a snail. Even if it's a snail. You're still going to want that. But I think that in this case, you don't want seed starting mix. I think it's too free draining. You think so? I think it'll just be hard once it, like the soil this tall, I've never used a seed starting mix that deep. I feel like there's so much perlite. It would be hard to get water all the way up there. We'll see what happens. So we don't really have too much of that in this mix. Yeah. This is like a standard potting mix. Anything that would work that's just off the shelf should be fine. So this looks pretty good to me. And our next step is it's pretty hydrated already, but you can do a nice little squeeze test and we're getting some crumbling away because we basically have to batter it on. We're doing some battering. We have, we have a little, little water here. Yeah. So we basically want it wet enough that it's fully saturated, but you can't like wring a whole bunch of water out. Exactly. Kind of like a damp sponge type. Yeah. That classic example that everyone knows. The other thing I like about the Coco Loco is that it's made of cocoa coir. And that's really good at sort of sucking water, waking it up. And that should do really well at this height. Okay. Feel it Jacques. I feel like that's, that's a lot better. It's staying. Let's make some predictions out of the four materials here. Yes. What are we thinking? I'm going to go with, I'm going to go bubble wrap, burlap, old potting bag, cardboard. Okay. I'm going to say bubble wrap and plastic, like the old bag. Identical. Identical. No difference. Okay. This might be easier to work with. Because there's more structural support on the bubble wrap. That's why I'm going with that. Now this one, I kind of included in here because I almost think it won't work because the burlap does have these holes in it and I'm scared that the roots are going to grow into it and just create a tangle. Get messed up. I mean, I want to try it. I think you could be right. The only thing I'm worried about my pick is being cardboard being last. If it gets too soggy and kind of rots away. That's the only downside. But if it doesn't, it's probably gonna work just fine. It's gonna be very sturdy when it's turned this way. And it's an infinite material that I think everybody at home has in a steady supply. Agreed. All right. Here's your first glob. Hit me. Boom. So the way you want to spread this out is that on one end, we're going to fully hit the edge of this and we want the soil to be equally thick all the way across. Yes. So the thicker the layer of soil, the less wraps you're going to get. That's true. And so actually you'll be using up the length of this quicker. Yeah. Meaning that you don't want the, the, each cinnamon roll layer so to speak to be any thicker than it has to be, I would say. Yes. Otherwise you are losing length. Yeah. And I think consistency like even thickness is probably going to be a good play here. Yeah. I'm going to try a roll here. Oh, I'm a little scared, but I'm going to get my first roll attempt. I'm seeing the tectonic plates start to shift. I don't know if I like that. I don't like it. How's it looking from the side, John? I mean, it's working. I guess if you over-soil it. Oh, it's creeping. Well, look, look how much, I only got two rings out of this. Oh wow. So I think you shouldn't trim that. I think that's, you know what, I'm actually not going to trim it, but I'm not going to fill it and I'll explain why. Okay. I think the idea here is if this, this one might not even work in the first place, but my hope here is that basically if I leave extra space, I could keep on rolling this and adding more soil and pot it up within the snail. Okay. That's getting too deep. Okay. So what I'm going to do Jacques is I'm going to compress down like I would normally do in a normal seed starting system. My cinnamon roll of soil here, my snail. We do want soil at the bottom for wicking. Yes, we do. So I'm going to do a bit of a tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. A little bomb. Got a little seed. It's like a seed molotov. Okay. We're going to do the old soil bag now. Emotionally with the seed snail technique at this phase of the process, where are you at? Because I'm already feeling like. I can tell where you're at. Where do you think I'm at? I think I'm at the same place. And where's that? That this feels a little bit silly right now. It feels a little overkill to me, to do it this way. I have trays. I can put the thing in trays. I'm just going to do that. Yeah. But you know what? We're trying it out because there is a place for this. And one of those places is the fact that you could just use common found materials. Yeah. It's for a budget garden. And I really like that. That is a hundred percent true. Okay. I actually feel pretty decent about those burritos now. That looks fat. How many rolls do you have? Uh, I could see one, two, three, basically. I'm going in on my roll. Look at this though. Okay. That looks clean. Look how many layers I've got. One, two, three, four layers for my snail. Maybe we're putting too much soil? Well, no, it's look at the thinness of the material. This is basically doesn't exist. Cardboard is literally 20 times thicker than this, you know? So you're just getting, you're just using too much on each roll. So here's my little baby. Bubble wrap. So I managed to make one. Both of our, both of our top picks. Why don't we do this one together, Jacques? It's a messy. I don't mind getting dirty. I'll leave it there. Let's try like an extreme compression on this one. Okay. I feel like now he's getting real. Look at that though. It's really nice. Doesn't it? You can fit a lot of seeds in there. Look at that. Feels solid. Does it? Yeah. It feels like if I got this at a taco shop, I'd be like, Oh, I got my money's worth. I got my money's worth. Yeah. A hundred percent. It looks like we're all snailed up on a Tuesday. Oh my God. I've never wanted to hear something more than that. So what we've got here, we decided if we're going to try different mediums, we're going to keep everything else roughly the same. So we've got the same, we've got the same soil mix. We've got the same seeds and Jacques picked out his favorite. Tell them. It's the cream sausage, a classic Bush determinate style tomato. Yes. Yes. Unfortunate name. No, it's actually a fun, it's a fun name. It's a fun name. Hey, rich flavor. That's all I need to hear. And it's a great tomato as well. So let's pop this open. Why do we choose tomato Jacques? So I think in this case tomatoes work really well. Anything that could handle some more jocelyn of the roots should do well in this kind of setup. I probably wouldn't choose something like ultra sensitive, like top root wise, right? Yeah. But I think tomatoes will grow quickly. They'll grow vigorously. They'll be able to fully test. And they do want to go down. They do want to go down. And you can bury tomatoes deep. Yes. Meaning when we transplant, it's not going to be a big deal if it's like a little overgrown or something. No biggie. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start in and I'm going to put one right in the middle. And then because of the way this method works, transplant like spacing wise, I think you can be pretty close together. You can get close. Cause in the end, if we're going to like separate them fully. Yeah. You're going to roll it out and just cut them apart basically. Yeah. I'm going to leave a little bit of space just cause I am curious to see what the roots do in this situation. I'm going to do every inch on mine over here and just see what happens. Okay. I got 16 in mine here, but you got to remember this one had more rolls. Yeah. Now what I'm going to do is just sprinkle the top and just do a little compress. Yeah. I'll do a little tuck. And just do that. I think I made mine so tight that I could barely get the seed in there. This will wick upwards if it needed to. Yeah. I don't think we're going to need to in this case because this can handle some watering. I think we can. I think it's fine. Yeah. I'm just going to be doing one. Yes. Every single inch or two inches. I'm going to do one. So in this case, I'm almost curious. I think the making the biggest one out of the burlap was probably an L. Um, but uh, with this much soil, like I could see the tomato less. I mean, it's not that much soil. I'm conflicted. I guess we'll find out. We have like basically like 12 seeds at least in each of these. Yes. And it's taking up like what would be maybe a quarter of this tray. So this is, you're right. That's about a quarter of the tray. Yeah. So 48 tomatoes per quarter tray. It's not bad. It's not bad. I mean, you could always put a ton of seed in anything you're growing. Sure. But in terms of how much space it's taking up, like four different tomato varieties, that's pretty good. It could be good for crops like peas, beans, et cetera. Yeah. I was wondering about that. We're at the point now, guys, we've snailed up, we planted up, we seeded out. And now it's time just like the snail to be patient and see what happens when they sprout. Well Jacques, we're back. And so are the snails. They look pretty good overall, but there's definitely some differences here. We have germination. So that's success. Why don't we start off with the burlap? Yeah. This was the one that I was honestly pretty hopeful about. And I think we very quickly discovered that the burlap is maybe a little bit too breathable. Yeah. I mean the germination, we have one, two, three, four, and one of them I would barely even count. Count it, it's fine. Let's say there's three. And they don't look as healthy even as the rest of these. And there's less. To me, that's not a success. Yeah. It just became too difficult to keep the outside moist. It just evaporated almost immediately. Yeah. So what must've happened on the outside, like cause you see the ones in the middle are the ones that sprouted. Yeah. These just must have just completely dried out, which yeah, could you have prevented this with maybe watering it more actively or something? But that's not really the point of the technique. It's supposed to be a little bit more hands off. So let's go to one of mine, perhaps the bubble wrap. Okay. I'm not too upset about this. No. It looks like I do have a bit of germ wash on the outside edge as well. Yeah. So we're seeing a pattern here with the outside edges in general, losing more germination or having less overall success. Probably just cause again, drying out. But I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now of course we did not start the exact same amount of seeds. You got to keep that in mind. That's true. The germination here is I would say pretty good. The plants look pretty healthy, but it is definitely not the best one. Yeah. I wonder if the clear plastic maybe just heated up the exterior soil too much. It could have been. I mean, there is a little insulation with the bubble wrap, but I don't know if that makes that much of a difference. Okay. Let's go to this one then. The most compact of the bunch. Not, not too bad. I mean, I'd say pretty close to the bubble wrap. One, two, three, four, five, six. And then one of them. I think damped off maybe. I think it died of damping off disease, which is that disease that kind of rots out right where it reaches the soil here. So one soldier has fallen. Maybe even another, there's a little tiny sprout there that potentially died off. But I wouldn't be too upset about this. Very small footprint. Easily you could fit double the amount of the soil bag version. I think you could probably fit at least four across. Four across and maybe like 10 down. You could probably have 40, which would be a crazy amount of seed. I think the smaller size when going with the snails at the start is probably a good idea. And that's generally what we say for seed starting is you don't want to start with the biggest container possible. No, no. Cause you're just making the root grow into this big pot. You're going to transplant it anyways. You might as well. If you're not going to transplant it, then direct sow it, right? Totally. So the winner, which is one of yours, I think. I don't remember, but I'll take credit if you want to give it. I mean, these look amazing. These look really good. This is the cardboard. And we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So technically the most, but again, we didn't control for the size. We're looking more for health and performance. These are the greenest, the most vibrant lush green that you want to see, which to me means able to uptake more nutrients. Also the healthiest structurally. By far. All the stems look consistently thick and nice. Some of these are like kind of wimpy. Like they're like a little bit elongated. These stems are thinner. They're definitely thinner stems. And it's all the same soil. These are definitely thinner. We use the exact same soil. Uh, what's your theory here? So my theory is, is that this is kind of the perfect balance between the burlap and the plastic. It's kind of became a grow back. Like it's retaining a decent amount of water, but since the cardboard is porous, it's allowing airflow and it's corrugated, actually. So it might even be airflow all the way through. Insulating plus airflow. Yeah. And that's really good for roots. You need aeration and water to have a healthy plant grow. And this is I think providing the most. And cardboard, I mean, come on, who doesn't have cardboard? It's all around the place. It's everywhere. So the moment has come where it's time to cut this open and actually see what the root structure looks like. I'm super curious because there is something to do after you start the seed sale technique. You got to put it somewhere, right? So let's chop this open. I'm curious to see how like much the cardboard held together as well. All right. The rollout period, Jacques. Look at the roots. Look at the roots. Oh, they're, they're at the bottom, I think. Or almost. Some of them are. Let's keep going. Oh. Oh wait. Did it come off the cardboard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on. What's happening here? Uh, so this is the downside of the cardboard, I guess. The cardboard can rot out. But look, if you do it gently. Yeah. Oh, definitely broke a root there. They're all on this layer here. So let's. Oh. Oh, interesting. I think this might be an issue. Are they rooting into the cardboard? They're kind of, cause this is, this definitely rotted a bit. Let's get that off. Oh. Oh yeah. Look. Look, they're through the cardboard right there. You really don't want that ideally. Maybe that's why they've done so well. They've actually accessed the entire soil bed. They probably have. Well, let's try to surgically remove this and see what we get here. I mean, I'm definitely taking some root tissue off. Look at that. Yeah, but that's. Oh, look, you actually pulled it through the thread. That was interesting. Oh, wow. So you'd really have to hold this down. Look how much. So there is some roots. Look, you can root prune. It's not that big of a deal. What do we think about the root structure though? I mean, why don't you pull a whole plant out and let's just take a look at that whole root mass. Okay. I mean, I'm honestly surprised it looks as good as it does. Cause there's not that many roots on it. There's not that many roots on this. Actually you want to open like one of the plastic ones. I'm curious. Yeah. Why don't you crack that one open? But I'm also curious. I think we might even see better root structure potentially on these. Well, it's definitely more intact. Yeah. So let's, let's do a whole spin out here. And I guess you could. Oh, there's probably a careful way to do it. That's on me. That's on me. I probably didn't do that right, but that's fine. Let's grab a nice one. Honestly, it's not. That's like a little plug right there. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a little plug. So cardboard won as far as the actual health of the overall plant, but it was more cumbersome to remove. Now, of course at this phase of a tomato's growth, you still need to pot it up. So let's grab one of those. What you would do, you'd grab some soil. We're going to use the exact same stuff we used before. You'd take one of your plugs, which is basically what this is at this point. This is like a tomato nursery plug and you would just pop it in here and you may even, actually it might even be better if you just held it like that and then you scooped soil around it. Yeah. One thing. Re-seed it. I personally would re-seed it a little bit lower in this case cause I have time to grow. One thing I like to do when they're like this size is entirely fill the cell and then like wiggle my finger down and just lower that whole segment in. Yeah. That could be another way to do it. But these, I mean, they're really healthy. It doesn't take up that much space. And especially the plastic ones, watering was not that difficult to maintain. The verdict on the method itself. We've tried it. We tried it four different ways. We can crack these open as we share. What do you think about the actual method? Is it something you would use in the garden? I would consider it maybe. I think like there's maybe some use cases. I wouldn't do anything that the plant doesn't like root disturbance cause I feel like this is too disturbing and shocking to the plants. So things like tomatoes, they don't care. Like they could get, you could tear all the roots off and they'll grow from a cutting. Right. So it doesn't matter. But it is an interesting method to save space and kind of like jam everything with a lot more soil. I've seen some people pot up directly into the rolls, but now that we've unrolled it, I honestly don't see. I don't see why you'd reroll it again. Yeah. We've also seen people to combat the cardboard disintegration. They put cardboard in a layer of plastic. To me, it gets back to, is it worth that effort? To me? I actually don't think so. I, this is not a method that I would use personally because I have a tray and I can just put a seed in a tray. And again, yeah, we, we offer a really awesome set of trays that I fully believe in. It's not cause of that. You can use any tray you want. You can use egg cartons if you want. It's just to me, it's too much effort for the reward. I'm not seeing a whole lot of reward. The reason why I like using cells is just cause for me, it keeps me organized. I don't have to track potting up all these rolls into different things. And I would prefer to not transplant directly into the garden without my soil being consolidated on the roots. I want the roots kind of sucking up that soil. Exactly. And in this case, it seems too difficult to achieve that. So I would prefer maybe as a way to start the seeds and then pot up could be feasible, but you're done doing a decent amount of work. I don't know if it saves you much. I don't know if it saves you much except for maybe, I guess you could say, material cost. Yeah. I think in theory you could pack it very tight. You could pack it tight. But you could also over seed a tray and then just prick them out anyway. Totally. And you could go Charles Dowding style and just put a tray down with soil and just straight prick it out. To me, it's not a method I would use. I'm curious what you guys think. And I'm sure there's something we didn't do right. Well, jocks it may be. I'm a no. What are you? Let us know down in the comments. And if you see a method we could have done better, let us know as well. I'm sure we made a couple epic mistakes here. We'll see you on the next one, guys. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.