How To Start Seeds Indoors

Starting your own vegetables from seed has several advantages but it can be a little bit overwhelming and intimidating if you're not sure how to do it. In today's video I'm going to let you know exactly what you need and walk you through the steps so you feel confident starting seeds indoors for your garden. Some of the advantages of starting seeds indoors are first off seeds are usually much less expensive than purchased transplants. There are several supplies that you need in order to start seeds indoors successfully but once you have those supplies they often last for years and so there is a cost savings to learning how to start your own seeds indoors. A pack of seeds can cost just a couple of dollars and that will provide usually dozens of transplants. Another big advantage to starting seeds indoors is timing. You have control over the when your vegetables are ready to plant rather than being dependent on the local nursery or big box stores to hopefully have what you want in stock at a particular time. Another advantage to starting from seed is the variety. Take a look through a seed catalog you will see dozens of varieties for most vegetables and flowers. A lot more options than you normally get in the nursery. You can also choose varieties that are well adapted to growing in your area or look for short or long season varieties depending on what your growing season is like. So in today's video we're going to cover everything you need to start seeds indoors, walk you through the steps of actually planting those seeds, and then finally tell you how to care for those seedlings all the way through planting. The first thing you need to decide is where you're going to have your growing station be. You may have a greenhouse ready to go and you know exactly where you're going to put it. If so, awesome, that's great, maybe I'll start some seeds at your house. But for me I don't have a dedicated spot available all year long which is fine because I really only need my seed starting station twice during the year. During the months of January and February when I'm getting my spring seedlings ready and then again in June and July when I'm getting my fall and winter transplants started. What has worked best for me is to use my laundry room. I bring in this rack you can see for that those few months of the year and get it all set up. Usually you're trying to start those seeds at a time when the outside temperature is not ideal for starting plants. So if you try and start seeds in your garage and it's cold outside it will probably be too cold in that garage to start the seeds. Likewise if I try to start seeds in my garage during the summer when temperatures are very very hot it will be too warm. When seedling starting time is over I simply put it back out in the garage and it stores a lot of my gardening supplies until they're needed again. So choose the location and you want to be able to have a temperature of about 70 degrees. You're going to use a heating mat to bring that temperature up maybe a little bit more. Once you have your location the next important thing to realize is you're going to need additional light. Even a really bright window is not enough light to start seeds indoors. If you've seen seedlings that are really tall and thin and kind of stretching that means they don't have enough light and if you don't provide enough light for your seedlings they will become leggy like that and they're really no good to anybody at that point. You can get a single light that hangs from a bar above the seedlings and that is usually enough to start one tray of seedlings. That works really well. If you're going to start more seedlings these wire racks work really well because I hang the lights from the racks and each shelf has its own light. So you want to be able to adjust those lights up or down. I love the pulleys that you can just simply move up and down. I have a couple of those and those are super convenient. I also have s hooks and chains. There are many options and more every day. Lots of led options and fancy grow lights and different things but I found for just the basic starting seeds indoors that fluorescent t5 bulbs work great. You want to make sure that there's good coverage that the the light is long enough and also wide enough. If you do use led lights you need to make sure to follow the directions for spacing and how far away to keep those from the plants because that will be a little bit different depending on the type of light that you choose. I also like to have a heating mat. Most seedlings are much happier and germinate a little bit quicker with just that extra warmth. Light and temperature are one of the most important considerations when you're growing indoors. You will need something to grow your plants in so you can buy reusable six packs or you can buy a little bit larger pots and you'll probably use both. Different seedlings have different size requirements and so it's nice to have both and then you will want a tray, a seedling tray, to put those into because as you water those seedlings water will drain out in that tray and so you don't want water spilling out everywhere. And then you also need a humidity dome. The humidity dome holds in the moisture and helps the seeds to germinate a little bit faster. It keeps that humidity level up. Potting soil or garden soil are not meant for starting seeds. They may introduce disease or different things that young seedlings really don't have the capacity to fight. The best thing to use is a sterile bagged seed starting mix. Lots of different brands have these. I'm not too picky about which brand I use. Of course you're going to need seeds if you're going to start seeds indoors. Use your local planting guide to determine what varieties you're going to plant and get the seeds that you need. Local nurseries are a great source of seeds. They often have a really good selection. If you can't find what you need there are many many online retailers as well. It's also important to label your seeds as you plant. Sometimes you think you might remember but those there are a lot of different seeds being planted. I like these small plastic labels that you write on with a sharpie. They're small enough that they fit inside the humidity dome so there's no worries about forgetting what you planted or mislabeling things. In order to have healthy seedlings you want to provide some air circulation and a little bit of stress on those growing seedlings. You want them to have a little bit of movement similar to what they would have outside and so a fan is a very important part of providing that which will help the seedlings. It will also help with diseases like damping off because there will be airflow. You've got your lights and your heating mats and your fan. You're going to need a power strip. Plug those things in and I also like to get one of my power strips with a timer on it that I can program to turn on in the morning and then turn off again at night so I don't even have to think about it. It's also important to have some way to water your plants. I found these watering cans that hold a decent amount of water but also have a long spout are really an effective way to water your plants. Before you actually plant your seeds it's important to get your layout ready to go. Set it up wherever you're going to have it. Get the connections right. Get it all set up so once those seedlings are planted you can just put them in place. So before I plant I like to gather all my seed packets that I'm going to start and make a label for each one and oftentimes if you're more than one six pack or more than one small pot you need to make several labels so at that point you're kind of planning how many seeds you're going to plant. It's much easier to write on the seed label while you're inside your hands are clean than when you're actually hands in the dirt. Prepare all of those labels put them with your seed packets and you will be ready to go and things will go much more smoothly and you'll know exactly what you planted. Get a large plastic tub or bucket some kind of container to pre-moisten your seed starting mix. I like to add in a little bit of worm castings as well and then spray water in until you can feel that soil absorbing that moisture. It's much easier to do it there all together and you don't want to have it be overly soggy. You want to have it kind of be the consistency of like a dried out sponge if that makes sense. So once you have that the right consistency you're going to begin filling your seedling trays whether it's the six packs or the pots you're going to fill those up and it's easy to hold that container right over your tub fill it up that way there's no waste. Fill all of your containers with soil and then put them in place in those trays. Now that they're full of pre-moistened soil it's time to plant. Follow the planting directions on the seed package for how deep to plant. Go through your stack of seeds and plant each one of them. Some seeds are really small and maybe a little bit difficult to plant. Usually you want to plant more than one seed in each container because if that seed doesn't germinate you're kind of out of luck for that little pot or that container. So I like to plant two or maybe three seeds. I don't want to waste seeds. Add your labels in as you plant so you know exactly what has been planted out. Once everything's planted put the humidity dome on top of your plants then put it in place under your lights and on top of your heating mat and that's it you've got it planted. So now all you have to do is wait. Keep a close eye on them but hopefully those seedlings the soil is moist enough that you it shouldn't dry out. If you notice that it's not really damp inside of there you may want to mist it with a spray bottle and give it enough moisture until it germinates. Once about half the plants have germinated it's time to pop those humidity domes off because they need access to that light. If you leave the humidity dome on too long it blocks the light and those seedlings will become leggy. Make sure to keep that grow light about two inches away from the growing seedlings. Set your timer to run your light anywhere from 12 to 18 hours. Pay attention to your plants. You don't want to let them dry out but you don't want them to be soggy either. Watering can kind of be the trickiest part of this so when it looks like they need a little bit of water then fill the tray. The soil will absorb that water through the holes in the bottom of the containers. The water that isn't absorbed needs to be removed so if you can take it outside and kind of tip it out or the easiest thing to do is just use a syringe and kind of suck that water out. You don't want those seed trays sitting in water. Once the seedlings have all sprouted and are growing a little bit that's when I like to add the fan. Just a little bit of airflow helps strengthen those plants. When those first leaves of the seedling sprout they'll have what's called cotyledons. They are the first set of leaves that appear after a seedling sprouts. After that they will have the first set of true leaves. Once they have their first set of true leaves at that point we can begin thinking about thinning those seedlings. So take a look at those seedlings and kind of make a determination which one to leave which one looks the strongest. Sniff those others and just leave the one seedling and allow it to grow and it will grow nice and strong more so than it would if you left all of those seedlings inside. Once it's growing and it has several sets of leaves in addition to thinning it you can also begin adding a diluted maybe half strength seaweed emulsion or seaweed fertilizer to when you water. So if it's not quite time to plant out and they've filled up their pot time to re-pot into a different pot and continue to provide heat and light for those growing seedlings. As it gets closer to the time to plant you're going to want to start to think about hardening off those seedlings. It's important to harden off your seedlings so that you don't take them from this protected perfect temperature perfect humidity perfect moisture environment out to the real world right where they're going to face lots of different things. You want to get them accustomed to it gradually. So one way to do that is to remove the heat mats and so they begin to be accustomed to a little bit cooler temperatures. Maybe begin by turning them off during the day and just leaving them on at night and then completely turn off the heat mats and then you will also transition and take those plants outside in the shade for an hour or two and gradually have that be a little bit longer until you're ready to get those seedlings transplanted. You don't want all that hard work that you put into babying and growing these seedlings to be gone if those plants go into shock when they face the real world outside. So take the time to harden off your seedlings and get them adjusted and adapted to being outside. Hopefully after watching today's video you know exactly what tools you need and what steps to take to successfully grow seedlings indoors. Best of luck with your garden and thank you so much for watching!