How and When to Fertilize Seedlings

A lot of you have had questions on how to fertilize seedlings, when, what to use, all that good stuff, and today in this video I'm going to hopefully answer those questions. Hey, I'm Brian with Next Level Gardening. If you're looking to join an online garden community that offers tips, tricks, and support to help take your garden to the next level, you're in the right place. Get started now by clicking subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss anything. Now let's get growing. We're back inside again, which is a good thing because it's back to being over 90 degrees. A lot of you had questions about how to fertilize your seedlings, and when, and what to use, so today I'm going to go over what I use and how I do it. I'm also going to be switching out the grow light. Viper Spectra sent me a P-Series. It's the P4000. This is the XS4000. I'm enjoying getting to try all these different lights out for you guys, and for me, to see kind of what the differences are. So this is the P4000. It has pretty much the same exact size. The Pro Series, the P-Series, is a little bit cheaper to buy initially. They don't have the same LEDs or drivers as the XS-Series, so while they're a little bit cheaper to buy in the beginning, the XS-Series has Samsung LEDs, which are the best in the industry, and so they're going to be more efficient to run. So over the long term, you're going to save money probably with the XS-Series versus the P-Series, but if you're looking to just save some money up front, the P-Series is probably the way to go. So I'm going to switch this out, and I'm going to use this one in the garage in about a month to start a bunch of perennials to go outside next spring. So let me switch this out, and then we'll get to talking about our fertilizer and how to do it, what I use, and some other choices that you can use. So over the next few months, I'm going to give this one a try, and I'll let you know how it came out, how it worked, and how it compares to the others. As always, we have links down below in the description for all the Viperspectra products and discount codes, so you can use those. On my website, you can find under Products I Love, you can find this stand here. Got that through Amazon. Hey, it's Editing Brian here, and I totally forgot that I wanted to mention next week, we're going to be doing another giveaway with Viperspectra. So we're going to be giving away another Viperspectra grow light. So make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you have the notifications on so that when that video comes out next week, you will get a notification. You can watch it, and then you can enter to win a Viperspectra grow light. Now back to the video. Now let's talk about fertilizing your seedlings. So when do you fertilize? Well, the first leaves that come up that you see when a seed germinates are the seed leaves. Those aren't true leaves. So you don't want to do anything until... Well, at that point, you want to remove the humidity dome if you have one, and then just keep it watered from below. Go back to my video from last week on kind of how to do that if you haven't seen it already. So those are the seed leaves. The second set of leaves are the true leaves, and those are going to look different. A lot of the seed leaves look very similar to each other. The true leaves, when they come out, that next set of leaves, they're going to look like the adult leaves, just in smaller form. At that time, when those come out, you can start to fertilize. And you can use any organic fertilizer half strength. So of course, I use the Neptune's Harvest, and I use the Fish and Seaweed Fertilizer. If you already have Rose and Flowering or their tomato and veg formula, you can use that as well. So this is just what I use, but whatever you have on hand, make sure it's organic if you're using another brand besides this. And you want to mix it half strength. So for this, it's a tablespoon per gallon of water. So we're going to mix a half tablespoon per gallon. So I'm going to mix mine in a quart jar because a gallon is a little bit hard to get under these trays. A gallon watering can, it gets messy. So a quarter of a tablespoon per quart. I really don't measure too precisely. I just do a little bit in a quart jar, fill the rest with water, and water them. Again, we water from below. You want to make sure that you're getting the entire root zone and you want to keep the water off of the plants if possible. So watering from below definitely helps with that. Once you've watered them and you've let them sit and you can see that the top turn, the top of the soil turns from light brown to dark brown, you know they've had enough. Take the tray outside and pour off the rest, hopefully into some plant that needs a little bit of fertilizer because you don't want these sitting in water where they're mold, mildew, fungus gnats, all that stuff that you don't want to have to deal with. If you don't have Neptune's Harvest or you have a different brand that you like, that's totally fine. Just make sure it's half strength and just make sure it's organic. If you don't go with organic, the chances of burning your seedlings are very much higher than if you go with organic just because of the way that it's synthetically made. Another reason I like Neptune's Harvest products is I've tried a lot of fish fertilizers in the past and the way they're made, they stink and there's no way I would ever use them inside the house. Neptune's Harvest, they do have a smell to them but they're nowhere near as strong as some of the other brands and they definitely don't last as long. So the only seedlings that are ready here for the actual fertilizer, at least in my house, are the Sweet Peas. Those have come up and grown really fast. I was actually gone, we went back up to Ventura County over the long weekend and I had bought a new timer and I had set it wrong and so it only came on probably less than half of what it was supposed to. I had the off as the on and the on as the off so it only got eight hours a day versus 16. So they are a little bit leggy but that's okay, at least it's the Sweet Peas so it's a vining plant so that's not going to hurt them as much as if it was a different crop. But as you can see here, the beets are up, the carrots are up, the purple broccoli is up, and the chard is up, of course the Sweet Peas. So we're still waiting on the cilantro and the spinach which in my experience are always, they always take longer than everybody else. So for today, the only seedlings that I am going to be fertilizing are the Sweet Peas. So while we were gone because I guess maybe there was not really any airflow in the house, we did get started to get some algae growth on top of the soil on a couple of these, mainly the Sweet Peas, ironically. So I did add a oscillating fan so that I just have it off now because it was making noise during the filming but that stays on. It's on the same timer as the light so it's on 16 hours a day and it just blows across the area which keeps the tops a little drier than down below the surface level. That's going to help with the fungus gnats, the algae, mildew, all of that stuff. And it also strengthens these. So these needed it because they're so leggy. It strengthens as they blow in the wind. It's like a little workout and it strengthens their stem so it's stronger so when it goes outside it'll be able to handle actual wind. So that's it. I hope that answered your questions. Again, all of my links are down below in the video description and I will see you guys next time.