So with everything that's going on right now,
it's hard to get seedlings at nurseries.
But I just got the call from one of my favorite nurseries,
Mission Hills Nursery here in San Diego. And I'm going to head over there.
And I figured I would take you guys with me to show you how I shop the nursery
to get the best starts, what I think about, how I select the plants,
and then eventually how they actually get into the garden. So boom, let's go.
Cultivate that Like button for an Epic nursery haul and let's get into it.
It's always a good idea to buy some starts if you're new to gardening because
when you're starting seeds there's a lot of mistakes you can make.
But if you buy seed starts from a local nursery, you help your nursery out,
you help your local community out and you help yourself out.
Cause you save yourself a ton of time and potentially some serious mistakes you
can make in the seed starting process.
There we are, baby. I'm getting excited already.
Getting a little too excited. Ha! Ha!
Last time I came here, which was a couple of days ago, there was nothing here.
And when I called they said in a couple hours there's very likely to be nothing
again. So let's look at what we've got. Guys, check it out.
I was at the nursery and I found... My name's Diane. I'm a big fan. And
she subscribes to Epic Gardening. So, we're taking over the world baby!
Yeah!
Okay, here's tip number one.
So here you have a six-pack of corn and there's no tag.
So I'll have to figure out which one that is. But what you can see here is,
generally when they do these six-packs, it's one or two per pack, right?
But then you have this corn right here,
which is a lot taller and there are three.
And so what you can do with this one is you're buying time.
So you're buying a taller plant that's grown a lot more.
But over here you can cut this, cut this, cut this.
So you split the roots up and you actually get three for one.
There'll be a little transplant shock, but you get three for one,
and this is probably five bucks or something. Over here one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12.
So you can get 12 younger plants for five bucks, right?
Instead of six in the six-pack. So that's just a fun little tip.
So tip number two is when you're buying tomatoes, these are different varieties,
but if they were the same variety, you'd rather choose the smaller one.
You'd rather choose a tomato that can establish itself in the pot that it's
finally going to be in, rather than grab one that's really tall like this.
Now what you can do is you can chop these leaves off here,
maybe up to about here or so.
And then you can bury the tomato right there to kind of save that.
And you can also bury it on its side, like this, underground.
And that can save it. But all things being equal,
you'd rather choose a tomato that has the room to grow and establish its root
system in its final home. I've found my heaven right here,
the dragonfruit heaven. But I needed somewhere quiet to show you this next tip.
So what you should do is you should take a look at the bottom of the pot,
see how many roots are popping out, but you can also just actually pop it out.
So here we have actually a pretty large tomato,
but the root system looks overall strong. It's not circling that much.
It's not too rootbound. So overall it's a nice plant.
Now we have this sweet corn and obviously there are more roots because there's
three of them, but it's also just a little bit more rootbound.
Now this isn't actually that bad at all and you can tease this apart pretty
nicely,
but you do want to take a look at the root system to see if it's totally,
totally bound up. By the way, with a plant like this,
instead of like cutting off the bottom that a lot of people will do is they'll
cut off the root circling at the bottom,
what you should do is tease it out instead of cutting. Cause if you're cutting,
you're actually damaging and truly destroying the roots.
Whereas if you're teasing it out, you're not going to stop the growth at all.
So it'll be in a good spot.
Here's another good tip. A lot of nurseries sell things by pot size,
not plant size. So these two peppers are the exact same price,
but clearly one is smaller than the other.
So get the most for your money and actually buy - remember when you're buying
size, you're buying time.
And that's more important than money in almost every case.
So here's an example of two plants.
They're both green bells that look the exact same, right? Or do they? Look,
you've got a little bit of leaf damage here.
It looks like there's some kind of pest pressure down here, whereas this one,
no leaf damage, nice good looking foliage.
And so same price, same plant.
And this one is probably going to perform slightly worse than this one.
It's your garden. So get the absolute best plant you can.
So here's what we ended up with. I got a bunch of different peppers.
I'm a huge shishito pepper fan, so I picked a lot of those up.
I've got some random tomatoes. We have a sweet 100. You've got to know,
I go with the San Diego red, baby. And then I've got a couple corns,
but let's see how to actually separate one. Okay,
let's pop this one out here.
Comes out nice and easy. So you can see, even if there was just one,
we'd still have to break this root tissue up a little bit. And there's two.
And I want to see if I can get both of these because why not?
Let's get a little more value for our money.
So you want to gently come through and you want to be gentle,
but you don't have to be like crazy gentle because these roots can handle a
little bit. So just as delicately as you can,
slowly tease these apart. And voila!
Now I have two corn plants that I can transplant. Here is what they look like.
They're definitely going to have a little transplant shock, but that's fine.
We just gotta get these in the ground sooner than later.
So quick tips on how to optimize your shopping trip at the nursery,
including how to get multiple plants in the same cell,
get more for your money, pick the right plants, pick the healthiest plants,
and just get your garden off to the good start. Now I think a lot of people,
and I don't know why this myth persists, it's like, oh,
you have to start everything from seed.
Starting from seed gives you incredible benefit. Number one, it's cheaper.
Number two, you get access to more varieties. And number three,
you actually truly do grow it from seed to harvest. But as a beginner gardener,
and a lot of you are beginners right now,
I highly recommend going and buying seedlings.
I do it every now and then because I want to supplement.
There's simply so many things I need to grow right now for these projects that
are coming up here on the channel and otherwise,
that I just can't start enough seeds.
So I need to grab stuff that's a little further along in its life, no harm done,
and you avoid a lot of mistakes that way. So I hope this was helpful. If it was,
drop a Comment, drop a Like, drop a Subscription.
I'll see you in the next video. Good luck in the garden. Keep on growing.