growing your own transplants from seed is an incredibly rewarding process
you are in control of the process from start to finish you can pick when your seeds are started
when your transplants are ready and control the health of your seedlings all through the process
add to that the fact that it opens up a whole new world in terms of varietal selections so
rather than being restricted to the couple of varieties that your local garden store might carry
you get the freedom to select from hundreds of different varieties which is part of the
fun of gardening is trying all these different things so in the spirit of starting your own
seedlings i wanted to share today six steps to seedling success to ensure that when
you decide to start your own transplants you are having the best results possible
so the first thing you want to consider when growing seeds for transplants is your seed
starting media you will have best results when using a growing media that's formulated
specifically for seed starting basically all that means is that the media is going to be
really well draining really light really loose making it easy for seeds to germinate and grow
so you can do this by making your own you can go into any local garden center and look for
a bag of media that says it's for seed starting there are a lot of different options out there now
everyone has heard from that friend or relative or neighbor about the person who goes out in
their garden digs up their garden soil throws it in a pot and starts their seeds in that and
sometimes you will have success with that but if you want guaranteed results i highly recommend
using a seed starting media the second step to success is water and the key is getting
not too much not too little which can be a little daunting when you're starting out but the best way
to gauge this is to thoroughly saturate your planting media before you plant your seeds
give that time to drain and make sure all of the excess water has run off plant your seeds cover
them with a little topsoil and then wait to water again until the top of your seed starting media
is just barely drying out to the touch don't wait until your planting media is totally bone
dry because you will kill your seedlings but also don't just continually water and water and water
and keep that environment super moist and never give it a chance to dry out at all because what
you are doing is setting yourself up for things like damping off where the plants just rot away so
finding that happy medium is really important so a little added bonus tip after you sow your seeds
use a humidity dome now seeds will germinate even without the help of a humidity dome but
what this does is it keeps that environment warm and moist and perfect for seed germination so
you're going to hasten the germination of your seeds with the use of a humidity dome
now you can use a clear plastic dome like this that's specially made to fit
seedling trays but something like clear plastic wrap is going to do the same job but whatever
you use you want to remove it very shortly after your seedlings germinate because if you
leave it on and allow them to sit in that humid environment with no air circulation again you're
probably going to end up with seedlings damping off now the third step to success is a grow light
and i talk about this a little more in depth in my video on grow light setups but i am
a big advocate of using grow lights with your seedlings some people swear by a sunny windowsill
but if you have tried that and have not had good results so you end up with weak leggy seedlings
definitely look into a grow light you can get single fluorescent bulbs fairly inexpensively
and those will do the trick for starting seedlings now i prefer using the grow lights
because it allows me to provide my seedlings with more light than i would be getting this time of
year when i'm starting a lot of my seedlings it also allows me to control the height and
the exposure to the light and just ends up providing a stronger more vigorous seedling
and this is the use of heat mats so heat mat is just a mat that you put underneath your seedling
flat to provide a small amount of bottom heat some folks like to use heat mats on everything
my preference is to use them only on my warm season crops so things like tomatoes and
eggplants and peppers anything that's going to be planted after the frost free date i don't use
them with any of my cool season crops because while it would hasten germination of the seeds
i don't i don't want to baby these seedlings too much so these are crops like broccoli and kale
and cauliflower then they're going to go out to the garden in the garden soil when it is still
quite cool and i don't want them to get used to this warm cushy soil environment indoors and then
give them this big shock when they're moving outdoors so i don't use heat mats on the cool
season crops for that reason but the heat mats are incredibly beneficial for heat loving crops step
number five is a fan if you are starting seedlings indoors in your home in your basement anywhere
other than the outdoors you are going to want to put a fan on your seedlings now it doesn't have
to be much it can be a small fan set on low only for a couple hours a day but that air circulation
is so important because what it is doing is helping to strengthen the stems of your seedlings
it's getting them used to the types of things that they would encounter out in the garden so
it's not going to be perfectly still with no breeze once you plant these guys out so you
want to slowly get them used to that air motion now you can put your fan on your seedlings from
the very beginning i usually wait till about the time i start to feed them which is when they're
up about an inch or two and have their first set of true leaves but either way is going to work
the key is just to provide some air movement and speaking of fertilizer that is step number six
the thing to keep in mind with seed starting media is a lot of times it either has no
fertilizer in it or a very very low dosage and it's not enough to sustain your seedlings
as they're growing larger so as i mentioned once my seedlings are up about an inch or
two and have their first set of true leaves i start to feed them and my
preferred method is to use a very low ratio all-natural fertilizer i add it to my water
that i'm watering my seedlings with and i feed them every single time they get watered
now this is the product i've been using for the last couple of years and i've had really good
results with this this is next step fertilizer from gardens alive it's specifically formulated
for seedlings you can see it's a very low it's a two three two and this is enough to nourish
the seedlings without giving them this really big artificial boost of growth and this one's
really simple it's just two teaspoons per gallon so i mix up a whole big vat whenever i'm getting
ready to water my seedlings and then for ease of application i like to use this measuring cup
that's got a spout on it and just very gently give each of my little seedlings here a drink
now i don't have a specific amount that i feed them each time i kind of just eyeball it
and saturate the soil but in general a 50 cell seedling flat like this will take anywhere from
five to six cups of water each time i water it and i will continue like i said i'll fertilize
these each time i water up until about a week or two before it's time to plant because then
i'm going to start the process of hardening off now this is not included in my six steps
to seedling success but this is an incredibly incredibly important step in the growing process
so hardening off is the process of gradually acclimating your seedlings to outdoor conditions
and to do this you're going to gradually taper off the fertilizer you're going to be watering them a
little less than you normally would and you're going to start to expose them to the outdoors
the easiest way to do this is just to bring your seedling flats outside in a protected area ideally
starting on an overcast day and you're going to gradually increase the amount of time that
you leave them outside so the first day if it's overcast you can leave them outside a couple hours
the next day it'll be about four hours the next day about five hours and so on and so forth over
the course of about anywhere from four to five days to a week of time the other thing you can do
is if you have some kind of an outdoor greenhouse just take all your flats put them outside in the
greenhouse leave the door open or the vent open so they're getting some air and you can just kind of
let them sit out there for about a week and that usually does the trick as well but if you don't
have a greenhouse if you have a sheltered kind of corner of your house where you can set up a
little table if you have a patio anywhere where they're not going to be out in just like full
gusty wind and blaring sun because that will destroy your seedlings and after they've gone
through that hardening off process they are now ready to plant in the garden so i hope that if
you've never tried starting your own transplants or if you've not had good luck in the past
that you will give it a try this year and if you find content like this helpful please consider
subscribing to my channel growfully with jenna thanks for watching and i'll see you next time