(birds chirping)
- Now direct sowing is such a useful way
of being able to grow food.
It's very natural way, but sometimes it's hard
to get the germination rates that you're looking for.
So in this video, I'm gonna show you some of the kind
of tips and tricks and secrets behind
how to get the best results possible
when sowing seeds directly.
The first thing you need to do
is to create a nice tilth.
A tilth is simply an area of ground
that is prepared for sowing seeds.
So that means going through with the rake
and carefully removing any kind of clumps of soil or things
like stones just on the surface to make it a lot easier.
Now here this is gonna be one of my seed beds,
I'm gonna be starting off all of the leeks
and having this really nice kind of fluffy texture
of ground is exactly what you're looking for
to get started with seed sowing.
So what I'm gonna do now is run you through the process
from start to finish with how I sow seeds directly
and I'm gonna use some carrots as an example,
and we've got this space here,
so you're gonna fit in a row of carrots
and kind of show you the way to sow seeds directly
to get the best results possible
and for it to be as simple as possible.
The first thing to do is for me when I sow directly
I like to make straight rows.
The reason why is that it makes it a lot easier
in terms of sowing, looking after all sorts of reasons
which you'll learn in this video.
The first thing that I like to do
is just as you've seen before my transplanting video
use a stick and string method.
So what I do is I stick one end at one side of the bed
like that and then I'll stick this on the other side.
I've got the string out here marking a perfect straight line
to act as a guide before we create the trench,
I wanna talk about trench spacing.
So I've actually got some onions here,
the bed behind me has onions
and because I'm growing carrots,
I'm going to basically interplant them in terms of
a row of carrots, a row of onions, a row of carrots
a row of onions because onions do provide a little bit
of protection against carrot root fly.
So, one of the things that you've got to think about
is weeds.
So if I'm just creating, say rows of carrots,
I wanna make sure that I have enough of a space
between each row to weed easily.
Now, I've got a hoe here so I might want to make sure
that the rows are a little bit wider than this hoe
so I can just run it through every couple of weeks
just to deal with that, we could use a hand hoe
but what I try do, or what I prefer to do
is to either grow things a bit closer,
so they'll block out the weeds
or you can interplant it with something.
So here behind me with these onions,
I've interplanted radish.
These radish are going to grow as a low layer
acting as a cover crop and that's going to block out
any weeds from emerging.
So naturally it's going to reduce the amount
of weeds I have to deal with and it's going to increase
the food that I'm growing on this plot of land.
Now, the next thing is creating the trench
and it's really simple.
You just want the end of some kind of garden tool,
for example, a rake or a hoe
and you're just going to run it along the string
at a desired depth that you want.
So, for me, because it's carrots,
I don't need it to be that deep,
so probably be about two centimeters deep.
I've done a trench here.
Now, if you're working on say new soil,
you've just made new raised beds,
it's worth making the trench twice as deep
and filling half of it with some really good compost
just to provide a little bit of extra nutrients
and fertility to the seeds that you are sowing.
So I've created this first trench,
what I like to do is do things in batches.
So I'm gonna mark out the rows where the onions
are gonna go and I'm going to complete
the two other trenches they're gonna be made
to grow carrots.
(birds chirping)
I miscounted I can actually fit in four rows
of carrots and three rows of onion which is great.
So I've made them, the next thing to think about
is getting them sown.
So I'm gonna choose my carrot seeds,
I've got three different varieties here.
I've got from Vital Seeds, I've got Nantes,
I then got Carrot Fine and then from Real Seeds,
Organic Giant Red carrot.
So the first carrot I'm gonna sow is the Nantes,
so I'm just gonna open up.
With direct sowing, it's very easy to oversow
but it's also very easy to thin.
Yes, it takes a bit of time,
I think it's down to you in terms of,
if you're using much older seeds
chances are they're gonna have a lesser germination rate,
so you want to sow a bit more thickly.
Now these are new carrot seeds
so I'm gonna sow them quite thinly.
And the sowing motion is a really easy one,
if you do much cooking and it's just like
sprinkling some salt or sprinkling a bit of flour
over something, and you're gonna repeat the exact same here
for carrots.
Now depending on what your direct sowing will depend
the rough distance but the back of the seed packet
will give you guidance with that.
So I'm just going to go through keeping a constant pace
and then just gradually dropping seeds
on the trench like that.
The first row is sown, so I'm going to continue using
that method of batching jobs just to sow the rest.
The next thing to do is once you've sown the row,
just make sure you label it.
So you remember exactly what you've planted
and if you put the labels directly in front,
you'll know exactly where that row is going.
So if you're planting other things around it,
you know you're not gonna get too close to it.
Now, it's just about really gently
going through and lightly covering over at these seeds.
If you haven't had a lot of rain,
we've had a lot of rain over the last couple of days
so this is very saturated, I'm not so worried about
giving it a good soaking.
If actually it's really dry with you,
you might want to give the whole bed a soaking
before doing this.
But for me, I'm just going to lightly cover these over
and then give them a light water.
One of the most game-changing things
that I learnt was from a video made by James Prigioni
who was sharing this technique
that Bill Mollison, who founded permaculture, used
to prevent sporadic germination of direct sown seedlings.
And I've taken it to also using a technique using cardboard
with sowing seeds in modules.
And one of the reasons why, if you say, grow carrots
or anything that you've sown directly and you get patches
of seedlings and then patches is of nothingness,
the main reason for that is that the ground has dried out
as the seeds are germinating.
So, as carrot seeds for example, are germinating
and if they dry out, it can kill them off,
it can stop the germination process
and it can, you know, cause that sporadic germination.
So the best workaround is to aid that initial
really fragile germination process by preventing
the ground from drying out.
And there's a pretty genius method
where you just use planks.
So these are from pallets that I've broken down
and I've actually cut these to size
to just be a little bit narrower than these raised beds.
And all you do is wherever you've sown your row
of seedlings, you'll place it over the top, like that
and then press it down and that's going to prevent
evaporation of moisture.
All you need to do is every couple of days,
just come through have a little look underneath
and as soon as you see this first sign of green shoots
then you remove it and treat it as normal, like a seedling
but this works a treat.
One of the things you may be thinking is,
oh, aren't I just creating slug habitats?
well, yes, and there's a good reason for it.
If I can use these bits of plank and get multiple uses,
not only are they gonna help the germination process
but every morning I can come to the garden
and I'll put it down, I can come to the garden
and turn it up and not only am I looking for seedlings,
I can also look for slugs.
It's actually a great way of trapping slugs
and for me the benefits far outweigh
the potential slug issue.
So, because things like carrots can take a bit of time
to germinate, chances are, you're going to get rid
of all the slugs in the vicinity before the seedlings
even come through.
And that's just a really useful thing
that we can really make the most of as gardeners.
I've put the first row of onions in
so I'm just going to continue doing that
but, in terms of direct sowing, that is all it is.
If you're going to have a lot of warm weather,
you may actually need to just flip these over to one side,
give it a soaking and flip it back.
The process of sowing seeds directly
is not meant to be complicated.
You've just gotta make sure that the timing is right
depending on whatever plants you're trying to grow
and also the main thing that I wanted to get across
is the importance of preventing the seeds from drying out.
So I promise you that plank method
that I learned watching James' video
is an absolute game changer and I really hope
that you can enjoy the benefits from it as well.
I look forward to seeing you guys again soon
and I hope you're enjoying the start
of this new growing season.