Hi Everyone! In this video I'll be demonstrating how to germinate seeds and start plants in a
hydroponic environment. This is something I get a lot of questions about on the channel and I'm
hoping this video will help guide people who are just getting started in the hydroponics game.
I've been refining my seed starting process over the years to make it easier and cheaper- what
follows is my favorite method to get healthy young plants! To get started we will need a growing
medium, which is a fancy way of saying something to hold our seed. I'll be using this rockwool
cube, which seems to be an industry standard. What I'm going to do though, is break down my rockwool
into smaller pieces. Using a full cube is just a needless waste of resources.
I'm going to be using these bell pepper seeds you see here to demonstrate my methods.
I've used these same processes to start a variety of fruits, vegetables and flowers, all having
success. I've got my rockwool pieces set up in an ice cube tray with pre-drilled holes. To germinate
our seed, we want to set it on top of our rockwool and give the rockwool access to water. You can see
here I'm suspending this ice cube tray above a container that is filled with water. Rockwool is
able to soak up and wick moisture. It's going to fully saturate and give our seeds access to all
the hydration they need to germinate and grow. At this point, I use a secondary container base to
act as a lid of sorts, covering my seed starting setup. I cover all of this with a towel to keep
things dark. In my experience, there's no need to purchase a humidity dome or a heating mat with
this method. I typically put this setup in front of a window, to get some free warmth from the sun.
From this point, I check in on my seeds once every day to see where they are at. Here we are on day
six and we can see that all of our seeds have germinated. These seeds all have a white root
emerging from them. You can see that clear root and then what looks to be fuzz surrounding it.
I often see people asking if this is mold or bad for the plants, but these are root hairs! They're
a sign that these roots are ready to go and thriving. We want to keep our plants in the dark
until we have stems starting to form and lift up. Here we are in day 10 and that's exactly what we
have happening. You can see that some of these plants have fully emerged from their seed casings,
while others are still working on that. Once plants open up, they begin looking for light.
And if they can't find it, they will stretch themselves out. This is why we want to monitor
our seeds daily, so we can get our newly sprouted plants into adequate light before they stretch
themselves. Long, lanky plants will have weaker stems, and might even stretch themselves to a
point that they can't stand upright. Now that our seeds have turned into small seedlings,
we can make sure that they are properly set up in their rockwool cubes and will have access to
the water in our reservoir. Ideally, the root of our plant will bury itself through the rock wool
and into our reservoir. In the instances where this doesn't happen, the plant and its root might
be sitting beside or on top of the cube. When this happens, I like to slice into the rockwool cubes
and manually insert my young plants. They'll be nice and stable in that cube now,
and we can line it up so that their roots go through the ice cube tray and down into our
reservoir. Getting our roots directly into the water early is going to prevent them from drying
out as water in our reservoir evaporates. If the water level isn't high enough to hit the rockwool,
it will dry out and so will our plant. At this point we can expose our plants to full light.
I've got my plants in front of a southern facing window, with a supplemental grow light coming on
through the afternoon and evening. We're looking for compact growth- if the plants are stretching
vertically, get them more light. Checking in again on day 17, our seedlings are looking pretty good.
As we look a little bit closer though, we can see that some of our roots are stuck up in the
ice cube tray and seem to be drying out a bit. We can either top up the reservoir, or reposition our
plants so that the roots are going down directly into the water. I'm guiding roots through the tray
holes individually. Bigger holes in the tray would make this even easier. We join these plants again
on day number 21- we can see that our root systems are really starting to spread themselves out.
This is just plain tap water, so these roots are going to keep stretching themselves
hoping to find nutrition. Three weeks in is typically when I will give nutrition to my plants.
I'm moving each plant into an individual reservoir and mixing in nutrients. You can use a half- or
even quarter-strength solution when feeding young seedlings. At this point, we are off to the races.
Now that our plants have some nutrition they should really start to grow.
And that's how I germinate seeds and start plants with hydroponics!
it's super easy and there's no real equipment needed- just everyday household items. Let me
know any questions or concerns in the comments below. Be sure to check out the channel,
where I've documented the full lifecycle of a bunch of different plants, grown
with hydroponics. Best of luck starting your own seeds, thanks for watching and Happy Harvesting!