Hi.
I'm Helen Muntz, USU Extension garden expert.
Today, I'm going to show you how to start seeds indoor.
It's a cheap way to start your own vegetables.
It saves you a little bit money from buying starts.
But there's other advantages such
as you have a lot of flexibility in what types of seeds
you can start versus what's available
at the local nurseries.
So you can order specialty seeds online.
Today, I'm going to start some Cherokee purple tomato
seeds and a California sweet pepper, California wonder.
So these typically, tomatoes and peppers
take a little bit longer.
They need to be started between mid and late
February so that they are ready to transplant in the spring.
I have a simple tray here that I've kept from shopping
at the garden center.
And I filled it with some soil, and then patted
the soil down a bit, flattened it out, and moistened it.
So the soil should be pre-moistened.
So I'm going to start with my tomato seeds.
Now, the rule of thumb is to plant your seeds roughly
twice the depth of the width of the seed.
But when in doubt, simply read the directions on the packet.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to poke just some little holes about an inch or so apart here
across my tray, and then I'm going
to put about two to three seeds per hole.
So I'm starting with my tomatoes.
And I'm giving them a lot of space.
You can plant them a lot denser, but I'm
giving them a lot of space that makes it a lot easier
to transplant later.
If all three seeds germinate, then you
can simply just thin them out.
So pick the strongest looking one and pull out the others.
Now, I'm going to do my peppers real quickly.
Same thing, you just put two to three seeds per little hole
here.
Easier said than done.
Here we go.
And then I'm going to gently cover up my holes.
Since the soil is moist, you don't
need to water it in, which is nice, because sometimes
the seeds will float away.
But I also like to use a water squirt
bottle to water a little bit, and that helps just
moisten the seed without having them float.
Like so.
OK.
Then I'm going to put a dome on top of it
just to keep in holding the moisture until they germinate.
And then I'm also going to put them on top of a heat pad.
This is just a regular heat pad like for heating your back
because it's a little bit cheaper than buying a more
industrial type pad.
So I put that underneath.
That just sort of speeds up the germination process
a little bit.
So we got our dome and our heat pad.
And we don't really have to do anything now
until we see them germinate, which will take up
to a week, maybe sometimes a little bit quicker
with the heat pad that helps.
And then you definitely want to use some light.
So once they germinate they need some light.
Now, the rule is to keep your light-- this is just
a regular fluorescent light.
And I have it on chains here, and the reason being
is because the light needs to be between two and four inches
above the seedlings at all times.
So the chain allows me to move the light up or down
as the plant grows.
So what I'll have to do once they germinate is I'm
going to have to remove this because it's a little too
tall for enough direct light.
So I'll take that dome off and I'll
hang my light about two inches or so above the plants there.
And as they grow, I'll move my light up.
And once they produced about two sets of true leaves,
those are the leaves that you see
after they first sprout, then they're ready to transplant.
You probably will need to transplant them into a larger
pot before it's warm enough to take them outside,
which is usually about mid-may.
Thanks for watching.
For more gardening tips, visit gardening.usu.edu.