Hi again it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose farm and every year I start a whole bunch of
my seedlings in trays like these inside the house in a protected environment before i move them out
to my greenhouses here but if you're new to starting seeds indoors you should know that
there are three distinct stages to their growth each requiring their own environmental conditions
i'm going to put up a chart right now which will in fact spoil the whole video
but i'll go through it step by step just so you know what i mean by each of these entries
your total time starting indoors is generally from six to eight weeks before the first before
the last frost in your in your area so you can look that up online look up last frost
put in your area it'll tell you what that last expected frost date is and you can time back
from six to eight weeks before that time if you start any sooner than that it can get a little bit
tricky because they will be growing in these and the seedlings will be getting larger and harder to
control in an environment like this harder harder to keep from stretching harder to keep from from
over growing their cells in the plug trays and that's the way i prefer to start them so six to
eight weeks is the time to begin now these three distinct stages i'm going to talk about the first
one is germination the second one i'm talking about is early development and the third one is
hardening off and all three are necessary as you can see by the chart it starts out with high
temperatures and high humidity and not too much air movement and as you move through the stages
you lower that temperature you lower that humidity and you increase the air movement to match what
the seedlings can expect outside so step by step let's first go through germination so this is the
stage where you're giving those seeds a perfect condition to crack or to open up send out their
first root which is called a radical and send out their first leaves which are called cotyledons
those first leaves may not look like the eventual leaves of the plant they're generally quite simple
and quite round and then the second set of leaves or the first true leaves that come out
generally look like the plant that you're that that you were trying to grow during this stage
the most important thing is that you have high humidity and high temperatures light isn't so
important air movement is minimal watering none you're just relying on the moisture in fact it is
important not to be too wet in this stage you just try to be moist and humid and give the seedlings
enough moisture to to pull from their environment but not so much that they will begin to rot
and there is no fertilizer required in this stage as for timing typically and this depends
on temperature a little bit and and also on the type of seed typically it can take from 10 days
to two weeks on average for your seeds to come out of uh to to to break to come into growth um
temperatures on average might be around 77 degrees fahrenheit or 25 degrees celsius is
about an average of what most seeds like as their optimum temperature for uh for germination now it
varies a little bit by variety but that's a pretty good middle of the road thing and that's pretty
reasonable to achieve in an indoor environment i can achieve that fairly easily just by using
a nearby space heater and and also using a humidifier some people use a lot of things like
doming or tenting their seedlings which is perfectly fine as well other people use a much
more much larger uh custom germination chamber so they they'll have many shelves and they'll
stick all of their seedlings in there they'll tent them all together they'll raise the temperature
altogether and they'll keep the humidity up inside of there either through a humidifier or again once
you just enclose seedlings with moist soil and a tent you'll get up to 100 percent humidity
almost immediately the second stage that we have to talk about here is early development now what
does this look like well i mentioned in the in the germination stage you would see the first
cotyledons the first leaves you'd see some radical development this is when you see them continue
their development you'll sometimes see their first true leaves come up very quickly after those
those cotyledons you'll see the stems elongating you'll see further root development but basically
once they've cracked once they've germinated you want to start moving them over to these conditions
you will be leaving them in these conditions for up to four weeks and you want to drop
that temperature right away if you don't drop the temperature right away and the humidity right away
you'll see those seedlings begin to stretch almost immediately they'll go a bit yellow they'll start
stretching towards the light that's another important point at this point is to give them
as much light as you can give them if you have a bright window sill that's probably
the right spot for them if you have artificial light i would recommend it it keeps them more
compact during the stage especially if you're keeping them inside the house for up to four
weeks they could stretch an awful lot by the by then with the weak light of early season
window light the temperatures i'll give you the specifics i usually drop it down to about
65 degrees fahrenheit or that's about 18 degrees celsius around this time you can actually stage
it down a little bit lower if that's possible for you to do if you do it in a basement room or some
other unheated area of the house you can drop it down a little bit lower just to keep that stretch
down and keep the development rate slow enough that you can manage it at this point it's also
important to start introducing some moderate amounts of air movement just a gentle fan
on the on the leaves just to keep the stems moving around a little bit will help to thicken up those
stems and get them ready for what's coming which is the hardening off stage where they're exposed
to environmentally conditions of outdoors watering at this point is infrequent remember
they just came from germinating early on they're not going to need a whole ton of water to keep
moisture in that soil they're not using a lot of moisture at this point so it's infrequent
and as you've had them in there for four weeks if they start to develop a little bit more they're
getting a little fuller you may have to keep a better eye on that but it's infrequent to begin
with for sure and on fertilizer well the seeds come with a package of fertilizer in them or a
package of energy in them where your seedlings don't need a whole ton of fertilizer at first
now again if you're keeping them inside the house for this stage which is about four weeks
by the end of that they may need some fertilizer and you want to start transitioning them that
into feeding a little bit to improve the root development and so on so i would say at this stage
it's none at first but as you get towards the end of that four weeks you might be introducing
fertilizer at a quarter strength or half strength if you're using a liquid feed fertilizer they'll
usually have those the full strength listed on the side of the package and then you can just
dilute that by half or by three quarters to get the right strength for new seedlings
finally after you've done all of this you want to go into a hardening off stage and this is
important too of the total time that you've had it in there two weeks in germination roughly four
weeks of growing on an early development the final two weeks or the final week depending on how much
how extreme your outdoor environment is or how different it is from your indoor environment
you want to give it some time to to get used to what it's going to expect outside it's a be a real
shame to grow your plants for six or seven weeks put them outside and then have them all peel over
which is not an exaggeration or burn off their leaves because you put them out too quickly and
they weren't accustomed to those temperatures or air movement or low humidity so you're doing a
further lowering of the temperature and you're doing a slow exposure to outdoor environment
this takes one to two weeks and usually the temperatures i'm targeting at this point indoors
if i can manage it if i'm keep for the daytime for the night time when i'm keeping them inside
if i can keep it down low like in the range of 54 degrees fahrenheit or 12 degrees celsius that's
kind of ideal day times if you can manage the work to do it the best thing is to actually move them
outside to the outdoor environment usually it's a little bit warmer outside in the days
obviously don't choose the worst of the of the windiest of the coldest and sharpest days outside
but if you can find a day where the environment outside is reasonable put them out expose them to
full sun expose them to the movement of the wind at this stage watering and fertilizer
you're trying to move them more towards what you would treat a regular plant and water as
needed at this point they have been inside for four weeks and so they've grown up quite a bit
you may have to check for watering depending on the cell size that you're using you may
have to check for watering every day or two and fertilizer at this point should be moving towards
half strength or even up to full strength at this stage now after you've done your germination after
you've done your early development after you've done your hardening off the you move them outside
you're going to be using them for either putting directly into the garden or you're transplanting
them into pots for further growth so your job is done for the early seedling development
at that point it's kind of the stage of growing on and i'll i have another video that talks about
growing on plants in pots if you're interested in that one otherwise you take it from here all
right that's it for me on how the you should use your first three stages of seed development
if you have any questions on that some things i didn't discuss in this video would be seed pre-treatment or collection or again some of those early stages after growing on you can
ask me those questions down in the comments of the video and thanks so much for watching