- Hey there.
The seed boys are here
and it's time to do a start seeds with us, fall edition.
- Let's do it.
- All right, Jacques, open up your satchel.
What do you got?
(laughing)
- I've got a little bit of everything.
- You got a little-- - That's for sure.
- Little couple treats in there.
- But I have like a slight game plan here.
- Let's set the intention.
First of all, if you're watching this video
and you still have time to plant for fall,
go grab your seeds and plant with us right now.
So maybe hit pause, come back to it.
- Totally. - But why are we doing this?
Well, number one, we're in San Diego's zone 10 B.
So we can plant a sort of second as the summer fades
type of type of planting.
- We get two summers.
- In a sense.
And then also, I personally have learned from last year that
starting my fall crops really early in San Diego
has been very helpful.
- Yeah, timing is everything.
- Leeks, onions, garlic, brassicas, cabbage--
- Brussels, yeah. - Brussels, all that stuff.
So, I'm gonna do a bit of a half and half.
So I personally am gonna start out with my alliums.
So I'm just gonna see what I've got.
I had a huge leek crop last year, I actually--
- Yeah, that was a lot of leeks.
- I honestly have had success
with most of what I've grown, summer and winter,
but the alliums and brassicas in the winter
did really, really well-- - Really well.
- And it's really all to your point about the timing.
Should I go with the King Richard or the German Leek?
- I think, is the King Richard like, taller?
Is that the deal?
- I believe King Richard is taller.
- Huh, yeah.
- Somewhere in fall harvest.
It's not hardy enough to over winter,
but I don't have over winter here--
- We don't have winter here.
- I don't have a winter.
- All right, I'm going to start with some brussels.
- [Kevin] Okay.
- So my plan with the brussels sprouts is
to start a 6-Cell now and then in a month start another.
And the idea is that if these get roasted,
if it gets like too hot in August, which it probably will
and they suffer too much, then I'll have a backup one ready.
And if it doesn't then I'll have
brussel sprouts in the winter,
and I'll also have brussel sprouts in the spring.
- I'm gonna do Gold Coin, it's a flat yellow cippolini.
- [Jacques] Oh, nice.
- I'm pretty sure that this is the one
I did a good job with this year.
- Okay. - And the larger ones
I tried to grow they didn't fully
kind of close the bulb out,
they kind of looked like cylinders, the cones.
- The stem just kind of kept going.
- Didn't really work out that well.
Nevertheless, I mean, I literally anyone last night
it's not like it was bad, but--
- I had a mixed success with my onions this year.
I got a couple good ones
and then a couple are actually still in the ground
and they're just now flopping over,
and they actually size up.
So, I'm surprised by how long they could go.
- I don't think the flavor's gonna be that impacted by that,
I think you're probably fine.
- Yeah.
- [Kevin] So I'm gonna do a couple like
mixed flats of onions and leeks, guys.
First, I went in with that Gold Coin,
next I'm gonna go in with the King Arthur leek.
King Richard leek, excuse me.
- So are you doing like a dense sowing
or are you just kind of doing individuals?
- I'm doing a triple, like a minimum of three seeds
because I learned that myself splitting the leeks out
from a multisown, it actually did work really well for me.
- Yeah, totally.
- So now I'm planting a 6-Cell,
in our Epic 6-Cell Trays
but it's really more of like an 18 to 24
depending on how many of these come up.
It's really easy to split leeks out.
- Really easy.
'Cause their roots are just so weak
and they don't tend up--
- And they're so vertical.
They don't really tangle and web that much, so.
- Yeah, like last year, I think I did like,
a hundred leeks in a single 6-Cell
and then I just split 'em all up.
- You split 'em all up.
- It was totally fine.
- Leeks are one of my favorite alliums.
- Same.
- Just so delicious.
So I'm gonna do two flats of the King Richard.
- I'm going in with the Pomodoro Principe Borghese again.
- [Kevin] Oh, you're going in with the tomato?
- Yeah.
So this is the, so the deal is,
in warmer climates, San Diego
or anywhere else probably even down to like zone nine--
- Eight B, nine, yeah. - Yeah.
You could get away with starting smaller tomatoes now.
Now I wouldn't start like a brand new beef steak now
'cause I would probably get a fruit,
but by the time I do, it's like on its way out.
But things that are smaller fruit did require less sun.
So I could actually still get
a little bit of production here.
And this is the one that allegedly you could store.
So you could hang this like somewhere in your house
and store it for like a month or two or three.
- We just harvested that.
- Yeah. - Yesterday.
- Totally. - To make some pasta
on the Epic Homesteading Channel.
- And it's real good.
- It's a great hanging tomato.
It's interesting the way that the,
at least this label displays it is like a pile.
- Yeah, 'cause they make-- - Like an absolute pile--
- They make them into like this,
like structure that they hang.
I don't know how they do it,
but maybe I'll find out.
- We'll see if you can get to that level this year--
- I don't know, I don't know.
I just realized I haven't been putting labels.
- You know what? I might do this one.
This is the, Alisa Craig.
And it doesn't look like it's been opened
but it was the last year's seed, so forgive me.
But it just looks absolutely massive.
It's the size of this young girl's head,
So five pounds is rather common.
- Rather common?
- Rather common, five pounds.
- So you could make a whole french onion soup
with one onion probably?
- Yeah, yeah, so we'll see.
I'll do all, I'm not gonna risk too much on this,
I'll do one flats worth,
but hey, if I get it, I get it.
It would actually be really interesting, Jacques,
to grow this in a perfectly like,
perfectly set up onion container.
- Yeah. - You know, like a five gal
with this inside. - Oh, like the solo?
- And put it on irrigation, like make sure,
almost like you're growing giant vegetables
like many of those growers do.
- Yeah.
All right, I'm gonna go in some leeks too.
I'm doing the Bulgarian Giant Leeks.
I grow these every year now.
And they're actually a little bit sweeter,
I'd say than a regular leek
and you could check my Instagram,
but I harvested a literal like bushel of them this year.
And they get up to like five feet in length.
- Yeah, you actually had a really solid leek harvest.
I thought I had you on the leeks
and then you came in with that Bulgarian beast,
and he got me, he got me good.
- The cool thing about leeks too
is that I grew all those leeks
in like maybe a 10 by one foot area.
- Yeah.
- It's something anyone could plant
that doesn't take that much space.
- So I have a couple little sections of my flower
and seed collection dedicated to warm verse cold.
So, these are the flowers that I've separated
out for the cool season.
So I'm gonna be planting them
as we kind of go into the cool season.
Some of these traverse both climates, it's not a big deal.
But I am gonna throw in more cornflower
also known as Bachelor Button.
- Oh yeah, those are great.
- And I'm gonna do a couple different Nasturtium mixes here.
So I have this King Theodore,
I haven't seen this like perfectly red one.
- Oh wow.
- So I think that's pretty unique.
We'll see-- - That's a nice color.
- We'll see when it grows,
this is like a nice blood red, so.
Nasturtium seeds are big,
so I'm gonna put these down a little deeper.
- I think I have probably like 20 leek seeds in each cell.
- Yeah, you can go that extreme.
- I'm going extreme.
- Yeah and this is something personally,
at least I picked up from Charles Dowding
with his multisown method, except for,
I believe most of the time
like he's gonna let them grow as they are that way
instead of separating them out, I don't think.
- I think he pricks, like--
- Sometimes. - Sometimes.
- Sometimes, but his beets,
I don't think he'll prick or--
- Oh right, he'll plant them as like three packs basically.
Before I do the watermelons, I'm gonna start my artichokes.
- Oh, okay.
- This year I decided to try a different variety,
usually I just do the standard globe.
- So did you not, did you rip
your whole artichokes out so they're--
- I cut 'em at the base so they could regrow
but I don't know if they will 'cause I have it out front
in an area that I've kind of abandoned to save water.
So they're Tavor and Imperial star.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
- At least one of 'em is spineless.
And one of 'em, I believe Imperial star
could be grown as like an annual,
like it doesn't need to over winter
in the more extreme sense.
- Yeah.
- So maybe I'll even get a crop like this fall.
- That would be very interesting if you pull off.
- Maybe not, maybe not.
So I'm gonna do a four pack of each,
I'm gonna go directly into the 4-Cells.
So why are you going with the 4-Cell and not the 6?
- Right, so things that, especially like, something,
here, let me take out the seeds.
That's a good demonstration.
So anything that has like a pretty substantial size seed,
I like to go right into the four cell
because it's gonna come out as a pretty large plant.
And I know for a fact that artichoke
does come out as like a pretty vigorous plant.
So it's gonna have no problem filling
up all that soil with roots.
Whereas if I did it in the 6-Cell
I could totally do that.
I just have to up pot it very, like very soon.
- Yeah.
- But if I could get away with just having it
grow nicely in a bigger soil volume, I'll totally do that.
Now, if they were smaller seeds
I wouldn't go directly into here
because then the seed's gonna struggle
using all the water available to it
and it might like dampen off.
- Yeah, that's the biggest--
- That's kind of my strategy.
- I think that's the most sort of logical way
to approach it is, if you're going to put a tiny seed
in there it's just gonna,
the water's not gonna dry out quick enough in the soil
and you're gonna sort of drown it out.
- Totally.
- And that's the biggest problem.
So I'm gonna do some Calendula here.
I actually like it quite a bit.
- I love Calendula. - So I'm gonna do 12 plants
and we'll figure out a way to kind of
pepper this around the garden.
Calendula great, also, now that we have the Epic hens
here at the Homestead,
it's a great one to feed to your hens.
I believe there's like an antimicrobial,
antifungal property going on there,
but also it tends to color the hens eggs a deeper orange.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean
it's immediately healthier, everyone says,
oh, orange yolk better hen. - That's better.
- If it's a colorant sort of function happening there,
I wouldn't say that's like guaranteed to make it healthy
but I certainly don't think it's gonna hurt them.
So Calendula.
One thing I've been doing with flowers, Jacques, this year
is I've just been planting the ones I like
and then finding where to put them
and I'm not stressing about,
oh like I need this one in this bed and this and that.
I just plant enough.
'Cause look, when you're sitting here planting
it's not that much extra time to do
let's say an entire nother flat,
and you'll be sure be glad you have it.
I mean, I think this is the first year
we threw some starts away, AKA just composted them.
- Right.
- Instead of we're hungry for more starts--
- That's true. - You know what I mean?
This is the first year we weren't
actually starving for more starts.
- And I think it's great.
Like for flowers personally,
like, I mean if you see my garden it's, they're everywhere.
Like I don't care what's growing there,
I'll just shove it in. - Yeah.
- The biggest thing is like,
I'll just try to usually put it by like an emitter
just so that I make sure it gets water
but sometimes I won't and they actually do fine too.
Flowers are quite resilient.
- So I do wanna do a Pickling cuke
'cause I think I can pull it off.
- [Jacques] Oh totally.
- So I'm wondering if this one,
Cool Customer OG Pickling cuke from Johnny's,
that should probably work. - Yeah.
- So I'll just do six of these.
I don't need too many here
but I will say I kind of lost track
of my cucumbers this season
in favor of my peppers, my onions, my eggplants, et cetera.
So my cukes got a little misshapen.
- Just a little neglected.
- Yeah, a little neglected.
So I need to redeem myself
and get some proper cucumbers going on.
- Here, I'm gonna start a whole 6-Cell of this one
and I'll give you half of them.
- Okay, what's that one?
- Syrian Smooth Cucumber, it's like a snacking cucumber.
- Oh nice.
- It's from this new seed company to me
called True Love Seeds.
They have like a lot of interesting seeds.
- Yeah.
- And that's actually why I haven't sown it yet,
I might sow it, but I got some dry land rice from them.
- Oh right, yeah, we were thinking
about doing some rice guys in the Epic pond.
- Totally.
- Or just crafting a environment that it'll grow well in.
- Yeah, the only thing I'm not entirely sold on
is whether we could do it now
or if we need to wait for spring.
- We might need to wait.
- So that's why I've been a little hesitant.
- We have grown our own wheat here at the Homestead.
- Oh yeah.
- Twice now and gotten a lot better at it.
And I'm thinking I was just talking to Chris,
who's on our team here, and she's grown oats.
- Oh yeah.
- And so I think maybe a fall oat could be interesting.
- I heard fresh oats are really good.
- As long as there's a spot for it.
There's weirdly starting to run outta space here.
- Yeah, I think we could squeeze it in some where.
- We could probably make it happen.
- We have something here.
- Okay, I need to get into the world of
some of these brassicas but I don't have that pack out here.
Can I steal some from you?
- Totally.
- I need some--
- What are you looking for?
Do you wanna do a brussel pack?
I have a couple seeds.
- Brussels would be nice.
Yeah, I'll do some Brussels.
I can do at least six brussels
and I'll mess around with the rest there.
- Yeah.
- So I'll do 18 more starts over here,
these last three 6-Cell Trays
of some some alliums and brassicas.
- Way ahead of me. - Yeah.
- Here's what I've got.
This is a legendary watermelon.
- Is it called legendary?
- No, it's the Bradford. - Oh, it's Bradford.
- And actually I think, I believe somebody sent it to us.
- Yep.
- But the $9 seed pack of watermelons.
- We got a mystery box a couple months back
of someone who sent us, I don't even know how many seeds,
maybe 500 packs of seeds.
- Dude, these are like Kabocha squash seeds.
- [Kevin] Whoa.
- These are huge.
- [Kevin] Hold on.
Wow, these are hefty.
- Yeah. - Those are hefty.
- Those are serious seeds.
So I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly
the legend on these is that
they were so good that the farmers used to poison
like 10% of their watermelons
'cause people would come steal them.
- Whoa.
- And the farmers would only know which 10% were poisoned.
So like if you wanna come steal some watermelon like--
- Take a gamble.
It's watermelon roulette.
- Yeah. - Is what they were doing.
- Like that's how they were controlling people
from stealing their watermelons.
- What's the cauliflower you grew this year,
that works really well?
Is it Song TJS?
- Song is the more heat tolerant one.
- Okay.
- The one that I really liked was the Flame Star.
- Okay, I'm gonna go hunt this down for you--
- Which is a cheddar type.
- Oh, there it is, there you are.
- [Jacques] And then lavender if you want a purple variety
is right underneath that one.
- Okay, well I'm gonna go with the cheddars.
And did you like them?
- [Jacques] I really like them.
- Yeah?
- For us we find that the cheddar cauliflower
just has like a more like complex flavor to it,
just tastes better.
- You wouldn't dare rice it, right?
It'd be dis disgraceful.
- I honestly don't care that much about riced cauliflower.
- Yeah.
I saw tweets and was like,
we're asking cauliflower to do too much, you know?
They're like-- - Getting a lot away.
- Has anyone checked on cauliflower?
- Ask if they're okay.
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna go with some Cha Cha Kabocha.
- [Kevin] Ooh.
- Little Cha Cha never hurt anyone.
- [Kevin] A little fancy dancey.
- I love Kabocha squash.
If I had to choose like one winter squash
it would probably be Kabocha.
- I need to get some cabbage going, we all know that.
- Oh yeah. - We all know that.
- I'm a little scared to start cabbage now.
- Really? - Yeah.
There's also, I put one in there called Tiara.
- Is it bigger? - I think it's at the front.
No, it's a small one that grows quickly.
- Okay, I want the slower growing one right now.
- Oh, okay. - Not the faster growing.
'Cause if it's faster growing
it's more likely that it'll bolt out
if we get our late summer heat--
- I was thinking the opposite.
- You think so?
- Yeah, 'cause then this has to survive.
- I'm trying to force this to go through the winter.
- Okay.
- That's the level I'm at with this.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
- Yeah. - Might still be
a little too early here in August to do it
but I've learned that last year,
starting not in August didn't work that well either,
it could have done even better.
- So I'm gonna go in,
this is like my third attempt with soybeans.
- Oh Godspeed, bro.
Godspeed, I'm not even doing it this year.
- I actually got a harvest this year.
- [Kevin] Did you?
- It's in my GreenStalk,
it did, this is the first time it's done well
was in my Five-Tier GreenStalk,
and I have like, probably 50 beans at home I could go pick.
- No way.
- So, I'm actually pretty excited.
It's given me new life to try again.
- Man, I tried soybeans last year, three times.
- Yeah.
- And every single one, they just spat in my face.
- I just need it to happen.
- They just laughed and spat in my,
they're like, look go down to the local market
and buy it, buy me, 'cause you're not gonna grow me.
- I wanna try, first of all,
I like, you know, steamed edamame.
- Yeah, sure.
- And then I also wanted to actually try making some tofu,
I thought that would be fun.
- Homegrown. - Yeah.
- So here's the way I do it.
First of all, your seed starting mix
should be slightly moist.
- At least not bone dry.
And then we actually have these bottom trays now,
so there's the 6-Cells,
which you guys know and love that we produce
but the Bottom Tray is a super sturdy 10/20,
so that's on our store now,
that's something that we just came out with.
- It's really good.
- It's really nice.
I mean, it's hard because like,
it's hard to describe it,
but basically like,
there's not a lot of trays you could pick up
like at the edge and have them not move at all.
- [Jacques] I would not do that with a normal tray.
- You'd break it immediately.
So, here's what I like to do when I'm rehydrating the soil,
I will go like this and I'll fill up
about a half inch or so of water.
And then I will just kind of let this sit for a bit
and see how much comes up
because on the bottom of these,
and I'll just show you this one here,
there's a big hole, right?
- Yeah. - And so there's enough space
for that water to kind of start wicking upwards.
And then the second it starts getting into that bottom soil
it'll start getting pulled through the dryer parts.
And so, I mean, look, it's--
- [Jacques] It's already sucked up that.
- It's already sucking it up.
So, then after that's done
I'll come in with the mist like this
'cause I don't wanna disturb,
like for example, Jacques, you've got like 20 onion seeds
in each of these, you don't wanna mess with it, so.
- [Jacques] With mist I would have no fear.
- I just come in like this and I hydrate this way.
Now, is that enough?
No, you gotta run it for a little bit.
- But if you do that and the combination
of bottom watering--
- You guarantee that you fully hydrated your mix here.
So I'm all watered up.
Jacques' gonna finish off here,
but hopefully you guys learned something
from this fall seed starting session.
We're trying to do one every season or so,
just to go through our thinking, share with you,
hopefully give you some ideas on some seeds
that you may not have been privy to.
- Yeah.
- And also just adjust 'cause every single season,
every three months or so we're learning something
about how to grow even better in our climate
and hopefully you're learning in yours as well.
So until next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.