Hi everyone. My name is Nadine from the RBG. Today I'm joining you from my
kitchen with a bunch of seedlings that I've started a couple of weeks ago.
So we're about six weeks away from our last frost date which is about May 10th this year.
Two weeks ago I started some peppers and some tomatoes. And today I'm
going to start a great companion plant for tomatoes, which not only tastes great
together, but also it can help each other grow which is basil.
So basil grows nice and close to the ground, helps to retain soil moisture
while those tomatoes are growing nice and tall, and it can also help to repel pests and insects.
One of the tomatoes that I started is this cherry tomato, and if you
look at the seed pack, it says "high yield" right there. So because I'm working with
an urban garden I'm trying to get lots of fruit in a small amount of space.
Where it's like compact, high yield are really good ones to look for when you're picking your seed packs.
So these might not be available to you, these types of trays,
but these could be -- from fruit from the supermarket. So what I've done is
I've put some pre-moistened soil into this old raspberry container, from soil
that I've moistened in this one here. This is seedling starting soil so it's
pretty fluffy. And it's really important to read the back of our seed packs when
we're starting seeds to give you those specific instructions of what the seeds
actually like, how long they're gonna take to germinate, etcetera. And these basil
seeds want to be planted at about a 1/4 inch depth. So I've marked it off on this
stake, and I'm going to draw those lines across the soil at that depth.
And then I'm going to sprinkle some basil seeds into that line and very gently cover it up
with soil. And then I can use my container top as a little miniature
greenhouse for my seed starting which I'll leave in the window. And hopefully
in nine days if they're warm enough, I'll have some basil seeds germinated.
So it's been about 12 days since we started the basil seedlings.
I wanted to give you an update on how they're doing. So this container has been
sitting in an east-facing window in my house. It's not getting quite as much
sunlight as I would like. We also keep it a little bit cooler in the house to save
energy but you'll see that about half of those seeds we started have actually
come up and emerged out of the soil. Now the leaves that we're seeing now,
these are the seed leaves of this plant. So these are the first leaves to emerge,
these are the leaves that exist inside the seed that are actually helping to
give that first boost of photosynthesis when they come out of the ground. Inside
of there, there are some teeny, teeny, tiny true basil leaves that are just stored
starting to form. They're really, really, really quite adorable. Now basil is quite
a tender plant, meaning that it really needs the warmth, the heat of the sun for
it to grow. It does not like the cold. So it's still going to be about 6 weeks
before this is ready to go outside. And in 4 weeks,
in fact, I'll start getting this plant ready by putting it outside in a shady
spot for about an hour each day and then slowly building up its tolerance to the
sun's heat. Same with these tomatoes that I started. So these ones I recently
potted up into these 2 x 2 inch pots, and they started in cells like this --
1 x 1 inch pot. Now here's a good tip -- as we noticed with the basil,
only about half those seeds came up. So in these tomato cells -- and this is a great
thing to do with all of your plants -- is to put 2 seeds in every time you're
planting. This doubles the chances of your plant actually growing because
you're doubling the chances that one of those seeds is going to germinate. So
I'll probably cut out this one at the soil surface, and let this one keep
growing. So because this basil is still pretty young, pretty sensitive, I'm going to
let it continue to mature in this container.
if you're planning to pot up tomatoes in your house and you don't have
containers like this, yogurt containers make a great potting up pot as well. Just
make sure to draw some holes in the bottom so that the water can seep through.
There's one more thing I'm going to add to this mix, I'm waiting for the seeds to
arrive in the mail, and that is marigolds. So marigolds make a great addition to
this combination of plants. They attract pollinators.
They also deter insects, as well, so another great companion plant to add to the garden.
Okay. Happy planting everybody! Take care.