GB 079 Seed Starting 29:42
SPEAKERS
Debbie Flower, Warren Roberts, Brad Gates, Farmer Fred
Farmer Fred 00:03
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot.
Farmer Fred 00:15
Welcome to the Garden Basics Seed Starting episode. Growing your own summer vegetables and flowers from seed is a fun experience. Plus there are just so many more varieties available as seed. If you have a sunny window or a seed starting kit with a heat pad and a lighting system, you're ready to plant. And, Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms tells us how he starts his tomato seeds. Also, can you reuse old soil that you might have in containers? As Debbie Flower tells us: It depends. But, she has tips for getting that old soil back into top shape. Warren Roberts of the UC Davis Arboretum tells us about the plant of the week currently in bloom in many parts of the country, the Winter Jasmine. It's all on Episode 79 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. And we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.
Farmer Fred 01:10
If you're dreaming of a summer vegetable garden, late February is a great time to put those dreams into action. How about starting your tomatoes and peppers and your zinnias and marigolds from seed? There are a lot more varieties available via seed then there are transplants at your local nursery. So, maybe you want a new adventure in gardening? Starting from seed is a wonderful adventure. You're going to get hooked on it. All you need is a sunny window and a propagation mat, also known as a heating pad. It provides bottom heat that keeps the soil warm, which speeds up germination of seeds and maybe some extra light if you don't have enough light coming through the window. And when you really get hooked on gardening, you'll want a greenhouse. Believe me, you'll want a greenhouse. So let's get some tomato and pepper seeds started. Now, peppers usually take 12 to 15 weeks to grow from a seed to a suitable transplant size. Tomatoes are ready to plant about eight weeks from seed. So again, you're going to be growing these indoors for the right amount of time till all danger of frost or when you typically plant these crops outdoors where you are. Now, there's a few secrets to getting those seeds off to a healthy start. You're starting them in small containers, they need plenty of light, bottom heat via a propagation mat, moving air once they're up, and the right soil. If you're tempted just to take those seeds and plop them into a pot along with soil from your garden, you're reducing your chances for seed success. Backyard soils just hold too much water to be a successful seed starting medium in a container. So a seed starting mix is a better option. It's more open. It actually has more uniform lightweight particle sizes. Backyard soil can be tight because the particle sizes are all of different sizes. Plus backyard soil tends to be heavier. It can have rocks in it, seeds, and who knows what sort of critters may have laid eggs in there? So why does it have to be a seed starting mix and not just a bag of regular potting soil? Well, consider the strength of that seed when it germinates. Those little plants aren't very strong and so the particle sizes need to be very lightweight, so that the little plant that comes out of the seed can push those particles out of the way. Other kinds of potting mixes that you might buy in a bag have particle sizes that are way too large. And those little baby plants can't push their way out. And you can find bags of seed starting mix wherever you get your garden supplies, but those bags are kind of small. So for those backyard gardeners who like to start a lot of seedlings and maybe share them with your friends (and you probably will) it is definitely more economical to blend your own seed starting mix. Usually there are three ingredients to a seed starting mix. There's peat moss or coir, which is coconut fiber. There's perlite, and there's vermiculite. That's one formula. Another formula would be one third peat moss, one third pumice, which is like vermiculite but a bit heavier. And one third well-screened, fine compost. So then you're going to mix those ingredients together, the three ingredients, whatever you settled upon. So let's say you're starting with peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite. Alright, get yourself one of those big buckets like you'd find at a home improvement store. Fill that bucket with the peat moss, put that bucket of peat moss into a wheelbarrow. Then fill that bucket with perlite. Put that into the wheelbarrow and then fill it with vermiculite and put that in the wheelbarrow. Now you have a lot of seed starting mix but you need to do something very, very important: and that's to moisten it thoroughly. Peat moss especially needs to be thoroughly hydrated before you start planting seeds in it. Water on dry peat moss tends to roll off. So in that wheelbarrow, put some water in it. Mix it up. You're gonna have fun, you're gonna be playing in the mud. So put enough water in it, maybe to cover the whole area, and then get in there with your hands or a shovel or some sort of implement and just mix it together until everything is well saturated, you may want to just let it sit in that wheelbarrow in that water for a few hours. Now obviously afterwards, you're going to have a pretty good muddy mess. So get yourself some large planting containers like a five gallon or a 15 gallon container, the ones that have holes in the bottom, and then take the wheel barrel contents and then fill up your pots with that soil. The holes in the bottom will allow the water to drain off and then an hour or so later, you're ready to go, until the seeds come up. You don't need to add fertilizer. That little seed has enough energy in it to get it out of the ground and produce the first set of leaves. As soon as it starts putting out more sets of leaves though, then you want to use a low dosage fertilizer. What is low dosage? Low dosage would be something with single digits, especially organic fertilizers that have less than 10% nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. That's what those three numbers refer to on a bag or a box of fertilizer. So I like to use fish emulsion or some sort of organic liquid fertilizer that you can mix with water and I would apply it at half dose strength and again this is after the true leaves are up. True leaves are those leaves that appear after the first set of leaves which are called cotyledons. Cotyledons are just there to really allow the plant to start photosynthesis to produce those true leaves. How deeply do you plant the seeds? It depends on what it says on the label of the seed packet you bought. Usually it's a quarter inch, so all you need to do really is place the seeds on top of that soil mix in the small containers and then top it with a bit more of that seed starting mix, not very much. If you're growing it indoors in a sunny window then you'll want to rotate it at least a quarter turn every day so the plants don't get too bent, leaning towards the window. And remember I talked about moving air. Yeah, set up a fan after the plants start growing and run the fan for about 10 minutes a day, maybe an oscillating fan nearby. That will allow those little plants to gain a lot of strength and girth along their stems. You'll be amazed at the results you're going to have as well as plenty of plants to share with friends. Enjoy seed starting, it's fun. Of course if you talk to a dozen gardeners you might get 12 different opinions on how to start your seeds. So let's get some advice from a professional seed grower. Brad Gates who runs Wild Boar Farms, famous for their fine line of tomato seeds.
Farmer Fred 07:39
If you're in tomato planting mode, maybe you're starting seeds, maybe you're transplanting tomato plants into the garden, how deep should you plant them and is there a substitute for a very expensive seed starting mix. Brad Gates and Wild Boar Farms has some suggestions.
Farmer Fred 08:02
Frankly, for the home gardener who's transplanting little tomato plants into slightly bigger containers, you could just use a good quality potting mix from your favorite nursery.
Brad Gates 08:12
Yeah, I always use that's when I'd use regular potting mix. That's what I would do. Uou can top off the trays and if anything is bigger than say your pinky fingernail, pick it off the top. You can also run them through like a quarter inch screen just regular high quality potting mix, just screen it at a quarter inch and it makes perfect seed starting mix.
Farmer Fred 08:31
Excellent tip. And of course as the tomatoes grow in that three and a half inch pot, they can get kind of lanky, too, but if you give them full sun like what you have here in this greenhouse, they will tend to be fairly upright but do you find you have to prune them?
Brad Gates 08:48
No. If you give them plenty of light and that's why I like the cool nighttime and then not too hot during the day and that will make them a little bit stockier. Sometimes when you mass plant like you're saying, put even up to 10 seeds or more in a small cup and plant them they can fight for the light a little bit so they can get lanky. The good things with tomato plants is you can always bury the plant and a bunch of the stem and it will readjust itself so to speak.
Farmer Fred 09:13
Yeah, just like if you bought a tomato plant at a nursery if somebody bought one of yours at a nursery and decided to transplant it into the yard like they should, they would want to plant it deeper than where it was planted in the pot at the nursery.
Brad Gates 09:29
Yeah, my general rule of thumb is plant about 20 to 30% of the plant, no matter how big it is, if it was a little seedling when I transplant, I'll plant them about 20 or 30% of the stem underneath the soil. Once I get a nice transplant that's ready for the garden. Same thing I'll trim off any leaves or suckers that are below where I'm going to plant and then I'll bury about 20 or 30% of the stem that keeps the potting mix it's planted in from drying out that keeps when the wind in the spring is blowing your plants around. It makes it little further down in the soil so it can handle the wind and it will also regenerate roots on the stem where it comes in contact with the moist soil.
Farmer Fred 10:14
We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast and we bring in the big guns to answer these questions. That would be our favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower, Debbie, even though it's only February, you know, people do have questions pertaining to what's going to be happening in just a few months. For instance, Josh writes in, he says, "I'm wondering about reusing soil from container plants. I know if a plant gets diseased, you should throw away that soil. However, for the rest of the containers, what is the best way to reuse the soil, bags of potting soil can get quite expensive, and it seems like a waste to put brand new soil in a pot every year. I'm mainly referring to growing annual vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and greens. Thank you for your insight."
Farmer Fred 11:08
Well, Debbie, thrift versus science.
Debbie Flower 11:14
Well, I'm always on the side of Thrift. You know, reduce, reuse, recycle. Those are important things in our world, at least in my world. And I always shouldn't say always, I do reuse my potting soil. That when if you were to look up the big guns in horticulture, the land grant universities that have, you know, PhD horticulture programs, you would get a mix of answers of about half of whom I would tell you yes, go ahead. And the other half would say no, the only reason I found that was listed for those who said no, was because of that disease issue. And Josh just seems aware of that. So if the plant died from disease, if its roots were rotted, or if the soil smells bad, like low tide or bad, bad fish, then I would not reuse that soil, because it probably contains some kind of a fungus or bacteria that can harm the plant. If it had a whole lot of weeds in it. If it was an untended pot, and a lot of weeds were allowed to flower and go to seed again, I probably would not reuse that soil. And commercially, it's not reused. But it can be even commercially. In that situation, they would use a steam sterilizer. But at home, I just reuse the soil, I keep containers of it, I have some in a garbage can, that I Well, I'll empty the containers that I'm done with and put the soil in there when it was just a healthy plant, a plant I decided didn't look good anymore, or it was an annual that had reached the end of its lifespan for me, then I would put the soil in that and let it build up when I go to reuse it. There are two things I'm concerned about. One is the texture of the soil, which is the size of the granules. And container soil, which is what we're buying in bags is mostly organic matter. And over the course of a season or a year or longer that organic matter breaks down, it actually gets smaller in size, and then it nestles closer to the other pieces of soil that are in the pot and the soil becomes more compact and it's less able to hold oxygen and water and that's not good for the plant. So when I go to reuse it, I will mix it with something that will open up that soil depending on what I'm planting that could be more organic matter or it could be added perlite or pumice or sand that could open up that soil. The other thing that no one mentioned, none of the academics mentioned, but that I experienced when I did reuse soil with students was a need to check the pH on the soil. If you fertilize quite a bit in that container maybe more than the plant needs, or you have time-release fertilizer in there and the plant didn't use up all the time release fertilizer. There may be a buildup of salts. Fertilizers we use for plants are salts or they are converted into the salt form so the plant can absorb them. If you've had a ceramic pot with that white crusty stuff on the outside, that's excess salts. And it can be washed out of the soil just with with a good flushing of that soil with clean water or you can modify the pH so the way to check for salts is with pH. If you have a pH meter, and the salt level is too high, your pH will read above seven, it'll be alkaline, above seven, and so I might do a little adjusting to the pH and that would take sulfur and it takes a little bit of time for the sulfur to act. But it will lower the pH over time. So those are the only two things I worry about. Well, three. The disease, don't use it, don't keep it if it's got disease or other pests like weeds in them. I've even done potted a plant that we were, I think it was with students and I think we were going to move it up into a larger pot, and there were slug eggs in there. Tremendous amount of slug eggs, like a full cup of slug eggs. Obviously, that's not something you want in your usable soil. So if there's any indication of a pest being present, I would not reuse the soil. When I do reuse the soil, I want to open it up with something with a bigger particle size, which would be organic matter, perlite, pumice or sand. And I would want to check the pH if I knew I had been fertilizing a lot, then I would want to check the pH and maybe have to lower it with a little bit of sulfur.
Farmer Fred 15:49
Alright,I have a series of questions based on what you just said.
Debbie Flower 15:53
Okay,
Farmer Fred 15:53
I'm glad you mentioned snail eggs because I was racking my brain thinking of all the insect issues that could affect the success of a plant, insects that might just overwinter in the top few inches of the soil?
16:08
Mm hmm.
Farmer Fred 16:09
And that could be what aphids, whiteflies.
Debbie Flower 16:12
Well, then there are the larva of things like tomato hornworms. Mm hmm.
Farmer Fred 16:16
Yeah, that too. Yeah. So that that would be if you did have a problem, like you mentioned with an insect or a mollusk, if you will, a snail or a slug. Maybe it would be best to do something else with that soil.
Debbie Flower 16:31
right away.
Farmer Fred 16:32
what are the options for doing something else with that soil? Can I throw it on the ground?
Debbie Flower 16:37
You can throw it on the ground, it's not necessarily the prettiest thing, it doesn't necessarily match the rest of your landscape. Ideally, what I would do to it is put it in my compost pile, mix it in, let it sit for a while and let those problems be attacked by the life in the existing compost pile.
Farmer Fred 16:53
Now I have a question about fertilizer. If it's a case of somebody over-fertilizing the soil and you were concerned about the pH, is there the possibility that the fertilizer they may have been using might contain too much sulfur and might have actually lowered the pH to a point where it wouldn't be compatible with most vegetables?
Debbie Flower 17:14
That's a possibility. And ammonium sulfate is sometimes used in places where natural pH of soil or the water being used to irrigate that soil is above good ranges for growing which is about right about seven. A pH of seven is a good range, a good target for pH in soil you're going to grow vegetables and annuals in and if you use ammonium sulfate regularly, the ammonium is used up as nitrogen in the plant and the sulfate remains in the soil and eventually the pH goes down. Knowing what fertilizer you've used, whether you've used one with sulfur in it, would be helpful to give you a clue. But checking the pH with a pH meter or with one of those color strips would be helpful in solving that.
Farmer Fred 17:59
What's nice, though, is that many of the vegetables that Josh mentioned about growing tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, especially, they don't mind a slightly acidic soil even down to what, 6.2, or thereabouts.
Debbie Flower 18:13
Yeah, I was taught 5.5 to 6.5 being a good range. But I was on the East Coast when I learned that and the soils and waters on the East Coast tend to be acidic. Whereas now we're on the west coast and those numbers are skewed a little bit differently because of our natural conditions.
Farmer Fred 18:31
But if that soil mix that was used in the original container, if it contained a goodly percentage of peat moss, and they had let that pot just sit there with nothing in it for a while and then thought about reusing the soil, would there be a chance that that peat in that soil may have dried out and will need to be resaturated?
Debbie Flower 18:54
Oh, absolutely, peat moss is tough. That way when peat moss dries out, it's difficult to get it to get wet again. And so mixing, I always wet my soil before I put it in the container. It's something I was taught and it's something I have taught others and it's something I practice. Because if especially if it's a big container, if you're growing a tomato in a container, you're looking at at least a number five size container. And that's what 15 inches deep, I'd say. And if you put dry soil whether it's out of a bag, dry media, I should say it's it's soilless mix, dry media out of a bag, or something that you've left over and it's dried out in your yard in your garbage can as I keep mine, when you add water to the top it will not wet all the way to the bottom water takes the path of least resistance will be which would be from the center of wherever you pour it out to the edges of the container and it'll go right down the container sites. So I always wet the media even if I'm not using a big container, in a bin with my hands with water and make Everything's gotten just damp, not not drippy, but just damp, like wrung out sponge kind of damp, and then put it in the container. And that will rewet the peat moss and anything else that you're using, maybe you're using coir, maybe you're using compost, whatever else you're using will get wet. And that will help the water then continue to permeate the entire container, not just go around the outside,
Farmer Fred 20:24
We gardeners never grew up, we still like to play in the mud.
Debbie Flower 20:27
You got it.
Farmer Fred 20:29
Now, would there be a nutritional deficiency in that old potting mix, and the first thing that pops in my head is there's probably less nitrogen and probably some sort of nitrogen should be added?
Debbie Flower 20:41
Absolutely. Nitrogen is a nutrient. The number one nutrient that humans apply to plants. And it's as a chemical in the form that the plant can use it, it moves with water, it moves as soil, maybe washes out of the pot, and it can become a gas and it can volatilize and plants use a lot of it. So yes, we we will definitely need to add fertilizer, you can mix it into the container, but that tends to be more wasteful. Part of it depends on your source of nitrogen, there are quick release versions of nitrogen, which are chemicals, there are slow release versions of nitrogen. And in those there are chemicals basically pelleted quick release versions, or organic types, which are things that will break down and become usable nitrogen for the plant, like worm castings, or bat guano or chicken manure, the the latters I would probably say the worm castings, the chicken manure etc, I would probably mix in to my media. But the other forms of fertilizer, I would just put on the top. It's called top dressing. It's done commercially in production. And it's critical to the health of the plants, they are started in containers with media mixed in fertilizer mixed into the media and that helps the roots get going. But then when that's all the plant has gone through maybe three months, six months, depends what fertilizers been used, it runs out and so then you top dress so you take the little bit of fertilizer and sprinkle it on top of the soil and water it in. I would think to that with nitrogen you would probably want to add that closer to planting time since nitrogen is so volatile if you took that steer manure chicken manure and mix it in that pot of soil now thinking this is what I'll put my tomatoes in in a couple of months, that nitrogen may be gone in a couple of months. Yes, nitrogen moves around a lot. And that is a problem. So yes, the nitrogen I would put in when I'm ready to plant and you don't want too much that they're usually recommendations on the container you purchase it from. Or if you're getting it bulk, somehow you'll need to look up maybe online. Some recommendations, you don't want to use too much because that will kill a plant almost faster than no nitrogen.
Farmer Fred 23:01
You mentioned that one of the ingredients you might add to have a greater pore space besides perlite might be pumice, and you mentioned sand, but you're talking about a special sand, aren't you?
Debbie Flower 23:15
Yes, sand. Sand and other soil types are defined by the particle size. And sand has the largest particles when we're checking out the texture of our field soil. But it has the biggest range of sizes. I can't quote you that range right now. But it's several zeros in the range of sizes so you can get sand that's very small and you can get sand that's very big. If you put all types in, you're just creating more of a cement than anything else. And so you want sized sand, sand that has been put through sifters basically, screens and only certain sizes come through. You can buy horticultural sand, or you can go to your big box store and buy builders sand. Builders sand has been sized. And in both cases it has also been washed because sand occurs primarily in places by saltwater and we don't want that salt in in our containers. So the sand needs to be washed and it needs to be sized. Either horticultural sand or builders sand.
Farmer Fred 24:20
And then finally, I have a question about something you mentioned about flushing the soil. So I've been wracking my brain for the last 10 minutes trying to think of what sort of device could you use to screed that soil, to clean it if you will. And I'm thinking about maybe an old window screen fastened securely to the end of a bucket and then tipping the bucket over and letting it drain.
Debbie Flower 24:45
The simplest is to take the container It's already in and start the water on it. And here we go. Getting our hands dirty again. Stick your hands in that mix, that soil, and move it around. You've got drainage holes in that pot, though, to allow drainage. Now, they may allow too much drainage. And if that's the case, for sure, a window screen would be an excellent choice.
Farmer Fred 25:07
As my solution is I keep much like you I keep two big buckets full of potting soil beneath my workbench outside, which when it rains, it's kind of leaky. And sure enough, they've got a lot of water in them now, but you know, they needed to get wet anyway for the peat moss in there. There you go.
Debbie Flower 25:27
Yeah. And it's time to start some seeds for later in the season. So you got moist media for that.
Farmer Fred 25:34
I'm gonna get my hands real dirty.
Debbie Flower 25:36
Mmm, hmm.
Farmer Fred 25:37
I think we've solved that one. Debbie Flower. Thanks for your help on answering Josh's question about reusing soil from container plants.
Debbie Flower 25:46
My pleasure, Fred, thank you.
Farmer Fred 25:57
Even though it's winter, there are a lot of plants that are in bloom or will soon be in bloom where you live. And one of those plants is the jasmine. And in particular, the winter Jasmine. We're talking with Warren Roberts. He's gonna tell us all about the Plant of the Week, winter Jasmine. And Warren, this is I guess you'd call it a viney shrub.
Warren Roberts 26:19
Yes. The winter Jasmine is mainly a low growing shrub. Although you can train it as a vine on a trellis. I've also seen it scrambling up on other plants. But winter Jasmine carries on the show that was started by the forythia. It blooms a little bit later. It has green stems, it almost has no leaves. That's why it's called "nudiflorum" and it blooms when there are no leaves on the plant. It has the advantage of being easy to grow. And it's fairly easy, easily available commercially. It also roots as the stems touch the ground. So it can actually spread as a kind of a tall ground cover. The pure yellow flowers are just a joy. And again, they bring sunshine into the winter, early spring garden.
Farmer Fred 27:13
It would be pretty to train that onto a wall or a trellis.
Warren Roberts 27:17
Yes, in fact it does rather nicely that way. It's native to northern China. So it's pretty tough regarding cold and has a long blooming period. It's not one of those things that just blooms for a little while, then it's over. You can have the advantage of the yellow flowers from late winter, early spring right on through the spring.
Farmer Fred 27:41
Now this particular Jasmine, the winter Jasmine, jasminum nudiflorum: is the aroma anything to write home about?
Warren Roberts 27:49
No, no, it has almost no aroma that I that I know. But with flowers of that time of year, I mean the aroma would be nice but it's not there. There are other Jasmines, of course, that are famous for their fragrance but the toughness of Jasminum nudiflorum, the winter Jasmine, makes it usable in all kinds of climates. I've seen it growing in Arizona, California, of course, and I I've heard stories that does really well in the eastern US and the south Atlantic . So it's a good shrub to use. It's easy. You can prune it, you can train it and if it gets out of hand, cut it back and it'll grow back from the low cuts stems.
Farmer Fred 28:38
An easy care, viney shrub. It's winter Jasmine, Jasminum nudiflorum. If you're looking for some brilliant yellow color, especially to follow the color of the forsythia in late winter, pick up this Jasmine, the winter Jasmine. Well, this is a very interesting plant for late winter, early spring. Thanks for telling us about it, Warren.
Warren Roberts 28:58
Well, I'm glad to share, it's a favorite.
Farmer Fred 29:01
Warren Roberts is the superintendent emeritus of the UC Davis Arboretum, and you can visit the Arboretum online@arboretum.ucdavis.edu. Warren, it's the plant of the week. Thanks again.
Warren Roberts 29:14
Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you.
Farmer Fred 29:38
Garden Basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday and it's available just about anywhere podcasts are handed out. And that includes Apple podcasts, I Heart Radio, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Podcast Addict, CastBox and Google podcasts. And for Northern California gardeners, check out this podcast: the Green Acres Garden Podcast with Farmer Fred, also available wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, subscribing and leaving comments. We appreciate it.
