Failproof DIY Seed Starting Mix Hacks – Suburban Garden

Failproof DIY Seed Starting Mix Hacks – Suburban Garden

I save a lot of money by using my own seed starting mix organic which has worked so well for the past few years. You can DIY seed starting mix so easily that you will be extremely surprised and wish you had done it before.
The best seed starting mix does not have to be purchased, with 3 ingredients, you can create your own!

To learn more hacks to save money when growing food watch Episode 1: https://youtu.be/qOEeuBFF_0I

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VIDEOS TO WATCH NEXT:

Learn how I make my own nutrient-rich soil and save money: https://youtu.be/mBhIL9YrYmo?si=15f0NP2HOubFOQU9

Learn more tips on how I stopped spending SO MUCH money growing fhttps://youtu.be/W9eAY-_enJU?si=e2eZXY_r-nWvzqbl

For more growing hacks and tips on growing food and flowers: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnmN5mrhySTfEHp1CIX5QhdA8lOfLImYG&si=Og8IPInwt3bTOgxO

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SHOP THIS VIDEO: (some of these items I have not used and are for reference. I try to shop locally)
Seed Starter Tray https://amzn.to/3QjBp90
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Fish Emulsion https://amzn.to/3EMpxts
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00:00 Introduction
00:47 Type of Soil to Start Seeds
07:57 Examples of what type of soil to Use.
10:41 Watering your seedlings
11:10 Feeding your seedlings

today we’re going to talk about soil episode one of the growing food series I showed you ways that you can grow on containers that you already have at home and how to use them in order to grow your vegetables whether you have a tiny balcony or a small garden or even if you want to grow indoors I also show you some of the lighting that you can use to get your seeds to grow properly and some of the seeds that you may want to start with but today I am going to show you the biggest waste in the garden that if you’re not careful you can waste a lot of money I was one of them I wasted so much money on soil I’m going to show you exactly how to figure out what kind of soil to prepare in order to get what you need so let me show you exactly the method that I use to figure this out and don’t be concerned you can do this too Growing Seeds can get expensive because of the soil so I’m going to show you what I go ahead and calculate in order to know what to use and don’t waste the money so if I’m growing in this little cells little containers I know that my seat Ling will not be here for very long I’m going to remove it and not pot it to something larger like this one or this one and I won’t have to put this amount of food in there or nutrients that would be needed if you are going to do it on one of these directly so I’m going to use a seat soil a basic seat so so this is the seat starting that I use g&b and I buy this out of wios which is my local Garden Center so if I don’t make my own and I just feel lazy I go ahead and use this and it’s always done just fine but making your own you’re going to save a lot of money I don’t need to have a bunch of compost and other things that are going to be really wasteful now if you if the seedling is taking long to grow then go ahead and put like a fish emotion just make sure that it’s not as strong as the bottle says maybe a third of the way so if it says a teaspoon maybe use a third of a teaspoon or a quarter just make it a lot less strong because he’s a baby and he doesn’t take that much of a shock when you start feeding it when your seedling is developing leaves that are the true leaves they call the true leaves the leaves that look just like the plant leaves is supposed to look so the first two leaves they’re not the real leaves they’re just emerging the next leaves that’s when you want to go ahead and up poot that plant when you have at least two to four of those leaves you find your pot and then you pot them into that so when it’s a small self to go ahead and recap you don’t need to waste a lot of seed soil with compost and other nutrients now if you want to make your own seed soil and not waste so much money on buying these bags go ahead to make it let me show you a way that I can make my own soil SE starting soil and save a little bit of money so I don’t have to use a SE starting soil that can get pretty expensive especially right now let me show you what I use to do this this is warm Earth casting so you can use a little bit of this and I’ll go through the amounts or you can use some compost I use fish compost then is perite and perite do you see the larger scale of that that helps with drainage so your seedlings once they grow they’re going to need some of that and even the Little Seeds as they grow they will need some of this too and then vermiculate so if you don’t have this sometimes it just dries very quickly this helps with water retention and damping off so if you have the roots on something that is too soggy going to go ahead and Rod away so vermicular to me is very very important so these three I would do vermite per light and then a compost and then on top go ahead and use maybe a little bit of this on the top of it just to help it with nutrition I want to show you this is the warm castings that I use from Home Depot and they’re great they’re really dark like I I showed you but if I could find somebody locally that did this I much rather buy from them but I do like it it works really really really well and I am going to continue use it until I find someone locally like my worm tea is from a local Source it’s all the way in Olympus it’s pretty far away from me but I’m going to go online and see if I can get it online so look for resources uh locally I think it’s a lot better okay don’t worry it’s really easy to make the mixture all you do if you have a container let’s say this is what you’re using and you have a plastic container you’re going to put this in I do two parts of either soil or cocoa core for flowers I feel like the flowers are a little more finicky and they don’t do well with cocoa cor for me but for food I cocoa cor is just fine so I will do two of these after you prepare your cocoa core and then I will do one of vermiculite one of these container and then one of the containers of perlite and that will help if you add some compost the only thing to keep in mind I will do maybe half of this or one of these depending uh I just kind of look at it and see what I want to add for the plants I’m growing but if you do one of these of compost go ahead and sift it I use this here to go ahead and get rid of all the chunks because fish compost has a lot of bark in it and those big chunks will not let the roots really grow well it will not help with the drainage it just doesn’t keep the water there for the roots and the nutrients that as well so I take my time to sift it I know it’s an extra step but it does help you don’t have to do it it grows still it may just spe that they don’t grow as well but for me the extra step is worth it sometimes gardening is just a matter of doing it and just feel like you’re meditating and taking your time to just do what you’re doing and enjoy the process and this is sort of relaxing for me so I I do this so you have two parts cocoa core or the soil one part perlite one part vermiculite and then half or one depending what you’re growing and if it needs a lot of nutrients if it’s going to be in the container for a really long time an example is like ground cherries take forever so I may do one of this of my compost that whichever compost I decide to use and I promise it’s super super simple I’ll also link a video where I prepare my soil I take an extra step to put boiling water and cover with aluminum foil just to get anything that may be in there growing that I don’t want it so I prevents like the Nets from coming I don’t always do that I don’t always get Nets so you don’t have to do that so if you feel overwhelmed don’t do that extra step just do what you need to do what you could do is once you get your seedlings into the upot just put vermiculite on top or some sprinkles on cinnamon and that will help with the Nets They al also sell those little sticky things you put on the top I’ll see I’ll I’ll try to find a link and put it below I’ve used that also but I really don’t have a big problem with Nats but most of the time I put boiling water in the soil and let that cool off overnight so I think that does help but you don’t have to do that do whatever is easy and doesn’t bring you stress and you’ll see you’ll enjoy the process once you do it a couple of times it will be natural and you’ll know what to decide to use I’m going to give you a couple of examples on how you will decide the soil that you’ll use if you’re going to put extra compost on it or not so if I’m growing my panes this is where I grow my panes and it just makes it super easy I put my soil and then I am not going to move them so I’m not going to upot them last year I kept them here if I decide to do that great but I’m going to assume I’m not going to do that I want the soil to be good because they’re going to be here for a really long time so I want them to have plenty of nutrients so that would be a time where I may add that compost and a little warm casting on top once I see them have the true leaves come up and that will really really help them so a container like this if you’re going to leave them and they take a long time to grow that is a good one to go ahead and add a food compost now if you’re growing let’s say in here and you’re just starting your Tomatoes or you’re starting your peppers in here and they’re only going to be here until those true leaves come out and you’re going to upot them I don’t I don’t add any of that fish compost or any compost that you want to use because to me it’s just wasted I’ll do the rest of it if I see them that they’re taking really long for some reason my temperature is not right it’s just taking longer because it’s cooler and where I’m keeping them then go ahead and you know add some fish emotion to it really really light don’t make it strong because they’re big babies uh and that will work fine if I am going to go ahead and use things like this big I go ahead and just use just potting a potting mix an organic potting mix I don’t like anything that has chemicals in it so I’m much rather fine organic try to find the most affordable I think I bought this one at Home Depot and it was the the most inexpensive one I could find now if I’m making my soil and I want to make my own then I just use top soil to do this type of containers when I up pop my seeds and the top soil if I don’t want to use the cocoa core top soil works really well but if you don’t feel like getting the top soil making your whole soil concoction as I showed you then uh potting soil will work just fine let me know how it works for you or if you have another way of doing this and have any tips on how we can save money let the community know because we all need help to be able to save money right now and that would be so helpful for all of us one last thing that I do I keep my water in a specific area because you don’t want to be searching for a container to water when you have a lot of those little boxes to water make it really easy for yourself so I’m going to show you where I keep mine right next to my grow rack this is where I keep mine it’s a little tray but here’s my watering can and I keep a spray bottle on the top there and that way they’re handy and I don’t have to keep searching for them so these are two things that I use for fertilizing my seedlings and not at the strength that it says here I put probably a third or a quarter what it says the warm tea is a great one and the other one I like to use is kelp and then the fish Emulsion also I don’t have I don’t think I have any of that left I cannot find find it so I probably have to get some of that but any of those if you have one of those that works just fine those will help you you can even if you’re sings are growing and you’re having to keep them indoors more you can always even do this uh worm tea when you dilute it you can put in a spray bottle and spray your leaves and it is great for the seedlings as they’re growing so these are the ones that I keep the most uh and that I use the most in any of the ceilings that I’m growing so so pick one so you try one the fishy motion is great it just has a really pungent smell so if you don’t want that maybe one of these other two may work better but try any of those will work really good for you one thing that you do need is going to be the heat for some of your seedlings to grow for example Peppers tomato things like that are going to need 70 to 80° so I don’t get that here it’s so cold here and I’m in my garage this this is where my grow room is if your area is that warm then great that’s why you need to get it to germinate I like this heat mask I just put them vertical like this and this is like a 10x 20 I put them this way because I can fit probably three of these on it or I can put them this way however you want to do it and I think it’s like three to the back like this so each of these cells have like 12 12 little seedlings so this this works just fine for me so investing in a heat mat if you don’t have enough warmth in your area where you’re growing this is going to be pretty critical I will link it below if you can find a local Source go ahead and buy that but I will link this one this is I have a 20in deep rack if you have a 24 this works or you can get a larger one and have one big one the reason I don’t do the large one is because once my setling have grown and I’m going to upod them I take them off the heat mat and place them to the side so I don’t keep my seedlings on this all the time now keep in mind there’s again things that are not going to be this is not going to be good for for example my pansies they’re like a dark area and they like the cold you know they don’t like this warm heat pad my Snap Dragons probably salad greens many of them you need to put them in a heat mat so go ahead and take a look at that seat package because that’s going to tell you do your research it’s really critical you do some research as you grow and be able to get familiarized with what are the requirements of that type of plant before you go ahead and put your ceilings on a hate mat and then you do kind of kill the seed and it doesn’t germinate this is probably I would say a must if you don’t have a warm area to grow in soil is the absolute Foundation of anything thing that you’re going to grow and is what is going to make your seedlings Thrive eventually to get even more and more strong so start the right way take your time to understand it and just go for it and I know that this process is really fun once you start you are going to go crazy growing things and realizing how much you can grow that is not in the supermarket and you want to experiment and try and eventually you’re just going to narrow down the things that you use use a lot and are able to use the most by saving the money in the supermarket and that’s okay experiment have fun with it but also be strategic because right now foods are so expensive so make sure you’re growing enough of the things you’re going to use and maybe a couple of plans to just have fun and experiment so if you have questions remember to ask me below or schedule a call for 30 minutes I’m doing it completely free to try to help anyone that has questions I want everybody to feel empowered to grow your own food and we are going to take the power back grow our own food get healthy and just encourage each other to create this community that will help each other grow for our mind body and soul