The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To STARTING SEEDS Indoors

This video is the ultimate beginner’s guide to starting seeds! I discuss why starting plants from seed is better than buying transplants, the best plants to grow indoors from seed, how to prepare seedling trays, how to sow seeds in seedling trays, and how to maximize germination rates with seedling heat mats!

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Why You Should Grow Plants From Seed
1:21 The Best Plants To Start Indoors From Seed
3:16 Seed Starting Supplies For Transplants
4:27 Prepping Seed Starting Trays
7:20 How To Sow Seeds In Seedling Trays
12:22 How To Use Seedling Heat Mats
16:12 Seed Germination Results
17:38 Adventures With Dale

I the following seed starting products* were featured in this video:
Seedling Heat Mat & Thermostat Kit: https://amzn.to/3GZLLGe
Seedling Heat Mat: https://amzn.to/3RERcQ8
Seedling Heat Mat Thermostat: https://amzn.to/4aC2ptg
Seed Starting Greenhouses (5-Pack): https://amzn.to/4awBBKS
72-Cell Seedling Tray Inserts: https://amzn.to/3tGWFh6
Seed Starter Tray Bottoms: https://amzn.to/48d5PRy
Peat Pellet Humidity Dones (4-Pack): https://amzn.to/3NKHoTf
42mm Peat Pellets (100 Count): https://amzn.to/3RK4w5A
36mm Peat Pellets (100 Count): https://amzn.to/3NNro2V
Jiffy Organic Seed Starting Mix: https://amzn.to/47hn434
Plant Labels (300 Pack): https://amzn.to/48Bf3a1
Sharpie Oil-Based Marker (3-Pack): https://amzn.to/48DqE8O
Full Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

If you have any questions about how to start seeds indoors and starting transplants for a vegetable garden, want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

***********************************
VISIT MY AMAZON STOREFRONT FOR PRODUCTS I USE MOST OFTEN IN MY GARDEN*
https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

***********************************
VISIT MY MERCHANDISE STORE
https://shop.spreadshirt.com/themillennialgardener

***********************************
SUPPORT MY SECOND CHANNEL!
https://www.youtube.com/c/2MinuteGardenTips

***********************************
EQUIPMENT I MOST OFTEN USE IN MY GARDEN*:

Miracle-Gro Soluble All Purpose Plant Food https://amzn.to/3qNPkXk
Miracle-Gro Soluble Bloom Booster Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GKYG0j
Miracle-Gro Soluble Tomato Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GDgJ8n
Jack’s Fertilizer, 20-20-20, 25 lb. https://amzn.to/3CW6xCK

Southern Ag Liquid Copper Fungicide https://amzn.to/2HTCKRd
Southern Ag Natural Pyrethrin Concentrate https://amzn.to/2UHSNGE
Monterey Organic Spinosad Concentrate https://amzn.to/3qOU8f5
Safer Brand Caterpillar Killer (BT Concentrate) https://amzn.to/2SMXL8D

Cordless ULV Fogger Machine https://amzn.to/36e96Sl
Weed Barrier with UV Resistance https://amzn.to/3yp3MaJ
Organza Bags (Fig-size) https://amzn.to/3AyaMUz
Organza Bags (Tomato-size) https://amzn.to/36fy4Re

Injection Molded Nursery Pots https://amzn.to/3AucVAB
Heavy Duty Plant Grow Bags https://amzn.to/2UqvsgC
6.5 Inch Hand Pruner Pruning Shears https://amzn.to/3jHI1yL
Japanese Pruning Saw with Blade https://amzn.to/3wjpw6o

Double Tomato Hooks with Twine https://amzn.to/3Awptr9
String Trellis Tomato Support Clips https://amzn.to/3wiBjlB
Nylon Mason Line, 500FT https://amzn.to/3wd9cEo
Expandable Vinyl Garden Tape https://amzn.to/3jL7JCI

***********************************
SOCIAL MEDIA
Follow Me on TWITTER (@NCGardening) https://twitter.com/NCGardening
Follow Me on INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/millennialgardener_nc/

***********************************
ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

***********************************
*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #startingseeds #seedstarting

What’s growing on gardeners it’s Tuesday December 12th and it might be a bitterly cold day here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina but it is already the start of seed starting season for the new gardening year that’s why on today’s video I’m going to prepare for you the

Ultimate beginner’s guide for starting seed if you’re new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spread chop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your

Supp is greatly appreciated first things first why should I start my plants from seed well I don’t know if you’ve been to any gardening centers recently but the cost of transplants have gone through the roof sometimes a sixpack of vegetables can be as much as five or $6

Sometimes it’s 5 or $6 for one single decent Siz plant contrast that to a pack of seeds you can still get a lot of packs of seed out there for about $2 to $3 a pack and there are at at least 50 to 100 seeds in this pack so I could go

To a gardening center and I can buy a sixpack of cabbage transplants for five or $6 or for $2 to $3 I can go out buy this pack of seed and start 50 to 100 cabbage transplants and that is with the cost of some kind of potting mix because

That stuff is dirt cheap and easy to make next question which plants do best started from transplant from seed indoors and there were basically two answers to that question the first answer is any kind of plant that does not do well being direct sewn outdoors from seed in an open air environment

Examples of a plant like that would be onions leaks or shallots because the seeds are so small and they have to be sewn so shallow they don’t do well being grown direct sewn in your open garden beds because they tend to wash away when you get really hard rain and have poor

Germination rates so because of that you’re going to watch winded up with disorganized rows with a lot of gaps in the rows those do best started indoors as transplants the second answer to the question is anytime you want to put plants in the ground that need a big

Jump start due to climactic conditions so an example of that in terms of cool season crops would be broccoli and cabbage because they need to mature when it is cool out not yet hot but not super freezing you generally want to have larger transplants ready to go as soon

As the weather breaks because if you direct sew them chances are you will run out of the proper temperatures and it’ll either get too cold for you in the fall and damage the plants or too hot for you in the spring and the summer and cause

Them to bolt and go to seed and you won’t get a good harvest now in terms of warm weather plants things like tomatoes peppers cucumbers and squash also do very well from transplants so you can give them a big head start indoors that’s because if we wait for the frost

And freezes to stop and we finally start planting things out in our garden directly in April or May by the time they get large enough to have a harvest it will already be fall so you really want to have fairly large transplants ready to go and the best way to do that

Is to start your seeds indoors now that you understand what the best plants are to start indoors let me show you how I do it the first thing that we need to do is we need to gather our seed starting supplies and I’m going to use the

Following supplies to start my seeds I’m going to use a Seedling transplant tray with a lid to maintain humidity but it has an adjustable Dome so I can vary the humidity as needed I’m going to use plant labels and I’m going to use an oilbased paint pen that you see right

Here the oilbased paint pens will last much longer than the water-based permanent markers the permanent markers will fade quickly but the oil-based pens will last all season I’m going to use a chopstick to help add the seeds to the seed trays it makes life a lot easier I

Have obviously the seeds themselves and and I have a seed starting mix now you can make your own seed starting mix if you want using roughly two to three parts cocoa core or Pete Moss to one part vermiculite add the vermiculite as needed to maintain more moisture but for

This video it was just easier to buy a pre-made product and I’m also going to use a Seedling heat mat and a heat mat thermostat for germination I will show you how to use them later in the video the first thing we’re going to do is fill our seedling transplant tray with

The seed starting mix now the seed starting mix is very light and fluffy so we actually want to use that to our advantage we are going to fill it up each of the individual squares to the top before we actually compact any of the mix down because when you compact

The mix down it’s going to add a significant amount of room to each of the individual seed starting trays that we will need later to sew our seeds and you’ll see the technique I’m using here I’m basically just placing the seed starting mix on top and then I’m running

My hands gingerly along the tops of all of the individual seed start trays just to make sure that everything is filled up to the top and then we’re going to scrape off any excess to the side and then recollect it in our potting mix bag because we don’t want to throw away that

Excess soil the next thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to gently compress the mix down in order to make room for our seeds now all of the different seeds that I’m planting in this video want about a/4 in of cover so when I simply press down this seed

Starting mix that’s going to give me about a/4 to a half of an inch of room in each of these individual trays and that’s just what I want so I can top them lightly with more mix once all of the seeds are sewn now it’s very important that you do not compress these

Down firmly you don’t want it to be hard you want to have just a light amount of firmness just enough to get everything compressed down but it is still nice and springy now that the mix has been perfectly compressed down I’m going to add just a tiny bit of water to each of

The individual tray cells because I want to pre moisten the mix you see the the mix in the very beginning is hydrophobic it will repel water to a degree once you put the seeds in there you don’t want all that water to collect on the top it

It won’t absorb very well so I’m just going to apply a light amount of water because the first little bit of water that you put in always takes a while to absorb into the mix so while I’m letting this water absorb I’m just going to go

About my day and then once it absorbs in we’ll come back and we will sew our seeds Okay after about 30 minutes the water has absorbed into each of the individual seed cells now we need to start placing our plant labels now I’m going to plant these by the row so I

Basically only need one plant label per row if you’re going to plant your seeds in a more random pattern you’re going to have to figure out a way to label them you’re either going to have to put a plant label per cell or you can do what

I do with my tomatoes and I draw out a diagram and then I list in the paper diagram what each individual seed cell is now we are going to begin sewing our seeds and to do this we’re going to use a technique called overseeding and what

That means is we will be planting more than one seed per individual cell and the reason why we do this is because seeds do not have a 100% germination rate they only average a germination rate usually of about 80% or so so if you only place one seed in each

Individual cell that means you’re going to have a significant number of cells where nothing comes up and we get around this by placing more than one seed per cell now if you’re buying very expensive seed like I sometimes do with hybrid tomato Tomatoes where 10 to 15 seeds can

Cost as much as $5 sometimes I will only overseed every other cell because the seed is so expensive that I don’t want to pay to put two seeds per cell but in this case I’m using pretty much all either old varieties or heirloom varieties where the seed is very cheap

So for that reason in this video I’m going to place two seeds in each individual cell now I want to show you why I love using Chopsticks in the seed starting process they are great for getting underneath the lips of these seed packets and whether the seed

Packets are brand new or if you place tape on like I do it lifts off very easily they’re also great for grabbing individual seeds so I’m going to show you how I do that I’m going to start off with the green cabbage and I’m going to

Place the seeds in my hand like you see it and then I like to lick the tip of the Chopstick and then that will grab onto the seed and then I can place one two in each individual seed tray again let’s show you a little bit closer with

This closeup the tip of this Chopstick is wet so the seeds immediately adhere to it so I like to place them in the corners of each of these individual seed cells just like that and this Chopstick trick makes things so easy and so precise Now you may have noticed that I sprinkled The Parsley seeds on top of my soil with my bare hands that’s because parsley has Terri terrible germination rates and the parsley seed itself it’s really lightweight and hard to deal with so it’s easier to just sprinkle a bunch

On top of the potting mix as for the mustard greens because the seeds are so small I overseeded them more and because we grow them as leafy greens they can be clustered together and it’s okay if we allow a couple of seeds to germinate in a single seed tray we don’t necessarily

Have to thin them down to one plant per seed tray when it comes to the cabbage and the broccoli they all need to be thinned down to one individual plant per seed cell so it’s very important that we don’t overseed them too much or else

We’re going to be ripping out a lot of plants and chopping them down so now that all of our seeds have been placed we want to bury them all about a/4 in deep and we pretty much did this perfectly uh by allowing the compression of the potting mix itself to go down

About a/4 in to a/ an inch so we’re just going to lightly cover them all about halfway and that will give us the/ qu in of cover that we desire while also not filling it up completely to the top so it gives us a little bit of a buffer to

Be able to water everything in we can’t fill these individual seed cells completely up to the top because if we do that we’re not going to give ourselves any room to add water so just like before what we basically want to do is we want to fill all of the individual

Seed cells with the uncompressed potting mix up to the top and then lightly run our hands on top of all the seed cells because then when we lightly compact down the potting mix individually that is going to basically have us arrive at the exact depth that we want and now

That all of our seeds have been lightly buried in the potting mix we’re once again going to take just a little bit of water and we’re going to wet down each of the individual seed cells now the potting mix underneath has already been primed and should absorb the water Fair

Fairly quickly but the mix on top is going to be fairly hydrophobic still so once again we’re going to have to wait a little while for that water to absorb into each individual seed cell and it’s important that we do this very lightly and drizzle on top we don’t want to

Disturb the individual seeds so we’re just going to let that absorb into the mix okay the potting soil has absorbed all the water now it’s time to fire up our seedling heat mat so so what you see right here is my large seedling heat mat in my office and then I have my

Thermostat right here and I have set it to 73° F now why did I set it to 73° F Well brasas such as broccoli cabbage and mustard they can germinate in soil temperatures as cool as 40° fah but they’ll take forever they can also germinate in temperatures as warm as 80

To 85° F but you’ll probably get spottier germination the ideal germination temperature for fastest results for brasas is about 70 to 75° F similarly parsley also germinates best at about 70° F so it’s very important that when you plant things in a seed tray if you’re going to mix different

Plants you have to make sure that they germinate at similar temperatures you wouldn’t want to mix something like cabbage with hot peppers because hot peppers need much higher soil temperatures to germinate so I’m going to take this probe for the heat mat thermostat and I’m going to place it

Underneath here so that is going to hold that heat mat thermostat probe so you can see that is rapidly dropping the temperature because that potting mix is cool so that is going to slowly warm up as the heat mat warms up and I’m going to place this Dome over top and that is

Going to maintain some amount of humidity I’m also going to open the Dome just a little bit to vent it to let some fresh air in because you don’t want an environment where there’s no fresh air for your seedlings to germinate because that can create a rot condition and you

Can have your seedlings damp off because it can grow mold or fungal diseases now you may be wondering why am I using this enormous seedling heat mat for that one tray of seedlings why aren’t I using this much smaller heat mat right here that is the perfect size for that

Individual tray well that’s because my seed starting has only just begun I just started that one Dome full of seedlings as an example for this video I’m going to start way more I’m going to start more broccoli more cabbage more mustard greens I’m going to add brussel sprouts

Collared greens and a whole bunch of other stuff that grows well in the late winter and I want to get them started now so I can plant them out into my garden in late January to early to mid February depending on when they mature generally speaking your seedlings are

Going to be perfect for transplant sometime around 4 to 8 weeks after germination when they’re 3 in tall so now we are simply going to keep an eye on these seedlings and make sure that the seed trays do not dry out so we should check on them every single day

And make sure that they are lightly moist whatever you do do not overwater them if you keep the potting mix too wet you will have a high degree of the seedlings developing a fungal disease called damping off disease and they will fail they will wither away at the bases

And they will die so it is better to keep your mix slightly dry than too wet however we want to make sure that it does not dry out completely so keep an eye on them you should expect germination sometime within 7 to 14 days in general however sometimes on these

Seedling heat mats they will germinate even more quickly once you start to see germination it’s very important that you get them underneath strong light because if they germinate and you leave bottom heat on them they tend to grow very leggy very quickly so once you start to

See the first few things break ground it’s a good idea to move them into strong sunlight or underneath some kind of intense grow light to prevent your seedlings from getting leggy it’s Sunday December 17th and I’ve had massive success with my germination already back here you can see my mustard greens these

Germinated in as little as 2 to 3 days they were starting to break through the soil so they have to be brought out into intense light or put under grow lights as soon as possible because they’re starting to get leggy the broccoli and the Cabbage that you see breaking here

They take a little bit more time but they’re all starting to come up really nicely so now I’m going to move them out into my sun room into direct sunlight and that will easily fix any of these legginess problems if you ever have a problem with legginess in your seedlings

The key is to get them under direct sunlight strong sunlight or strong grow lights as quickly as possible and then you can also set up a very gentle oscillating fan because that will move move them back and forth and that will cause them to thicken up their

Individual stems and that right there is my complete beginner’s guide to starting transplants indoors from seed so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you’re notified

When I release more videos like these if you’re curious about any of the products that I used in this video or that I use in real life in my garden they are all linked Down Below in my Amazon storefront in the video description so expand that video description and click

On the Amazon link to see everything I use in real life and while you’re there check out my spreadsh shop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next

Video what’s wrong Dale do you want something Dale go hit the button oh you want to eat you want to eat oh we are button training Dale because he knows so many words that we’ve taught him but you know what we’re trying to get it so he can communicate

And say words to us and we just started it and he’s already picking it up so well so in this food right here we have London bro brussel sprouts carrots and Jasmine rice oh he’s been waiting so long for this Dale wants to each each yeah

Buddy he’s doing such a good job he is such a smart boy I can’t believe how well he’s picking up these buttons