Silicone Seed Trays, Purple Tomato Controversy, Chocolate Habaneros & Your Seed Starting Essentials

Whether you’ve never started your own seedlings before, or you’re not sure about the best equipment and best methods I am here to help you take you and your gardening from okay to abundance. Today I’m talking about my favorite seed starting gear (silicone trays, stainless steel 1020 trays, etc), the best seedlings mix, and the best varieties to grow in your late spring and summer gardening. The Purple Tomato, Chocolate Habaneros, Golden Yarrow and so many varieties are well worth growing in every garden, and so let’s get to germinating, and growing it all together.

If you’re looking for these exact trays and cells you can find them here:
https://www.sili-seedlings.com/?aff=6

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CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro
0:12 Essential Gear – Trays
0:32 Essential Gear – Seed Cells
1:10 What We’re Starting Today
1:25 Seed Starting Mix
2:19 My Seed Starting Mix Recipe
2:54 Chocolate Habanero
3:29 How To Sow Seeds
4:09 Chocolate Habanero Experiment
4:42 Labeling Seedlings
5:01 Why Start Your Own Seedlings
6:37 Comfrey
7:11 Chili Flakes – Why I Grow Hot Peppers
7:55 Best Orange Habanero Variety
8:30 I Don’t Thin Seedlings
8:56 The Purple Tomato
11:18 Heirloom Tomatoes Are Still Modified
12:06 Midnight Roma Tomatoes
12:51 Seed Age
13:12 Campari Tomatoes
13:46 Berkeley Tie Dye Tomatoes
14:24 Sun Gold Tomatoes
14:46 Sun Gold Vs. Sun Sugar
15:02 Indigo Rose Tomatoes
15:16 Surprise Visitor
15:22 Golden Yarrow
16:05 Dealing With Small Seeds
16:30 Growing Tomatillos
17:06 Chick Lupine
17:25 Don’t Just Choose Hard Seeds
18:02 Growing Stevia
18:50 Caribbean Red & Red Savina Habanero
19:34 Habanero Experiments
19:53 Shishito Peppers
20:27 Paprika & Jalapeno Peppers
20:41 Chocolate Bhut Jolokia
20:57 Pepper Anatomy
21:28 Growing Tithonia
21:48 Hibiscus / Jamaica / Roselle
22:12 Final Seed Starting Steps
22:34 When To Water Your Seedlings
22:50 Final Steps & Closing Thoughts

summer is fast approaching so we’re going to do some seed starting and I’m going to show you how to do it and what you need to do it and also the things that you can buy once and use for the rest of your life as far as gardening goes so to start things off you may notice that these trays look a little different than most seed starting trays that you’ve probably seen and that’s cuz they are made from stainless steel it looks like any other seed starting tray same size same format it’s a 1020 but again it’s made out of stainless steel I’ve had these for I want to say about 2 years and so long as I wipe them down a bit at the end of the season they look as good as new as long as I’m using them and the same is true for my seed cells these are silicon seed cells which means they don’t crack Under the Sun they don’t break there’s no plastic involved I absolutely love them I’ve had them for even longer than stainless steel trays I use them over and over and my favorite of these offerings is the 10 cells they have a nice hole on the bottom which is perfect for sticking a Sharpie into to pop a Seedling out and I just find that they’re a nice size for growing tomatoes peppers things of the sort to get a healthy size seedling that doesn’t start to get rootbound and then you can you know transplant it out when is ready I also use some of these six cells and I also have four cell ones but I won’t be using the four cells today because they’re better for things like zucchini and loofah that are you know kind of ginormous and pretty quick growing seedlings but the focus of what we’re going to be starting today is peppers and tomatoes and peppers super spicy peppers in particular take a really really long time to get going so I’m actually a tiny bit late in starting them but they can grow pretty much year round here in zone 10A so everything will be just fine as far as seed starting mix goes you can use a wide variety of things you can even even use common potting soil or potting mix so long as you sift out and remove any particularly large chunks because tiny little seeds do not have the strength to be able to push through a little piece of wood mulch so you want to make sure that your seedling mix is light and fluffy and holds on to water but not too much to the point where it’ll rot your seedlings I’ve used everything from just straight up cocoa core to Cocoa core with perlite cocoa core with perlite with worm castings which is what I’ve mixed up today and if you’re looking for a fantastic commercial seed starting mix or one that you can buy in a bag that works really well my favorite at least as of right now is the Malibu compost seed starting mix it looks like this and it is absolutely wonderful and if you’re only starting maybe one trays worth of seeds I think it’s a worthwhile investment but if you’re going to be starting a ton of seeds it’s definitely worthwhile to start your own I’ve also used the fox farm seed starting mix which is this right here is called light War it’ll work wonderfully well I use two blocks of cocoa core all the worm castings that I harvested from one of my Garden Towers and then a healthy portion of perite and it’s proof that these are my own worm castings look what I just found got one little guy right here don’t worry I’m going to take him out and put him back in the garden Tower cuz he’s not going to have a good time in this confined little space your seedlings don’t really need a ton of nutrition when they’re germinating and to take that point further you actually really don’t want any strong fertilizer in your seed starting mix because it can burn your seedlings and inhibit germination so what we’ve got today is going to be perfect so let’s get started so as I mentioned earlier the focus of what we’re starting today is going to be peppers and tomatoes and at the top of my list of peppers is chocolate habanero this is my favorite pepper of all all time end of sentence it’s hotter than an orange habanero and it is just packed with flavor and I find that the heat level is kind of on the upper level of what is tasty without hurting at least for my taste buds and the taste buds of my family and extended family this is the normal heat of an orange Hoban arrow and then this is the heat range of a chocolate habanero and in somewhat of a sistic manner they are both my favorite pepper and the hardest pepper specifically of the Habaneros to grow it takes so long for them to grow but it is so worth it when it comes to sewing peppers seeds I like to put two seeds per cell and I put them just at the surface level and then I use a Sharpie which I’ll be using to Mark the seeds to just press them down a little bit most seeds do not really need to be planted all that deep and that is a common mistake that both beginner gardeners and gardeners who aren’t used to starting seeds frequently make if you look on seed packets most of them will say an eighth of an inch a/4 inch and if you think about it that’s basically surface sewing so you just want to kind of tuck it ever so slightly below the surface and you’ll be good now the reason I use a Sharpie instead of my finger is that it’s much easier for your finger to be moist as opposed to something like a Sharpie so it’s much less likely to stick to the end of whatever you’re using to press the seed down into the soil I’m going to be doing a bit of an experiment this year cuz I have chocolate Habaneros from two different manufacturers these are from pepper Joe’s it’s where I’ve gotten a lot of my kind of more Niche pepper seeds they are as the name suggests pretty dedicated to growing peppers and then the others are from Urban Farmer who I have a lot of other seeds from and I kind of get a lot of my more standard edible varieties from now before I label it I like to to give it one last good inspection and make sure I don’t see any seeds peeking through and we are looking good now even though a lot of this tray is probably going to be chocolate Habaneros I make sure that I label my ceilings as soon as I finish one little cell and so I use these plastic markers I honestly don’t really love them I’ve just had them for a while and as they break I throw them away eventually I’ll move to little wood popsicle sticks and when it comes to things that stay permanently in my garden I have these nice copper markers but they’re a little bit too big for this so these work fine but don’t buy them I just happen to have them and I’m using them up for the time being now as I fill up this next cell I want to talk about kind of the why behind seed starting and why not just go with seedlings and I mean the most obvious thing is seedlings tend to be pretty expensive particularly if you have a relatively large garden if you’re only growing a few things you maybe are only doing a little bit of container gardening you don’t need to go through all this trouble and invest in good equipment and grow lights and all that jazz but the most fun part of starting your own seeds is that it opens you up to a massive variety of options more so than you would ever be able to buy it even like a you know nice Boutique little local nursery and this variety that I’m growing right here the chocolate Habaneros is a great indication I’ve seen them at pepper Joe’s which is where I bought these seeds but they are very expensive compared to the seeds if you’re looking to grow something like a standard habanero jalapeno you know green lettuce purple eggplant you can probably get those seedlings pretty easily and pretty affordably somewhere local to you but I think if you’re in gardening for the Long Haul it’s well worth it to invest at least little by little in good seedling equipment so you can do this for many years if not decades which is what what I am planning to do another reason to start seedlings yourself is that often times seedlings for varieties like this won’t become available until later in the year which if you’re in a colder Zone say six maybe even seven that timing works perfectly for you but if you’re here in zone 9 10 or you know somewhere warm like that often times the seedlings are a little bit late for you and you could have started them earlier and even transplanted them out a little bit earlier so I’m starting these in February and I could have very well started particularly these super hot peppers in late December or January as a whole but it was just something that sat on my to-do list for too long so I’m still well within my window for these to do well and now that was the last of my chocolate habanero seeds but I have an empty guy at the end I’m going to put comrey comfrey is kind of like some of the other plants I’ve talked about here on the channel where it’s a bit controversial but if you drill down to the reasons of why you should grow it I think it’s well worthwhile it has perhaps the strongest root system of any plant you would ever grow in the garden and it can Harvest minerals from deep deep deep down in the soil and you can use it as a fertilizer you can use it as a medical herb it’s really such a utility plant also comfrey is a plant that you will never kill once it’s established its roots go so deep and it regrows from the root so if you intend to plant this really know that you want to have it there forever one thing I forgot to mention earlier is the whole reason I like to grow chocolate Habaneros is not necessarily to use them in salsa or you know something of the sort I use them as chili flakes and you may think it’s funny to dedicate so much time and energy to a seasoning that you can just buy at the store but let me tell you something chocolate habanero chili flakes are an entirely different animal than what you will ever find at any store they are packed with so much flavor so much heat and again they kind of sit right on the line of what is useful and delightful in The Culinary context versus you know the Shak and a kind of peppers which some people really enjoy but most don’t and most don’t grow for that reason I’m done with that tray of chocolate habanero so we’re going to move on to some normal Peppers as well as some Tomatoes let me do one row of my favorite variety of orange Habaneros pretty much any variety of orange Habaneros is going to be delicious and wonderful but my favorite when I did a test a few years ago and grew 15 different varieties of Habaneros this was the best orange-ish habanero Magnum orange habanero there’s a bajillion different varieties out there most people probably aren’t as crazy as I am and would never grow that many habaneros but I found that this one was the most productive great flavor great heat um I think the prettiest version of the orange habanero was a peach habanero it had kind of a lighter color but Magnum orange habanero is my favorite so I bought a bunch of these seeds and when it comes to uh either chopping off or separating peppers I generally don’t like to thin my seedlings particularly my Peppers what I’ll just do is I will kind of rinse the soil a bit in water and then gently pull them apart I’ll show you that in the future but it’s going to be quite ways away for these peppers if you don’t feel like taking that risk cuz it can stress your seedlings you can always just kind of pick your best seedling from the lot and then snip off the other one but that always breaks my heart just a little bit so let’s move on to some Tomatoes This is the purple tomato this is a very interesting plant and the most expensive seeds you can probably buy for your garden this is about 20 bucks for 10 seeds so I appreciate the extra step of them coming in this little Ziploc bed and I grew them last year I kind of went back and forth on you know kind of the ethics and rationale of growing them because you are not allowed legally to sell the seeds or to sell the peppers they are a patented seed and initially I was a little hesitant to kind of uh post about that and share about that but when I came around to it I really thought of like why am I a garer like why am I growing what I grow and I grow for nutrition and I grow for flavor they are a bioengineered seed but before that word scares you away let me just say that what they did is they took jeans from Snap Dragons purple Snap Dragons in particular to activate the an thein production in the tomatoes there are some Tomatoes um that have you know a decent amount of anes sinins but they’re not stable and there’s certainly not packed as full as these are these are purple all the way through they are just absolutely beautiful and are delicious they’re wonderful my favorite small tomato is still ultimately the sungold you just can’t beat Sun Golds but I think they’re worth growing and there’s a big difference between these as GMOs and say any Roundup Ready crops these are bread for nutrition this was the work of uh some very passionate scientists one scientist in particular to increase the nutritional value of food that you know people would eat anyways and you know we all eat a lot of tomatoes so I think it’s a worthwhile thing I think they’re great seeds they grow great they germinate very easily so they’re a very beginner friendly tomato tomatoes in general are a pretty beginner friendly thing to grow uh in comparison to the belligerant hard chocolate habaneras that I have and I’m happy to answer any questions or concerns that you guys have about these Tomatoes self-pollinate um unless you are really intentionally kind of taking a little paint brush and manually pollinating them it’s it’s pretty tough to cross Tomatoes accidentally and it’s also worth noting that Norfolk healthy produce is not some giant mega Corporation they’re a company with like six people working there they have a little Greenhouse up in Davis so um this isn’t some huge mega organization that’s going to hunt down gardeners and droves to check how they’re using their seeds still abide by the rules um they worked for decades to develop this so don’t be sneaky but I think it’s worth I think it’s worth growing for most people one of my favorite things on this topic to remind people of is that heirloom tomatoes which people kind of assume to be something that has existed forever are still distant descendants of the original tomato that was in South America so the tomatoes that we eat today even the heirloom tomatoes are still vastly different in their genetics from the original Tomatoes but I really encourage you to look into the science and the background of the purple tomato and if it’s not something you want to grow that’s totally fine but if you’re looking to grow nutritious food that is equally delicious I think it’s well worth adding to the garden and you can save the seeds for your own usage you just can’t sell them and you can’t sell the tomatoes if you get one plant out of even all those seeds to grow and you save seeds from a couple tomatoes you’ll be good for years to come and you can kind of repeat the cycle so that’s that let’s move on to a different tomato speaking of purplish Tomatoes this is another cool purple tomato that I grew last year this is a non- genetically modified variety this is the midnight Roma which is part of the Indigo series there are a bunch of tomatoes that have purple skin and have more anth thein than your average tomato but are not purple all the way through these are really cool and really pretty and these also come from a very interesting seed company called Rose 7 that is based in New New York and they have a lot of really cool culinary varieties of seeds so everything that I’ve grown from them um from my purple peas to their potatoes to these it’s all been really delicious and all really vibrant too the color of these Tomatoes is absolutely stunning they grow about as well as any other Aroma and then they just bring a little bit more flavor and a little more color to the conversation which is always a delight um these seeds are think about a year old so they’ll still be perfectly fine for germination I’ve never really run into an issue of German in Old tomato or pepper seeds but there are some seeds that you need to be cautious of that will not go bad but the germination rates will decrease very significantly like parsley carrots and a few other things let’s move along to some other Tomatoes these are seeds that my mother saved who is also a gardener these are compari tomatoes um they are very productive and very easy to grow variety these were the first tomatoes that I ever grew as a gardener and they kind of set me off on the Journey of growing Tomatoes cuz they were so easy they produce so fast they produce so long they get so tall they’re just kind of the tall dark and handsome of tomato growing or at least that was my experience when I was just getting into this all for the first time they are pretty tasty and anytime you’ve had an on the vine tomato at a grocery store I’m willing to bet it’s probably a compari tomato next up we’ve got Berkeley tie dye and these are tomatoes that I have saved for myself I don’t remember where I got the seeds from initially I want to say it was San Diego seed company but these are a couple years old so I’m going to go ahead and just use them up now Berkeley tie dyes are probably my favorite like Big Tomato so I think Cherokee purple beef steak you know we’re not talking cherry tomatoes here they are so full of flavor they’re super fleshy like you’re thinking like delicious BLT this is exactly what you want and exactly what you need they’re pretty easy Growers uh I grew one a few years ago that was like a couple pounds which was shocking but they’re usually not that big but really really delightful now as I mentioned earlier sungolds are probably my favorite not even probably are my favorite cherry tomato they are beautiful they’re small they are so sweet so much so that every time someone comes to my garden and I have Sun Golds on the vine that are ripe I bully them into eating them or at least trying it uh even people who don’t like tomatoes will usually like sun Golds cuz they’re on their own level Sun sugars are a closely related friend of sun Golds I did a taste test last year and didn’t really find any huge difference so get whatever seeds you can get your hands on and grow them I think Sun sugars are supposed to be a little bit sweeter but again I don’t really notice the difference and now the last tomato I’m going to add these are indigo rose so similar to the midnight Romas I sewed earlier these are purple but purple on the outside so this year I should really be able to do some Powerhouse cherry tomato comparisons and there’s the last tomato for now I just had a visitor come visit me while doing my seed starting everyone say hi Riley I almost forgot about this little six cell at the end because I’ve been focusing on the 10 and for this I’m going to sew some golden Yaro so I have a bunch of yarao that is establishing in my garden isn’t big beautiful and white just yet but this is golden Yar which is not something I’m currently growing and the seeds are absolutely microscopic and therefore for a giant pain in the butt to try and individually sew so what I did with a Yar that I’m doing with these is just kind of sprinkling them on top and then as they get bigger I’ll separate them up pot them up pot them up pot them and then you know stick them somewhere in the garden so we’re going to make sure my hand is dry because if my hand was wet this will be a nightmare we’re just going to sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle kind of like taking a little granulated salt putting it on some eggs in the morning I kind of take a similar approach with basil because basil seeds are too small for my patience same can be said of carrots usually when you’re doing carrots and rows you sew them and then you thin them rather than spacing the seeds perfectly because that is a recipe for Insanity now what I’m going to go ahead and do for this golden Yaro is I’m going to take my sprayer make sure I have the Mist setting I’m going to take it on the lightest possible setting for the Mist just give it a little bit of love and now we’re on the last tray which is almost all six cells and the first thing I’m going to put in here is Tomos I have two different varieties of Tomos that I’m going growing this year I have these Tom ver Tomos from plant good seed and then also these purple Tomos again little baby microscopic seeds so I’m just going to kind of come over this and tap the end the smaller the seed the shallower the depth is a good rule of thumb to remember with all this now growing tmos these are very very aggressive climbing plants so at trellis is going to be your best friend hello squirrel we’re going to shift gear slightly this is Chick Lupine I direct sewed some of these in an earlier video so I’m going to also start them in seed cells I grow a royal Lupine which is a native Lupine to my era that pollinators love and looks beautiful so figured I’ll expand to a new variety of Lupine native Lupine that is I think it’s fun to have a wide variety of seeds in your you know germination station or whatever you want to call it because particularly if you have stuff like peas or whatnot or you know any sort of legume cuz they shoot up real quick so while you’re waiting patiently for your peppers to show up that theory kind of approach carries through to gardening as a whole where it’s nice to have some stuff like tomatoes that grow generally quite easily ju to POS with stuff that maybe takes a little bit more work a little bit more time so you have winds and things to Joy at every point in the process rather than kind of getting discouraged and waiting for only hard stuff there’s probably some life lessons in there Beyond gardening but today we’re just talking about gardening now we’ve got a few more spaces I’m going to start some Stevia I love Stevia I’ve made Stevia tinctures I’ve dried Stevia and use it as a powder it’s a delightful sweetener and most Stevia that you get at the store is not pure stevia it is a extract so it’s nice to be able to grow it yourself and get the good stuff I don’t have a ton of seeds so I’m going to surface sew these another thing you could do with seeds that are this small and hard to work with is get your soil or your seed starting mixed situated and then just sprinkle on the ever so slightest bit of a cocoa cor or a very lightweight seed steering material so this wouldn’t be time to add something with a lot of chunky material like anything with Forest byproducts or wood in it but the method I’m doing also works perfectly fine where you’re just sprinkling it on misting it and it all will be well now I do still have some 10 cells over here in this tray which I’m going to use for just a few more Peppers Caribbean red habanero is another one of my top tier habanero varieties if you’re looking for a variety for chili flakes where you know you want a little bit of heat but not like the full punch and Powerhouse of a chocolate habanero this is your best friend I would say this is my second favorite chili flake pepper orange Habaneros are good for some reason for me they just don’t translate as well in a chili flake the flavor doesn’t carry the same but Caribbean red Habaneros and chocolate Habaneros will do your right every time red Savina habanero is another good one that’s a red variety I do have bunch of that in my cupboard right now cuz I grew that last year and it’s was delightful but if I had to pick I would pick Caribbean red Habaneros and a lot of these pepper experiments I did because I could not find any information on the internet about the subtleties between different habanero varieties so I hope to be that education for those who are into heat and particularly love habaneros it is my favorite pepper and there’s a lot of options which is great got one more six cell one more 10 cell let’s split up the 10 cell I’m going to do shidos now I grew shashido not the past year but the year prior and they are incredibly productive and one of the most beginner friendly Peppers cuz they just crank out peppers like nobody’s busy and a fun thing about growing your own shidos is usually when you see shidos they are green but ripe shidos are actually red and they’re a little bit sweeter the same kind of mystery of spices carries where I think it’s 1 in 10 or one in 20 shishitos is very spicy I mean very spicy relative to like a jalapeno we’re not talking like Habanero hot but they’re really fun and really easy to grow now let’s throw some Paprika in there I’m not even going to try and pronounce that but that’s the seed you may notice I don’t have any jalapenos and that’s because the jalapenos that I planted last year are still growing and so I just need to chop them trim them back add some fresh compost and they’ll be good to go let’s do a little chocolate boot jelia so this is a very very hot ghost pepper kind of above my usual threshold for heat as far as preference goes but it was a part of my most viral video that I’ve ever made wherein I rubbed a ghost pepper in my eye to prove a little bit of pepper Anatomy wherein there is no capsacin on the outside of peppers the capsacin is contained in the pith or kind of the white part of the pepper and that contaminates the seeds so the seeds do not actually in and of themselves have heat uh it is the pith that kind of spreads the love so if you were to take the seeds of a pepper and wash them in something like hydrogen peroxide they would have no heat you could rub them in your eyes and be you know none the wiser I mean be kind of probably a bit of a stupid thing to do I just did it for Education sake I’m actually going to dedicate one of these last rows to Tonia AKA Mexican sunflower it’s a variety I’ve been wanting to grow and I got the seeds just a little bit too late in the season last year so I am very excited to add them to the roster in this one very cool very big plant and a big supporter of pollinators both native and not I’m actually going to do habiscus I have a bunch of different habiscus H Roselle whatever you call it I know Southern gardeners which I’m not I referred to it mainly as Roselle I grew some last year but not enough so we’re going to try and do it in cells now it’s very slow plant but very productive and with that we have three full trays of seeds now the last thing that I’m going to do before I fill up the bottom and put them under some grow lights is very very lightly Mist all the tops of the seed cells this will be the only time that I water from the top everything else will be bottom watering I did this already ready for the super tiny seeds like the golden Yaro and even the tomatillos I’m using the Miss setting and I’m not even remotely at full power now at this stage there’s not a consistent frequency that you want to be watering you want to look at the top of your seedlings and make sure that they’ve dried out just a tiniest bit if they look like this where there’s a good bit of moisture you do not need to water them leave them alone all of these seed cells are now full and fully hydrated which means it’s time to stick them under a grow light and for the peppers on a heat mat that really helps to replicate the nice summery conditions that they like to grow in so they can get into gear for when summer actually comes around a lot of these things will take many many weeks to germinate but some will be sooner and I’m excited to show you all the process of what that looks like if you enjoyed this video make sure that you like it and subscribe to the channel if you want to learn more about growing your own food herbs and medicinal herbs this has Ben Aon AKA garden zaddy and I’ll see you on the next one