A Common Life

25. How We Grow Our Transplants From Seed At Home

• Taylor and Morgan Myers

Share episode

In this episode, I break down why a home gardener should try growing their own transplants from seed and share how we do it ourselves!

If you listen and have questions, feel free to email me at taylor@acommonlife.co . You can also find my write up on this topic on Substack here. Leave a comment if you'd like!

Mentioned in the show:
Soil Blocks
Seed Flats
Seed Trays
Peat Moss - I use ProMix BX
Compost
Blood Meal
Bone Meal
Mycorrhizae - I use Great White
Rock Dust / Azomite
Flourescent Lights - Bright / Warm
Shop Light Fixture
Neptune Harvest’s Fish emulsion
Our newsletter that talks about planting tomatoes
Lacinato (or Toscano) Kale

Find us Elsewhere:
Instagram - @_ACommonLife - Morgan
Community Newsletter - The Common
Twitter (X) - @_ACommonLife
Twitter - @Taylor__Myers - Taylor
LinkedIn - Taylor Myers

DM us on the Socials or email us at Taylor@acommonlife.co

Music on the podcast was composed by Kevin Dailey. The artist is Garden Friend. The track is the instrumental version of “On a Cloud”

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, welcome to a common life podcast. In this episode it's going to be just me and I'm going to be talking about seeding and starting your own transplants from seed at home. So for the home gardener, it is not absolutely necessary to start your plants from seed. You can go to your local big box store like a Walmart or a Lowe's or a Home Depot, and get transplants there. You can go and get them at your local nursery. You can get them from your local feed and seed store co-op tractor supply places like that and your local farmers markets. Early in the season you can buy transplants and you can start plants from seed in your garden. So it's definitely not a necessary thing to start your, you know, to have a place inside your home or in a greenhouse where you start seeds to grow as transplants. However, it is a nice skill to have and it can really up your gardening experience, because when you can start your own seeds and you feel comfortable doing that and you have a setup for it, that's when you can really go out and purchase seeds of plants that you want to grow, not just the crops that are, you know, on sale to you at these stores that I mentioned. So you can plant a much wider array of varieties of tomatoes and peppers and lettuces, and you can get out and have a ton of fun growing those types of things. So in this episode, we're going to talk about more about why you would want to start your own transplants from seed, and we're going to talk about some of the reasons why. You start some plants from seed and transplants, and others you just direct seed into the garden, and then we'll talk about how we do it at our house and how we've been doing it for the past many years, and I'll tell you some other things that you can do that might make it easy to get started at your own home. So, yeah, without further ado, let's jump in.

Speaker 1:

So, as I mentioned, there are two primary reasons that I think a home gardener should really consider starting their own transplants from seed. The number one reason is for variety. Whenever you start your own seeds, you can open up any seed magazine and really you can choose anything that's in it, especially if you live in a tempered zone. I mean, of course you have to grow things that can grow in your zone, in your climate, but you can choose any variety of any plant that you want, that you can grow, and you can grow it in the home garden if you can start those things by seed and transplant it. So that's the first reason that I think, hey, you should really consider doing this and trying it. And then number two is for cost savings. When you go to these stores and you buy your own transplants, it can get expensive quick. So you might spend $6 for a transplant at the local market or at the nursery and for $6, I could grow 100 transplants. So it is quite economical to grow your own transplants, especially if you have a really big garden.

Speaker 1:

So there are going to be some plants that need to be transplanted and some plants that will be direct seeded into your garden. Let's talk a little bit about the difference between those two things. So the plants that you're going to want to transplant, that are going to need, that will need transplanting, are typically the ones that require a longer growing season. So, for example, let's talk about tomatoes. So let me think here Okay, so if I'm going to put a tomato seed in the ground, like in my garden, I'm not going to transplant it.

Speaker 1:

The soil in my garden needs to be a certain temperature. It needs to be like 70 degrees or so, 65 plus, for it to germinate. So that's going to push me into likely in the late April, early May range. Okay, so I'll put that seed into the ground and then it'll sprout, and then it'll grow and after three months or so I might be getting the first tomato. That's going to be what I'm aiming for for that tomato. So that'll put me at May, june, july, early August. I'm going to be getting tomatoes, no-transcript. If I were to transplant that tomato into the garden in the middle of April and I've already given it a head start, I've taken off a solid month there. So you're talking about May, june. June is just when I'm going to be getting the first tomato. So the difference there is going to be a month and a half where I'm not getting tomatoes and if I transplant it into my garden and give it a head start, I'm going to be getting tomatoes so much earlier.

Speaker 1:

So when the window of growing is limited and you want to maximize your fruiting potential and maximize the time that you're going to be able to actually harvest from your plant, being able to start them indoors when it's 20 degrees outside, grow them inside and then plant them outside when the weather is nice. That's just going to shorten that season for you outside and give you much more fruit to enjoy. So that is one reason why plants need to be transplanted. And the other reason is whenever you're growing seeds from a transplant, you can control the germination and you can control the environment that they're growing in much better. I mean it's in a controlled environment, whether it's inside your house or in the greenhouse. So some plants that are really finicky and they bugs love them, and plants animals love to eat them and they just are finicky when they're at their young stages. And when they're in the young stages of their life they do much better whenever you start them indoors. So a lot of your brassicas and your cole crops so that would be like your broccoli, your kale, your cabbages, brussel sprouts those are usually started inside. They do really great as transplants and you can grow them up and then transplant them outside into your garden once they are ready. So those are the two primary reasons. Some plants they just need that extra protection when they're young, and then other plants they have longer growing seasons and so if you can give them a head start indoors before the weather conditions are perfect outside, then that gives you a longer harvest season in your garden.

Speaker 1:

So now I want to talk a little bit about how we start our seeds indoors and what we do, and kind of give you the bare bones of how to do it yourself. So we've been doing this since gosh 2000 and 10ish 2010, 2011. And we've really been doing it the same way since then. Not much has changed. Back when I started doing this, there was a new technology that came around called using soil blocks. That's the one thing I'm hesitant about in this whole thing is that, honestly, doing it, I think that's the best way. I think using soil blocks is the overall best way.

Speaker 1:

The reason I haven't switched over to soil blocks is because I just don't have that much space, and so I like using seed trays. So I'm going to tell you how we do it. We use seed trays. We don't do soil blocks. But if you can and want to explore with soil blocks, all of the great garden farmers out there, they love it, they love using it, and I do recommend soil blocks. Based on what I have read, looked into and what people have told me, they seem to work great. So go get you a soil block maker if that's the route you want to go. But the way we do it is we use seed trays. So we get plastic seed trays. I've used for gosh seven, eight plus years.

Speaker 1:

I just keep reusing the same ones over and over again. I make sure they're sanitized at the beginning of the season, I mix some bleach in with some water, I dip them in there and let them dry off out in the sun, rinse them off and then, boom, they're ready to roll. I put in some a peat moss compost blend and sometimes I'll add in some blood meal for some organic nitrogen supplement, some bone meal for the phosphorus, and I also put in a mycelium oh gosh, mycorrhiza inoculant, which is basically just a beneficial fungus that interacts with the plants and the soil and helps the plants get nutrients from the soil. And I'm going to link all this in the show notes so I'll show you all of these things there and you can click on them and explore there. And then another thing I'll put in there sometimes is like a rock dust or like a rock supplement, and some of these things like the rock supplement really isn't going to benefit the seedling, but when I put that transplant into the garden, the rock supplement, mineral supplement will go into the garden and will slowly be broken down and will be adding to the overall fertility of the soil. So if I do that every year, that's just kind of the way I can keep my soil replenished with those minerals and micronutrients that my plants need and that I need.

Speaker 1:

So I put the peat moss in and I put my seedling tray into like a tray holder that I don't use. It's not perforated so it does hold water and that way I can water from the bottom and I don't have to disturb the tops of the seeds, and then I put them under lights and so the lights that I use. Again, this is how I've been doing it ever since the beginning. There are other ways to do it, there's better ways, but this works for us and it's pretty easy low key way to do it.

Speaker 1:

I get fluorescent bulbs and I put them in shop lights and I hang them above the seed trays. And the fluorescent bulbs that I get, I get one warm light and one bright light for each shop light holder and beginning. Of course, each of them comes with like two places for two bulbs and I use two shop lights. So there's four fluorescent bulbs in all two in each shop light, and I use two shop lights over the trays and the trays that I use are. They fit under them perfectly and this light combo of the warm and bright light gives the best spectrum of light that you can get from fluorescent bulbs and the plants seem to do great under them and they really like this light. I make sure I have chains so I can raise and lower the light.

Speaker 1:

You want to keep your light around two inches above your plants at all times. You don't want to get too far away because then your plants will get really leggy and they'll. I don't know if you've ever seen transplants or if you've tried to grow transplants in like a window and they grow up and they get really tall and then they fall over. That's because they're trying to get to the light and they get too weak and they end up falling over and they get what they call leggy. So you don't want to do that. So you want to keep your lights close to your seedlings. But they do put off light, these fluorescent lights, I'm sorry, they do put off heat. So you want to keep them about two inches or so above. So you want to be able to raise and lower your lights, and that is pretty much that, some considerations here. So you can get a dome. They sell these seed starting kits at like Lowe's, on Depot and all the other places. The nurseries and co-ops feed and seed.

Speaker 1:

I don't recommend the domes, the humidity domes, because they just create the perfect conditions for mold and you don't want mold growing on your seeds or your seed starting medium, like the peat moss mix, and that is a problem that I've had in the past even without the domes. So I don't recommend the domes. I just recommend you really watching, making sure you're keeping your moisture levels of the soil right, and if it starts to dry out, you keep it wet. But if you start to see mold, you just have to dial that back some. The other thing that really helps with mold is air circulation. So if I start having issues with mold, then I will get either a fan or we actually use an air purifier that kind of sits right beside the seeds and it purifies the air, but it also circulates the air and that works great. That essentially gets rid of all of the mold issues that we have. So that's what we do Whenever the seedlings reach oh gosh, four inches or so in height. Usually that's the range where it's like, hey, these guys are going to be ready to go outside and be ready to be planted into the garden and you can also.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's talk about the seedlings. When they first come up out of the tray, they're going to have two leaves. Typically all of your vegetables will. They typically have two leaves and that means they're no-transcript. I'm talking about the die cotyledons. There are cotyledons or monocots, which is like corn and grasses. They only have one cot, but that doesn't really matter for right now. Most of them are going to have two seed leaves and these two seed leaves, when they first pop up out of the soil and they put out these two leaves, those are their seed leaves and they're not your true leaves. The next set of leaves that come are going to be your true leaves and they're going to look like what you will anticipate and what you're expecting the leaves of your seedling, of your plant to look like. They're going to be the true leaves.

Speaker 1:

Once you have four true leaves, then that is typically around the time that your seedling is ready to be transplanted out into the garden. So it's really something that you kind of have to get in there, mix it up a little bit, get some experience with to know. But you'll be able to tell whenever your plant is growing. It looks good and you're like, hey, it's kind of it needs some more room, some more space to grow and it's got a couple to four good looking leaves, then yeah, it's probably about time to start hardening that plant off, to get it into the garden.

Speaker 1:

So what I just said was hardening off that plant. That's vital. That's the next step you don't want to miss out on hardening. This is a critical step. It's also the most common area that I personally mess up. So I start the seeds. They're growing, they look beautiful, they're doing their thing, they're under the lights, the environment's perfect for them, they're glowing. It's time to plant to the garden. But I have to harden them off.

Speaker 1:

So what is hardening off? Hardening off is when you take them and expose them to the elements outside in a small, incremental way to harden them up, to get them ready for the environment that they're going to spend the rest of their plant life in. So if you can imagine this plant in your laundry room under the lights right, that's where ours are. They don't have any wind blowing on them, there's no rain hitting them hard there's, you know. They have the perfect amount of nutrients and the environment is just perfect. The temperature isn't fluctuating, the sun isn't pounding on them and they're just growing great. So they're really weak and they're really soft. They might look beautiful, but the second they get hit with some hard wind they're going to topple right over. And if you're not careful, if you just take those and put them into the garden, they're going to experience what you call transplant shock and if it doesn't kill them, it will set them way, way back.

Speaker 1:

So the hardening off process typically what I try to do is I try to put them outside the first day for an hour, the second day for two hours, the third day for three hours, up until I've done that for about five, six, seven days. And when I put them outside I don't want to just throw them into the blazing heat and I don't want to just throw them out where it's got. They're going to get rained on and it's going to be really windy. Typically I will try to put them in a shaded area and leave them for an hour, and the next day I might keep them in a shaded area for two hours and then the next day maybe I move them into a little more direct sun for part of the three hours. But the issue is and what I said where it's I most commonly make the mistake is I forget, I forget and it ends up going from, okay, today's going to be three hours to it's six hours, and that shady spot in the morning is getting direct sunlight in the afternoon.

Speaker 1:

And now my plants I didn't water them, they I show up and they're super droopy, their cells are dry and that's a terrible feeling. When you've made it this far, you have beautiful transplants and you're ready to plant them out in the garden and then you forget about them and they are hanging on for dear life. It's not a good feeling. So I highly recommend doing the hardening off process and I highly recommend creating reminders and like timers on your phone to remind you to bring them inside and so you don't forget about them Because, again, like they are in their cell packs and so they can dry out quickly and you don't want that to happen. You don't harden off your plants by not watering them. You want to keep them really well watered throughout this process, but exposing them to a little bit of wind, exposing them to some direct sunlight and temperature fluctuations. That's really going to help prepare them for their final landing spot in your garden.

Speaker 1:

So I think, okay, here actually I'm not done. There is the last step of actually planting them into your garden. So what I do before I plant into the garden is I do a root soak, and the way I do this is, you know, I remember I mentioned I plant them in seed trays and then I take the tray holder, which doesn't have holes in it, that you can just something you can basically just drop your seed tray down into, and I fill that tray holder up with a liquid fertilizer and organic liquid fertilizer. So what I have is I think it's Neptune's harvest fish emulsion and it smells terrible, but it's an organic fertilizer, and I soak those roots really well in that and then I take them out, I let them drain a little bit and then I will plant those transplants, those seedlings, into the garden, and that is what. That is how we do it. That's what we do when I plant those transplants into the garden.

Speaker 1:

The only plant that I can think this applies to and I'm not 100% confident in this, but I know it applies to tomatoes. You can plant tomatoes all the way up to where the first seed, the first seed leaves, appeared. So when a tomato seed sprouts and pops up out of the ground, it shoots out its two seed leaves. They're long and skinny, and then the next leaves come out. They look like tomato leaves. Where were those first two seed leaves came out of the stem. As it grows you'll see them hanging out down there. You can plant the tomato transplant as deep as those two seed leaves are so and then roots will come out from there. It's actually recommended to plant tomatoes that deep. It helps them send out more roots and be more stable.

Speaker 1:

Other plants, other transplants. I don't do that with any other transplants, but but our tomatoes, I did a I Will in our show notes. I will link one of the newsletters we sent out where I sent a picture diagram, this whole thing about how you can plant tomatoes deep. But the rest of my transplants I try to keep the soil level, even with the Garden soil. So I you know I don't, I don't cover up the stem that has emerged in my transplant cell. If that makes sense, I keep the soil levels even.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I, I think that's gonna be it. I think I've covered everything. If I've missed something, I'm gonna put my email in the show notes. Don't hesitate to reach out. I'm gonna send out a newsletter that covers all of this and, in more detail, I'll be writing it out. It'll be coming out shortly as well. Check that out. A common life dot sub stack comm is where you can find it.

Speaker 1:

And If you've listened to all this and you're like man, this sounds way too complicated, I don't want to do it, man. I really hope that's not the case. But if that is you, I just recommend going and just trying it. Just trying it, and it's really not that hard. It's really not that difficult.

Speaker 1:

You just put some seeds.

Speaker 1:

They're gonna sprout up.

Speaker 1:

Make sure you have a light form. They'll grow. Throw them outside for a few days to get some sunlight and a little wind, beat them up a little bit and then Toss over the garden. They're gonna grow, and you can start doing that in January and February for crops like like we are seeding right now and can't put these crops like your, your Kale and your black broccoli's and cabbage. You can't put these crops in the garden right now, but you can start them indoors and as soon as the soil gets workable in the garden, boom, we're gonna be planting crops in it.

Speaker 1:

So that's again the beauty of being able to start your own seeds, and I'm gonna be able to get my favorite kind of kale wasa not okay, that is not sold anywhere Locally around here as transplants. So I'll be able to have the kind of kale that I want in my garden because I can start it from seeds. So I highly recommend you giving it a shot, and if you have any other questions or Any other things that you want to add to this I'm sure there are others out there that do this and they do it differently. I might even disagree with some of the things that I've said don't hesitate to send me an email To comment on the newsletter. I'd love to have a discussion and learn from you as well. So, with all of that being said, guys, we are entering into the gardening season, so happy gardening you.