EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT JIFFY SEED STARTER/GREENHOUSE

hey folks its Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome to the farm blog today today is a huge day on the farm it is planting day so really excited about planting some Veggie seeds this year and I've got a bunch of stuff from jiffy and very more seed company that I want to show you this is our tomato greenhouse and it has very large peak Bucks and the way these things work is you put water on them and they swell up and we'll show you all that and we also have these here which are for starting vegetables also but they're a little bit smaller PUC so there are several different kinds of these little peat puck greenhouses that jiffy sells and we're going to show you a quite a few of them today we'll also show you how to use a regular old potting soil and these little peat pots that you can plant directly in the soil I'll show you how to use those show you how to get your plant and started so come along on the farm vlog today and we'll show you how we use all this stuff all right [Music] [Laughter] all right so first things first we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna add water to our peat pods okay we're going to set these down on the ground we're gonna fill them with water we're not going to overfill them because you can't overfill them but we're gonna fill them with water it works better with warm water so I've had my hose laying out here in the Sun so that's gonna help us out a little bit and these little guys they will grow up to be great big fat peat pods and I'll show you let me take one of these out of here so you can see what they look like okay all right you slide the little case off here and these are little greenhouses okay this little greenhouse thing fits right over top of the peat pods and that holds your moisture in there so when your plants start to sprout they'll stay nice and moist let's pop one of these peat pods out here so here are the peat pods and they're just a little tiny like hockey puck looking things I dropped it they're very tough too there's a little tiny hockey puck looking things and they look like just compressed peat moss that's all they are and when we add water they'll go from this size right here all the way up to about that size guys in case you're wondering this is Lexi Lexi is our dermal Shepherd pup she's all black beautiful little dog go ahead and lay out all three trays here and then we'll turn the water on and you'll watch the miracle happen so your job right here is basically they just wait just kind of sit and wait if you filled it up a little bit too full which I did just now you'll notice that some of these little pucks will float up out of their little pockets so you want to just gently place them back in their little pockets pretty simple some folks we actually have three different sizes of peat pot here we have the 72 we have the 50 and we have the 36 okay and we're just waiting on these guys to swell up and you can already see I'll bring this over here you can already see they've started to rise up so they'll start rising up like this and then you can go on and put your seeds in once they're nice and moist and they're kind of mushy alright so the size garden that we're going to be planting here on the farm is about a half an acre okay that is a lot of garden a lot of garden to maintain a lot of garden to have so I suggest you start small if you're new to this and work your way up now if you don't add enough water in when you first do your jiffy pots be careful don't just pour it in there because you can hit right in the center of these little peat pots right here and you can wash out the very center which is something that you want to avoid if you do pour too much water in it you can always just tip it up like this and get rid of the water now there are three methods I like to use when planting any kind of garden vegetable I like to either use a butter knife a nail or a pencil and I'll take my pencil and sharpen it and poke a hole down in there and then I'll drop my seed in and then I'll cover it up so first thing we're gonna plant here is gonna be our beefsteak tomatoes now we're gonna get started and basically we're just going to use our nail here and you can just use any old household nail and we're gonna just poke a tiny hole in each one and kind of wallow it out just a little bit okay just ever so slightly we're going to go through and we're gonna do this with every single one of these peat pots doesn't take long now you've seen getting in a hurry we're gonna be planting the beefsteak tomato here and basically we just tear it up in here and we'll pour our seeds out in our hand tiny tiny tiny little seeds guys that is enough tomato seeds to plant your entire guard basically we'll put two of these little seeds per pod we'll continue to put the seeds in until we're done we'll go in a systematic manner in other words if you're going to do a row do a row all the way across or do a row all the way down so we're doing one row at a time all the way down here and then we'll label our little green house beefsteak tomato okay now if you drop seeds down in there which you will do it's good to have a towel sitting beside you so you can dry your fingers off but you're going to drop some seeds down in there do your best to retrieve those seeds if you don't you're gonna have little plants sprouting all over the little green house here now don't worry if you don't get them all the way down in the hole the first time you can always tuck them in take your little nail and you'll push them down into the hole guys it's the point where I asked you to click that like button if you like what you're seeing if you're learning a little bit click that like button leave me some comments down there questions comments concerns anything this is pretty fun stuff just FYI one little seed packet contains all a backyard gardener would ever need to plant it must of the time if you're planting this kind of stuff out of these little seed packets you're probably a backyard gardener so we've got this entire little greenhouse planted up and we're gonna put the cover on it and this is what the cover looks like right here and we don't want to put it in direct sunlight we just want to set it in kind of a protected place okay until our seeds start to sprout and then we'll start to bring them out into sunlight if you take this little greenhouse and you put it in direct sunlight with this right here it will bake your little plants and kill them so be sure until they sprout you keep them in a semi light place not a full Sun light place and when you take them out on your porch to let them breathe and you open this thing up be sure you protect those little plants for the first few weeks you don't want that direct sunlight pounding down on top of them you have to acclimate them to the outside Sun so we'll go through with our nail and the few that we did miss we'll go ahead and we'll tuck them in down here and basically you're just raking over the seed ever-so-slightly a good rule of thumb here is when you're planting seeds plant the seed twice the depth of the size of the seed in other words these tomato seeds are teeny teeny tiny little flakes like pepper flakes almost okay so you want to plant them very very shallow a lot Michela than you think now bean seeds and squash seeds and larger seeds like sunflower seeds and stuff like that again go with that rule of thumb only plant them twice the depth of the width of the seed and of the words if the seed is this tall and this wide plant it twice the depth of the width okay the skinny part once again don't plant them too deep make sure you don't overwater so just let the peat pods swell up to what they're gonna swell up to if they're still standing water in the bottom try to pour that water off or leave them uncovered for a day or so so that that water puddle dries up you don't want a big water puddle you don't want to be drenching wet because if you leave them like that it'll promote mold growth and you don't want that something everybody should know is that their mold spores in the air in the air that we breathe outside in the air that we breathe inside our homes there are mold spores and their yeast spores they're always out there they're always out blowing around so be sure you don't overwater get these things too moist too wet because that'll kill them just as quick as no water will kill them so we used about half our seeds and this is the 50 pack 50 tomato plants is gonna work my but I'll be giving some of these tomato plants to my neighbors and your neighbors always appreciate that so if you're outside and you're working and your neighbor sees your garden you give them some tomato plants they really appreciate that kind of thing so we'll put the lid on this and this is ready to go inside the house so you can see these swelled up nicely and they're nice and big but these didn't swell up all the way so we've got to add a little more water now we want to make sure we put our water in between here and don't pour directly over the peat pots because this stuff this peat will wash off okay so you don't need to fertilize these you don't need to do anything until you put them in the ground these peat pods contain enough nutrient to get your seeds started and to grow the plant up you know I've seen them as tall as six inches so they're good to go they're ready to go you don't need to put fertilizer on them we're gonna add a little more water very gently kind of in the area right there you can see those peat pods starting to swell pretty cool how they swell up like that so folks I did a little video on this last year and jiffy fairy Morse sent me a bunch of seeds this year and sent me these products to show you I want to let you know they've come out with a new product called this so easy okay and this is for stuff that has really tiny seeds so I don't know if you've ever sewn lettuce before but they have very very tiny seeds and so do tomato plants so this is a little bit easier way to sow your tomato plants they're called so easy and these are two different varieties this is the Roma which we love in our sauce and this is the Independence Day which I have no idea but I guess you probably harvest them on the fourth of July we're gonna put these in the other peat pots some folks I'm not one to waste so what I'll do is I'll take my seeds that are left over I'll fold the top over and basically I'll put a little piece of tape across the top so that they hold in there then once I've taped it shut I'll take these and I'll tape them right to the container right to the little greenhouse so I'll know exactly what's in there one thing you need to know if you're going to be a good gardener you need to be meticulous you need to pay attention to stuff and you need to make notes of what you did this year versus last year and see how things go you can make tiny adjustments if you make notes so it's a good idea to make notes if you're gonna be a good gardener now if I'm going to show two different types of seeds in a greenhouse I'm gonna label what side I put where and then I'll take my little sharpie right here and I'll draw a line right across and I'll put an arrow that says this is on this side and this is on that side and I'll put a left and a right and I'll write that on the lid and I'll write that on the sides and that way I won't get confused you can't really see the black sharpie so get you a little roll of painters tape or masking tape or whatever like that and put a left and a right or a and a B or C and a D or whatever you want to put that lets you discern between this half and that half cool now here's one that the seeds didn't fall down through there so I'm just gonna take my nail here and I'm just gonna push him down and it's just that simple okay and that that's the pointy part of the nail then I'll take the flat part of the nail and I'll Pat them in there that's pretty much good right there so the next thing we're going to show you are these jiffy peat pots okay and these pots are made of compressed peat moss and they're pretty cool pretty simple you can plant this directly in the ground and the roots will penetrate right through it it's biodegradable it's awesome so we'll show you this real quick so we're not going to do our transplant today but we're going to talk about it a little bit so we'll take our plant starter mix here and we'll pack it down in there nicely and we'll make out a little hole and we'll drop our peat pot our puck down into there and pack it down there nicely and make sure it's watered good and we'll put it in a jiffy plant tray and we'll show you that tray will show you everything you need to know in the next video when we go to transplant our tomato plants and our other plants into larger pots some of these will be big enough that we don't need to transplant them some of these will need to be transplanted and grown a little bit bigger so folks thanks a lot for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge farm I hope you've enjoyed the vlog I've got a ton of seeds to plant they sent me some wildflower seeds too I said man we just cleared a bunch of land and I need some wildflower seeds I'll never get all those planted that's awesome thanks a lot jiffy for sending those out to me I hope you guys learned something today thank you for coming to the Starr neeraj farm if you guys are interested in a t-shirt there'll be links down below click that like button click that thumbs up come back and see us check out some of the other videos we're out here on a farm my wife and I bought sixty acres then we bought ninety then we bought 40 we're on two hundred acre farm here and we're taking it from bare dirt to a profitable business and we'll take you along with us and show you all that's involved all right so thanks a lot for watching Stoney Ridge farmer today I appreciate you and we'll see you next time okay [Music] here it's we've had some ways opposed to me 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