How to start your vegetable garden seeds with success!

guys before we get started with today's video I want to show you some cool grow lights this is a Mars hydro SP 250 grow light it's absolutely huge and this is the SP 150 Mars Hydra reached out to us and they are going to provide us with a coupon code down the video description in case you want to install grow lights in your garage or in your shop or in your house for getting your seed started pretty cool they're LED grow lights from Mars hydro thanks a lot to enjoy the video hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm today we're going to unravel the mystery for you so if you're considering plant in the garden and you've never planted a garden we're going to go through two different ways here that you can plant your seeds for your garden now there are a million different ways there's ways with plastic cups there's ways with peat moss cups there's all sorts of different ways but these are two ways that I've had success here on our farm getting our seedlings started so come along today as we teach you a little bit about the jiffy peat pucks and this very Morris Pro X seedling tray and we'll show you what soils to use we'll talk a little bit about how this works and we'll make it easy and simple for you alright [Music] first of all guys let me welcome you to our farm this is our 200 acre farm here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina behind me you'll see our utility vehicle and this is our mobile chicken coop we have our chickens out on pasture we move that coop either every day or every other day and we let the chickens put out good old butt fertilizer for our lawn and for our pastures so it's pretty cool what we're going to be doing here is starting all of our seedlings for our garden for demonstration purposes today I'm just going to show you a few of these jiffy peat pucks and we'll go into detail about that and I'll show you how to set up these right here now you can buy any brand there'll be a link down in the video description to all the stuff that we're using today but you know you can buy any brand you can go to the store and buy it with the crazy times that we're living in right now you may just want to order it online we'll show you all the tools that you need it's not a lot of tools you just need a little bit of know-how and we'll give you details that you need to know down the road in other words what do you do after you plant the seeds how long do you wait before you put them out in the Sun what do you do if you've never planted a garden or even if you have planted a garden this should be good food for thought this is what we're gonna start with these are the jiffy peat pucks okay I put this on for a display right here but this is how the actual package will come let's set this to the side I've got some onions in here we'll talk about that in just a few minutes too so this is how it comes you're just going to reach in here I'm gonna pop this little guy out slide that you won't need this unless you want to use it to make some labels so hang on to it until you get done and it tells you on the back here a list of instructions but we don't need those because you're gonna learn by watching a video here today so here's the lid we'll take the lid off set it to the side a little thank-you note from jiffy that's good customer service right there inside here you have some labels so this brings us to our tools so these little labels will stick down inside here and that will tell you what you planted where there's nothing worse than having this planted and not knowing what the heck you have planted also this is a plant vitamin for seeds I've never used this before but we're going to try it today typically I just use tap water and these are little peat pucks let's give you a little close-up it is compressed peat moss in a little bag okay this little puck right here has compressed peat moss and your seed is going to go right inside here okay now you can wet this and these will swell up I've got one down here that's already swollen I'll show you and I did this one yesterday so these peat pucks will go from it's pretty miraculous pretty interesting to watch they'll go from this all the way to this so it's a little bag to hold your seedling this makes planting your seeds so super easy this is my favorite way by far but we're going to show you two different ways today just so if you don't want to go with the peat pucks which I don't know why you wouldn't you'll have another way so here's what we're gonna do first you want to be on a nice level surface we'll go ahead and set this onto the side since it's already ready to go for seeds okay you want to have a nice level surface and the tools you're going to need for this entire operation are going to be pretty simple I bet you got them all around your house you're gonna need some tape this is masking tape and what we use this masking tape for is if we don't want to use these little tags right here I don't like these so much I think that they fall down and they get lost and they go all over everywhere so what we'll do is take a piece of masking tape we'll pull it out we might as well just show you and we'll stick it on the side of our peat puck tray and we'll label it and we'll talk about the rows so we have 72 pucks in here this is enough to start an awesome awesome garden okay guys you can mix and match all sorts of goodies in here so you could do two rows of one type of tomato two rows of another type of tomato you could go in here with other types of small seedlings be it flowers wildflowers whatever you want to plant you can plant it all in here we have three of these 72 peat puck plant carriers and if we have any extra plants we'll give them away to a neighbor if you've got a neighbor there's no better gift than a little tomato plant and a bucket that they can grow on their patio so pretty cool here's what we're going to do we have two quarts so you use two two two and a half quarts of warm water lukewarm water now before we pour this I'm going to talk to you about how we pour it because it's important we do it all at once so I guess first of all we're going to open up our little vitamin pack there's a little tear spot right there we didn't have to cut that or anything and we're going to go ahead and pour that in here I think it's yellow yep so we're pouring that in our court jar if you're going to use these four cannon or something later on be sure you wash it really really good I imagine that this has just some micronutrients in it and a little bit of phosphorous to help get that root established toss that over to the side and here's what we're going to do we're going to take our two quarts of warm water this one has the solution this one has no solution and we're going to evenly pour this over the entire area we're gonna do this pretty fast pretty hastily okay that's one and that's the other this is going to seem like way too much water but if you don't do this very fast what's going to happen is they'll start loosening up and when you pour it in you'll wash all the soil out of one of the little peat pucks so let's get a time-lapse on these guys swelling up this is lukewarm water from the tap [Music] wasn't that cool watching the time-lapse of that thing swelling up it literally takes about four minutes for this to swell completely up to their full capacity they'll take up all the water that you pour it in there and I'm gonna say roughly two to two and a half quarts if you put more in there you're going to have a flood and you're gonna have to pour water out if you put less in there then they're going to dry out quickly so now we've got moisture in here what we want to do we don't want to put our seeds in while it's really warm again the water is tap water so it's probably about 110 to 120 degrees we don't want to put boiling hot water or anything in there that's going to kill any kind of microorganisms that we might want any beneficial microorganisms so what we got to think about is setting this to the side and we're going to go ahead and get the one that we've already worked on yesterday so this one's ready to plant here's a little secret guys when we get you a little close-up you've got all this condensation on the top of your little greenhouse I'll show you what to do now you see it now you don't just that easy tip it up slowly to a corner right here because sometimes you're going to have a whole lot of water and if you have these indoors which you probably will you're going to pour water out everywhere so now we are ready to start putting our seeds in here we're going to get you some close-ups of what we do and we have two tools that we're going to be using this tool in this tool just a finger and a lead pencil you can use any kind of pencil you use a pair of tweezers you can use a stick a toothpick whatever you want to use what we're going to do we're going to show you with a couple seed pods here exactly what we do for success typically I would take row by row and I would go and I would do this okay but for today's demonstration purposes we're just going to do a couple of these but what I'll do is I'll take my little lead pencil and we're going to start right here in the center and I'll go right in and I'll poke a little tiny hole right there just right in the center and some of these bags like you can see this one they're a little bit tight so you want to open that up just a little bit and then poke it down in there just ever so slightly literally about that far okay so we're not going in very deep here we're going in probably a quarter of an inch we want to go through every single one of these and that way you know all of them are done and then once you plant the seeds we're going to tap them close and I'll show you we're just going to take our finger that's tool number two and we're going to tap them close we're just going to pet peat moss back over top or soil back over top of our seat now a general rule of thumb for seeds then these are our Roma tomatoes that we're going to be planting today a general rule of thumb for seeds is you want to plant twice the thickness of the seed and you'll see how tiny these tomato seeds are they're really really tiny alright guys let me be totally honest with you I typically will do this inside my house on the coffee table pretty much I'll lay these out I'm watching a little TV in the evening time and I'll start poking seeds in okay we're just going to do a couple rows and every once in a while you might get one that's a little bit of a mess like this so just Pat him back in there Pat it back down and then take your PIN or your pencil or your toothpick or whatever and fix it back up so we've got this all settled we're going to go ahead and put our seeds in again we're using a Roma tomato seed and these are the faring Morse brand seeds pretty much the stuff you see in the little kiosk and Lowe's or Walmart or wherever you might shop so we're going to pour out some seeds in the palm of our hand and these are tiny little seeds guys see how tiny those little seeds are and what we want to do is we want to put two to three seeds in each one of these little peat pucks okay and I just pinch them out of my hand you don't want to pour the whole bag in your hand at once you just want to do a couple seeds you just drop them in drop them in there so pour out about thirty seeds in your hand and then just hand pick them and drop them in okay now it really works better if you start on one side and work your way consecutively to the other in that way you don't miss any there's nothing worse and getting done planting all your seeds and you've got missing peat pucks so get yourself organized and think about what you're doing here okay the reason we put two seeds or three seeds per peat puck is because we want to make sure we get germination if two seeds germinate or three seeds germinate and then we'll come back in with our little scissors and we'll snip them off okay that's just part of gardening we're gonna get rid of the ones that we don't need inevitably one plant will be bigger and stronger than the other plants we want to take a look at them after about two or three days after they've sprouted and got I don't know half inch tall and we want to snip out the ugly one or the worst one so we're culling out the bad let's get you a close-up of how we put our seeds in so we will wallow it out a little bit pull that to the side that little baggie to the side wallow it out just like that and then we'll take our fingers and we're gonna drop two seeds down into each hole that was two seeds stuck together there's two seeds right there all we're gonna do tuck those in again they just need to be just below the surface and they'll even sprout right on the surface so we'll use our little tool here pack them down in and take our finger and what we're doing is just getting those seeds just below the surface and that's exactly how we do it right there guys there's some seed right there that's how easy it is to use the peat pucks that's why I totally prefer the peat pucks over the trays but I thought I'd show you guys the difference in the two before we start with the trays here let's talk about seeds okay so we've got some seeds that are small like these tomato seeds and over here I've got some bell pepper seeds I've got small seeds over here and in a bag down below I have my larger seeds this is what I mean by larger seeds so peas squash zucchini anything with the seed I'll just go on and open this guy up anything with a seed that's bigger like that right there now you could sprout these seeds and you could really sprout them a bigger seed in this tray right here but I prefer to just put these seeds straight into the garden they do just fine if you really want to get crazy you can put them in this tray right here but odds are you could just put the larger seeds right into the garden you just want to make sure that you don't have a frost risk so you need to check your map right on the back here and it has the time when you're supposed to plant them and the distance and then everything you need to know all right I'll put my big seeds back in my big seed bag because these are going directly in the garden typically our last frost here in North Carolina is around April 15th if I put these seeds in the ground it's bound to frost so also we have some sets these are sets I'll get a little close-up for you here so these are sets these are for growing red onions okay so you'll just plant that and that guy will turn into a great big old fat onion pretty cool we won't put these in any kind of seed tray we'll put them directly in the ground and you can plant these a little bit earlier in the year so we've got our tools we got our sharpie we've got our pencil we've got our tape we've got our scissors we've got things that we need from marking these guys and sometimes if I'm going to plant tomatoes all one it's windy out here sometimes if I'm planting tomatoes and I'm planting all one tray I'll just tape the package to the top of the tray right here okay now you want to think about this and stick around to the end of the video we're going to talk about after your seeds sprout once we show you how to set up this tray so these packages do not come with the little labels I like these little labels for sticking in the dirt I don't like them for the peat pucks but these little labels are very handy for this kind of tray so we'll get rid of our little guard here we'll toss them to the side and you can see there's a preparation right here you can see how I folded it in two so you have to plant trays right here okay totally separated if you want to get all crazy you can label each plant tray or if you want to get real crazy and label each row you can do that too that's where you're gonna need your masking tape because there just aren't enough of these little guys okay so we're going to show you exactly what you need to do get everything out of the way here I'll show you what you need to do in order to get these trays started so in this bin right here we have seed starter mix and it's really powdery you can see the wind blowing right here so if you're gonna do this don't do this inside okay don't do it in your basement don't do it in your garage do it out in your yard that way when you spill some of this powdery seed starter type soil it will go into your yard and not make a mess that you have to clean up later so I have this in a bin you can buy a seed starter at pretty much anywhere post a link in the video description in case you don't want to go shopping with these crazy times we have right now with this virus you can order it online and they'll ship it right to you jiffy makes a seed starter this is not jiffy seed starter this is a what I got from a local co-op it's a tobacco plant seed starter okay so what we want to do we've already got our seed starter out here slide these guys over and I'm gonna take my cup here and you can use any size cup or whatever you want to use Bowl or whatever and we're going to pour the seed starter directly onto our trays okay and this is the least messy way that I have found to do it so we just take our starter mix and we just dump it upside down on there and we kind of move it around okay so you know see how that works okay once again just dump it you kind of move it around just like that if you've got two trays it helps to but to trace together if you want to you we just want it to be flush with the top right here so we'll continue to do this until we have both trays filled that ain't rocket science and you don't have to do it this way but this just seems to be an easier way to do things and that's what I look for and that's why I make youtube videos do a nice neat job and you'll be proud of it do a nice messy job and your garden will show you did a messy job if your messy in your garden your garden is most likely not going to be very successful so you really have to be on top of your game if you're gonna grow a nice successful garden it makes sense doesn't it guys it's time it's time to get your seed started it's absolutely time if you've got a favorite flower or something like that that you have in your yard and you pick some seeds from it last fall or if you think about it this fall save back some seeds and you can plant your own plants so what we say back are my favorite flower the black-eyed Susan say back some of those seeds in that way I'll have some for planting in these trays and they're a tiny tiny little seed okay good to go here's the part where we make a nice big mess so you want to make sure all of your little compartments are full of soil and we could do this in the yard that's probably what I'd recommend to you but what we're gonna do is just do it right here so we're gonna sprinkle some water gently over top of this seed starter mix we're gonna let it soak in you're gonna find out this seed starter mix does not want to take on water it really doesn't okay we'll try and make sure you're on a fairly nice level surface and they'll start taking on water fairly slowly if you want to you can take your fingers and Pat them down but it just takes a little bit of time and it makes a big mess compared to the peat Puck's that's why I like the peat pucks this is a pain in the butt and that is so super easy and simple see what I mean please just make a big for lack of better terms just a big stupid mess they just make a big mess so there's a tray underneath our our seed starters right here that will fill up with water also so you could pour a little bit of water on this let it soak in come back in an hour pour a little bit more water let it soak in come back in an hour but again I think you're seeing right here what a pain-in-the-butt it is to do it this way versus using the peat pucks now for the seeds again the same thing applies if you're gonna put seeds in these you want to…