- Good day, I'm Mark
from Self Sufficient Me. In this video, I just wanted to give you five tips on seed sowing
and seedling growing in trays or small pots or
punnets just like this. Let's get into it. (gentle music) One of the advantages I have living in a warm, subtropical climate, is that we can sew and
grow all year round, but not necessarily the same plants. You just can't grow
everything all the time. We have to pick the timing
and that's the first tip. Sow at the right time, because consistently right temperatures for that type of plant will usually help in triggering that seed to sprout and the plant to start growing. So if you sow the seeds too early, so if you're in a cold
climate and it's cold and you wanna get a head start
and you sow them outside, they're probably not gonna start because their clock isn't right. They might sit in the soil and
survive for a little while. But a lot of the time,
you will have failures because the seeds will either get damaged, get damp and rot, or they might get dug up
by rodents or other pests. And of course, if those seeds do germinate and come up at the wrong time of year, then those plants will
be off to a bad start and they'll get stressed out. And if they do grow and you get them through that stressed period where they really shouldn't
have started in the first place, they'll probably grow into
poor performing plants. They might not grow very good fruit. I might not grow very good leaves. They might not grow very big, or they might, because they
are off to a bad start, get targeted by pests and get
eaten alive by bugs and grubs. So you do wanna get the timing right. Now, how do you get the timing right? Well, I would suggest you do start if you're a beginner and you don't know your property
and your climate that well, and you're new to growing food crops. I recommend seed growing charts, get online or get a book
and find out for your area, when is the best time in
general to sow certain seeds. And then in the future, once you've been growing
for a few seasons, you'll start to understand and get to know your own microclimate, which might be slightly different. Or you might, with more experience, understand when you might be able to cheat and sow a little early, because you might have an early summer, or you might be able to get away with it under certain conditions,
or you might sow indoors and get your seedlings off to a good start and all those types of tricks. The other thing is not to do with timing, but I wanted to grip
it in at the same tip. And that is, when you're
sowing your seeds, don't sow them too deep. A good rule is to sprinkle
soil on top of those seeds about twice the seed size. Now for some seeds, you can
hardly see them, they're tiny. And if that's the case,
I would hardly bother sprinkling anything at all. But I do, I would say very light dusting of seed rising mix on top of them. And if it's say a pumpkin
seed or something quite large, well, then I might push them down or cover them over by about an inch or so, but in the main, I would
rather hardly cover them at all than cover them too deeply. And the reason for that is
when a seed is germinating in mature, it's dropped off
a plant or blown in the wind, it doesn't normally go somewhere and get buried by a heap of soil, that would just make
it dormant if anything. Usually what happens, even bigger seeds, they will rot, say a pumpkin or whatever or get eaten by a bird, get dropped out and deposited somewhere
on top of the ground. And they might likely get
covered in a bit of dust or sand or soil over a period of time, and then it'll come up. So it makes no sense
to burry them too deep. If you do that, they might
not germinate at all. Or if they germinate, that
seedling has to sprout and get through that soil or that medium to get to the top and out. Takes a fair bit of energy to do that. You don't want those
seedlings trying too hard and getting too stressed to survive. And speaking of medium, tip number two is use a good seed raising mix. Now you can make your
own, which I do often, sifted from our garden ingredients, like compost that I've made, but I still find the best way is just a buy a good seed rising mix because often, that takes
the guesswork out of it. It's sterile, so it
doesn't have any diseases that's in the soil that
might affect your seedlings. So for a beginner especially, I would say, buy a good quality seed raising mix because it's worth the money because then you're
gonna get better results. And you're not gonna waste valuable seed that you've purchased. And also, of course it saves
time and time is valuable. So you could put that time
into doing other things around the garden. Now, a good seed rising mix in my opinion is a mix that has a good
medium, it has a fine medium. It's not too chunky because
you don't want big pits of bark and sticks and that through it. That's going to make it
hard for the seedling to get through when it's germinating, and you don't want a seed rising mix that also dries out too fast. You want it to have some
water-holding capacity. So that's why those more
expensive seed rising mixes do have elements in them that hold water and then
allow for that water to be uptaken by the
seedlings as they're growing, rather than drawing out too quick and then stressing those seedlings out. The other thing is, it needs to have some nutrients in that mix. It can't be just completely
bland and no nutrients, because once that seed germinates, pretty soon after the
roots are placed down, that'll start searching for
nutrients within the soil. There's only so much nutrients
that's in the seed itself. That seedling uses for a
very short period of time, until it then needs to use elements from outside of that seed. And when I say water holding capacity, the last thing it should
have is the free draining. So it can't be too heavy, 'cause if it's too heavy
and holds too much water for too long, it can actually deoxygenate the soil or the medium. And it can drown the seedling. But I talk a little bit
more about that shortly. Tip number three is protect
the seeds and seedlings if necessary, from pests
and also the elements, heat and cold. Now here you can see, I've
just got them out in the open. They're elevated a bit, they're
on a bench, which does help. I know we have possums
around here and if these were on the ground, it'd be
much easier for the possums, rats or rodents to come
straight over and munch on them. But because they're elevated, better health, slightly, not a lot, but also because they're
out in the open and we have predators around here, for example, owls at night and hawks through the day, not a lot of rodents or
possums like to come out in the open and try their luck. So I can use that to my advantage, but it doesn't always
work that way for me. In my experience, I like to try this first because it's just easier for me. I don't have to go through
any extra Halabaloo. In the past, I have had small greenhouses. You can lock them away. You can put them in a greenhouse where they can't get accessed by animals, or you can put a cover
over the top of them. And each of these have
little mini covers like this, this lid here and this base, and you can put one of these
rows of punnets inside this and put the lid over the top. And then it turns into
a safe, mini hot house. So I have a backup plan if
I see them getting targeted. And that is another good point. Keep an eye out for your
seedlings getting targeted, come out every day and
check, look closely, make sure they're not getting nibbled off. Usually they're not
destroyed in one night. Usually there'll be some signs of a rodent or a possum or whatever
animal coming along, sussing it out, nibbling off a few leaves. You can get onto it before
the damage gets too bad. And before they destroy
all your seedlings. But in the meantime, I've
been pretty lucky here. So from now, I'm not
gonna do anything about it unless something changes. When it comes to the elements, you might find that there's
too much of a danger sowing outside, say in
a really cold climate, where there might be a risk, even though you're coming into
spring or you're in spring, there must be a risk of a late frost, and that could knock
all your seedlings off. You don't want that. That is why people do protect their crops with these mini greenhouses or a greenhouse or a
hot house or sow inside. When it comes to heat, well,
you can have I shade house and do the same thing and protect your seedlings from heat damage. If you're in a warm climate like us, we're coming into our winter, you still get some really hot days. So you might want to consider
a cover or some shade cloth, either your young seedlings which are susceptible to damage easily, 'cause they're quite tender. So if that's the case, consider protection through coverings of some sort. Tip number four is water regularly. And now that's a double edged sword because I don't want
to give the impression that you should keep these
things watered all the time. And at the same time,
I wanna sort of explain that you do need to keep them hydrated because seedlings can dry out really fast. There's not a lot of medium. And in warm weather, a bit of sun, they can quickly dry, out
stress and die in a day. And you don't want that to happen after you go through all that trouble of getting them to
germinate in the first place and growing quite well. At the same time, you can run
the risk of over-watering. And if you do that and keep
them too wet for too long, you can run risks of drowning them. They don't get enough
oxygen, the roots can rot. They can get certain
problems like diseases and fungal diseases dampen off, which is a fungal disease
that can cause the roots and the stems to rot and die. The best way I think I can explain it. What I usually do is I just look at how the plants are doing
and how moist the medium looks. In most weather, unless it's
drizzling or cold or rainy. If it's a normal sunny day, well then, I would give it one water every morning. I would say watering
in the morning is best. And that then gives
those plants a good drink and it withstands the heat and
the sun throughout the day. And then by the end of the day, you don't give it another water. It should be starting to dry out and it gets into the evening, the plants don't need as much water and they can then get
that oxygen they need, dry out a little bit, which is still good for the plant, rather than
sitting in water all night. And number five is
don't let your seedlings grow for too long. What I mean by that is
they're only small trays and pundits and small pots where you sow your seedlings in. Generally, that means that
there's only a certain amount of nutrients. Often you're sewing more
than one or two seedlings in a small punnet, and
if you're doing that, there's a lot of competition for nutrients and those nutrients in these small areas of medium get taken up quickly. And then the plants start to suffer because they're effectively
starving of nutrients. They might be getting enough water, but they're certainly getting root bound and they're competing and
they're running out of nutrients, even if they're the only
plant in that one small area. So if they've reached
an appropriate height, which is usually around
three to six inches high, stop planting them out. If it's not appropriate
to plant them out yet, because maybe it's still
too cold out in the garden or you haven't got the garden
beds ready or whatever, I would advise that you pick them out and put them into a new
medium, a new fresh medium that's appropriate for growing plants in, that has fresh nutrients
and their own space. The good thing about sailings
is they're very forgiving for picking them out and
putting them into a new spot and they'll grow quite well. The older they get, the harder
it is for you to be able to transplant them. So I recommend transplanting them out when they're quite young, or if you see that
there's a lot in one area, pick them out early while they're small and spread them out into other containers. That way, they're not competing as much, or if you don't need that many plants, don't feel bad about
murdering several of them and just pulling them out
and leaving one per punnet, so that one can grow on and get strong and get to a nice height
for you to plant out. Tomatoes are like that. I would always recommend
sowing more than one seed per small punnet area. That way, you've got more
chance of at least one of them coming up, but then if
say three or two come up and you only need one
because tomato plants, as you know, can get quite large. Well then, just take them out. Just remove a couple of them, discard them and let the one grow on. That way, you can then transplant that one with a nice root ball, when it's ready to be transplanted out, rather than trying to
separate two or three smaller plants or seedlings
to be planted out. And they get then more stressed. But the bottom line is, you
don't want to let them grow on and on and on in these one small pots, because there's only so
much they can grow onto until they start getting stressed. And then, once they're stressed and leggy and starting to effectively go downhill and you stop trying to plant them out into the garden at that state, you're not gonna have as much success. They will recover a lot of
the time to some extent, but they won't grow on
as vigorous as you want. And that's what you do
want, good, healthy plants that grow from the seedling stage, right through to adult. And full-size, looking
healthy and producing the best product possible for you to eat. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, make sure you give it a big, growing thumbs up, share the video round because that helps my channel heaps and subscribe to the channel
if you haven't already. Thanks for watching, bye for now.
