BuildASoil Seed Starting #1

all right welcome to I build a so a blog post on seed starting I've got some seeds that were germinated on January 1st at my house I oftentimes just grab a shot glass or this is a little espresso cup fill it with some water and I throw my seeds in there to pre-soak them and so I want to talk about all things related to germinating your cannabis seeds really any garden seeds this is mainly for annual flowering vegetables some of the other seeds were will have some different information but the size of the seed the sowing depth all that stuff for anything similar will work great I'm gonna focus on cannabis seeds as a lot of times people spend a lot of money on these and so I've got four seeds in here I'm actually going to show in the next video I'm gonna have somebody record me following these instructions that I'm going to go over and I'm gonna plant them and I'm actually gonna use these cups because that's often times what a grower at home will do that's what I've done most of the time show you how to cut those and make those right now and then we're gonna do a separate video on planting so if you're looking to learn everything about planting seeds this will be the short video for you to watch ok these are sunshine daydream from Bodhi seeds so thanks for that now some of the notes that I have here as far as stuff that I just wanted to cover in this video and not forget that's why I'm doing this video we're gonna make the other one where I'm actually physically doing the stuff but for now let me go over some of my notes so seeds very important that you get good genetics I'll tell you story the first time that I bought seeds was from overseas on an online seed bank I only ordered one pack plus the freebie that came and I germinated all of them the same way and I killed them all and I went through a lot of money and it took weeks again to get the next batch of seeds and so all of my plans were delayed and it was incredibly frustrating and so I'm helping to hope I'm helping I'm hoping to help you avoid that situation so if you follow some of these basic ideas you don't have to do it exactly how I do it but some of the parameters about the environment the moisture level and some of the general ideas that we have will probably help you right now so let me just jump straight into that okay cups here is the dome some people don't use a dome some people just like to use just the cup and that's all and I'll go over the ideas a little bit later let me just go over the tools that I'm going to use and then I'll go over some of the controversy of you know why or why not you might use some of these so this is a standard trade though inside here is a standard kind of flap insert and make a number of different sizes oftentimes when I'm doing a whole bunch of seeds I'll use these because they're the right height all the way across it's a pretty good size of soil I'd say there's like a half cup of soil in there and that'll allow you enough time to keep things moist and enough size to transplant ideally I really like these maybe it's just because that's what I used in the beginning but the shape is nice and easy to transplant into like 1 gallons or 2 gallons for your next potting and they're easy to label and they're just easy to work with and they're just a little taller so whatever you can use anything you want for the cup my main thing there is I just don't like the smaller cells because I don't want the soil to dry out when I'm when I'm busy and I want to have just enough of a battery there where I don't have to transplant right away I have enough soil to make sure the plants are healthy you get a couple sets of leaves before I transplant them so that's the idea here now it's Colorado where I live it's dry and so these domes really help I really do not like heating mats I'll go into all of that stuff here soon as far as making the cups it's pretty simple I use a standard you know Solo Cup I think is what these are just a party cup from the grocery store you can get different colors to color coordinate what I typically do is I take the cup like this I take my scissors and I actually go at an angle along the bottom let's see if I can get that there and so there's the angle I put a slice in it kind of grabs and you can see there's just a small hole on the side I found that that works really well I used to try and jab a hole and then there'd be soil compacted in there and if I am in a hurry or maybe do two of these if I'm being more careful I might go around and actually put like four cuts so that it's even all the way around and then when I bought them water it actually can hit sometimes when I'm doing seeds I like to water in the tray and when I put the water in here and this is inside I like it's be able to soak up some water and I'll talk about bottom versus top water but you can see I've made my cup I put four holes into it and so now you can see through it when I put my medium in it's not really going to fall out but the roots can grow through there and drink up water and that's ideal because sometimes I forget to cut these holes because I'm busy and it'll get waterlogged in here it's harder to guess exactly how much to water and you risk root rot and you risk killing your seedlings and it can happen fairly quickly if it turns anaerobic in there so that's just an idea the next thing that I do I'll go ahead and label this one right now since I've already made it and I'll probably do another cup in the next video just in case somebody doesn't want to watch it both so I'm gonna label this one sunshine daydream couple different things to keep in mind here when I'm labeling these I usually label one fully written out sunshine daydream and then on the rest if I'm doing a lot of them I'll just write SD and then depending on if I'm doing multiple sets of seeds I'll actually write the date of germination so I'm not you know confused and so these were actually put in to soak on the first normally on the second after twelve to twenty-four hours I would put them in their soil because these were pretty thick seeds and because I know there's some flexibility there I waited almost 48 hours it's now the third and I'm gonna go ahead and put these in soil so it's actually been about 48 hours and so you can put the date on here I'll put one three and then the other thing that you can start to do is number them right now it's not really important right now I usually number them once I sex them but because we're gonna be documenting the differences in growth between them and looking for ideal characteristics a lot of people like to make notes and it's helpful to make like a number so this would be sunshine daydream number one I'm only doing four seeds the reason is I'm pretty sure I'm going to get two to four females out of those four seeds all of them if I were to show you in here have already shown tap roots I wish I could show you in there I just don't think I'm gonna be able tip it down let's see there what and so those four have tap roots it's really hard to tell I always leave that there so I don't end up the camera and I'll show that better in the next video but these four seeds will be enough for me to get at least a female that's all I'm looking for because I'm doing this here in a retail store if I was at home I pop the whole pack or maybe at least half that pack and then that number is going to be determined on your on your space and how much time you have sometimes if I'm a lot of hunting only pop a few if they look work if they look like they are worth it then I'll buy several packs and I'll look through that to find a keeper all right so we went over the making of the cups and labeling ideas for that just making sure that you either put the date or the name you can also abbreviate I like to leave one of them fully written out in case I forget my abbreviation it happens when you've got a lot of genetics alright ideas on the moisture and the order of operations so I want to cover a few things people will a lot of times just jump in pack their soil in here throw a seed in and in the water and that will cause a situation where the soil really moves around the seed ends up moving and then you're the guy that a few days later is wondering why those couple of seeds didn't germinate and you're digging in the soil and you're possibly gonna hinder the seat when you're doing that and so it's better if you can be very confident that that seat is exactly where you put it so if you don't see any germination you don't feel like you have to go digging because you remember that one got spun around maybe it's buried too deep maybe I need to save that seed and so avoid that thought by doing it right up front so I've got some 3.0 soil right here that's most likely what we're gonna use here at germinate these in just cuz I wanna show people that you can use a pretty nutrient-rich soil to germinate your seeds in and so I'm opening a bag right now that's beautiful mycelium growing in there okay so I'm I'm gonna go ahead and put some in it's gonna cause a mess around my best but I don't really care and so as you pour the soil in you'll notice that the moisture isn't perfect and then as you pack it you're gonna want to add more moisture the challenge is is if you wait to do that like I mentioned your seeds going to move around so you can either just water a little now put some more soil you can stack all these cups up and put them in a row and then use your tape and sprayer or a wand or just water slowly and make sure they're all water you can water a little bit from the top and then bottom water in your tray wait until all the water is absorbed take all the cups out dump your tray out dry and clean it you should have about the ideal moisture in there now so there's a few ways to do that ideally though what I want you to do is maybe for this first time take all the soil put it in a container like a five-gallon bucket or a Rubbermaid tub and I want you to slowly moisten that a little less than you think can come back maybe 15 20 minutes later at that point I want you to pick up the soil and squeeze it and when you first get the soil out of the bag most likely you're gonna need about ten percent water so maybe err on the side of caution that means if you've got seven and a half gallons in a one cubic foot bag and you're dumping all of that in a tub you want about three quarters of a gallon of water on there come back and check it later we're gonna do is put your hand in and you want to be able to squeeze the soil and barely see some moisture beating up on here feeling like it just about to start to drip down your hand but if you squeeze and it drips too much you want to add some more soil because you overdone you've overdone it and if you've overdone it and you have no soil you're gonna have to let this sit and kind of dry out so I prefer prefer to see you maybe dump half of what you're gonna use add the moisture or make sure you have some backup err on the side of caution get it to it's about the right moisture you can always water in a little bit in a cup okay but that will kind of teach you where that moisture needs to be after that you're gonna feel the way to the cup you're gonna have a pretty good idea once you've done this exactly where that moisture needs to be also we've cut some pretty decent sized holes in here and this soil drains pretty well the 3.0 has these large grow stone that help keep that oxygen in there even if you overwater it so it's a little more forgiving and if you're using like a seed starting soil that has a lot of aeration they're fairly forgiving too and you can kind of err on the side of caution but with a living soil with recycled soil one of the things you can do is get a little money and it's just kind of a it's gonna cause stagnated growth and so with seeds and support and kind of hit the nail on the head and that's why I wanted you to really focus on getting that moisture right with the squeeze test making sure that it's not over water or under water and it's really not rocket science but I've talked to enough people to realize until you get a baseline for what that it's very confusing and like I said I killed my first set of seeds and I was really sad about that I was using rock wool I got way too wet way too hot close to the light all the things wrong because I was trying to really baby him so we've got that we put all the soil in we made me scooped it from her bin where the moisture was perfect and we packed it in there okay at that point I'm gonna tamp it down with my hand with like my knuckles or with my fingers and make sure it's pressed flat not as far as I can but maybe like if you like espresso 15 pounds of force just nothing too strong I'll put my hand in Tampa and that will make sure that when I do go to water later it's not gonna just spin around it's gonna be fairly packed down in the video I'll show you the exact details but I normally leave a little bit of room in this cup in here so that I can come back I put a finger hole in every single cup that I'm working with once the moisture is perfect and then I'll go drop one seed in each finger hole and then I'll just go around each finger hole and I'll pull the soil and over it it'll pack it down in Tampa so now it's all even and then after that I'll come through with a sprayer spray bottle my champion sprayer and I'll just put a light mist and very softly right over the top of each Cup at that point I've built a system that has the soil that has packed in here nice so it's not gonna flow and I know that I've got it not over watered or over or under water and I've missed at the top and I've already pre soaked the seat and I'll talk about the differences whether you soaked or not but if you pre soaked you have a little more forgiving forgiveness here if you haven't pre soaked and anything dries out you're gonna kind of slow down and maybe even kill your seeds where once they're pre-soak they're pretty much gonna germinate and it's just a matter of how hard they have to work to tap into their first moisture and so anyways if you've got a dome that's gonna help with that like I said I'm in Colorado so I use this dome to help make sure that the relative humidity being dry doesn't dry out my soil and kill my seed so that's the idea like I said I'll go over the next video the exact steps for that with the moisture to show you what I mean all right the humidity dome I went over that some people don't use them in fact if I've got a lot of seeds I'll just put the trays on the floor in the grow tent and I make sure the grow tent environment is good the idea with seedlings is that you want relative you've been be fairly high that way they don't have to work very hard and that way the soil doesn't dry out once they all germinate you want to cut back backs they're more in a realistic relative humidity and they start to actually grow transpire move water and nutrients from the soil up and if the humidity is too high they may just K stay kind of stagnant and so I only use the dome to make sure that until I see them all break the soil surface I like to keep the dome pretty much closed or maybe just with a little bit of airflow in here that way the relative humidity is very high and I'm sure to make sure that there's no drying out of the soil once they've germinated I typically crack it and open it with seeds you can basically just take it off and you're good to go with clones you got to do a little better transition so there's the information on the dome whether to use one or not is up to you I'm dry here it makes a lot more sense for me to water in the morning make sure I've missed it the tops of my seed link and then put the dome on so I'm sure it's not gonna dry out for my grow life okay lighting I like to use the ceramic metal halide the endo Max 150 watt endo max is a really good replacement for a t5 the bulbs last a long time the lamp and you can it's got a really good spectrum and you can actually put a pretty decent distance away and have a pretty good spread but in any case this isn't really a lighting and talk so I'll just mainly focus on the fact that if you are using a high pressure light you don't want to have it too close where the heat causes the soil to get too warm and maybe move that moisture around so consider that if you've got a really powerful light maybe move it off until you see germination and they're ready for it okay heating mat I think there are no no I don't like heating mats at all I think a dome and a heating a heating mat is a recipe for damping off and I prefer to see you just avoid the the heating mat or maybe only use it if you're cloning and you're in a slightly colder environment otherwise things to be aware of if you're in a colder room you have to use the heating mat maybe fully vent your dome because the little bit of heat and Moisture is gonna cause a lot of condensation okay just be aware of that come over your dome everyday make sure you avoid any damming off and get to the point where hopefully you just remove that dome as soon as possible that's if you have to use the heating mantle okay next thing is to talk about relative humidity in tips like I said high relative humidity dome will keep it close to 100 tents I'd like to be in a 75 range you know just normal temperatures anytime you get extra warm you're looking at damping off extra cold it's gonna not be right the see looking from for warmth to signify that springtime that there's a reason to germinate and so just make sure that you've got a dialed in grow area within normal room temperatures and you'll be fine a note here for old seeds so if you've got really really old seeds they may be something super special or maybe they're not they're just old seeds you have laying around a couple different a can do if you've got a lot of them you can just try and germinate them doing normal methods and if it doesn't work then you know for sure you've got to try some of these methods using aloe vera powder which we carry or your homegrown aloe vera has a lot of specialty properties that will help these seeds germinate folic acid is another one we carry a product by cows bio egg that's not right here but that fulvic acid really helps it really helps so check that out especially the older seeds you can do a lot of research on just that subject and then gibberellic acid it's not something that I use but I've heard it used a lot for people that are trying to pop old seeds and that's one of those things that people had really good success with so if it's important to you fulvic acid gibberellic acid might be super important to preserve those genetics otherwise if they're just a little bit old few years old just using some hallow and fulvic will be more than enough and if they're only you know a year too old or they're just normal seeds nothing you know really really ancient or they've been stored properly you're not worried about germination rates just water will be more than enough that being said a lot of people like to use the route wise microbes the second they have a tap which as soon as you put the seed in and it's going to get a tap root out so a lot of people like to inoculate with the micro complete and the enzymes right away here this evening process because the system is designed to be used from route emergence all the way until harvest and the sooner we know that the sooner you can get but the biology and contact with the seed the faster it's going to develop that relationship and we're gonna have a little bit better success so that's something to keep in mind besides that those are the additives that's how to soak old seeds here's some other considerations if you've got large seeds seeds that you know were produced outdoors and they've got a really thick shell to them soaking seeds is probably gonna be imperative if you've got some brand new seeds seeds that you made yourself you know we're very healthy or maybe their indoor seeds they usually don't have as thick of a hole to them you may not have to pre-soak your seeds but here's my thought with vegetable seeds I'll just go through and I'll put a whole bunch of seeds maybe two per container and just make sure that I get even germination with cannabis seeds it's either they're rare they're more expensive or you don't want to waste them and I feel like when I soak it for 24 hours before maybe 12 to 24 hours you can go up to 2 or 3 days I just think it's not recommended some people think that it might need 2 more males I don't think that that's what happens but there is some correlative evidence that stressing them might lead to more males so 24 hours maximum soak time 48 hours if you really have to push it ok that's what I did this time and these tapped roots just after 24 hours all four of them and so at that point I'm ready to put them in now if if they are seeds that are outdoor like I said with a thick shell they might actually take a couple days to even tap through you don't have to see the tap to plant it as long as it's been soaked 24 hours they have absorbed moisture you can put it in the other thing I'll do is when I take the foil off of here which is what I do on my cup the seeds are usually floating or at least a couple are and I'll tap the surface tension of the water on the seed and if that's he sinks immediately then I know it's fully absorbed it's ready to go and I'll go ahead and germinate those seeds so that's something to consider between old and new seeds also the other reason I do it is that you know I'm busy and so if I don't mist the top of the soil if the soil moisture is not perfect and I have not pre soaked the seeds there's a small chance I could get it to dry out and to avoid that I prefer to soak the seeds the other thing is there's some constituents on a seed coating that actually prevent them from germinating until enough moisture has has been absorbed the reason why is Nature doesn't want to accidentally germinate seeds when there's just a gentle misting of rain and not enough to actually sustain life and so normally when you're sprouting seeds for like sprouted CT or for sprouts for your sandwiches at home you usually have to go through a rinse period off the seeds before you actually finish the sprouting and it's the same thing for here the seeds soak takes care of that you take them out of the water put them in new soil and I think a bypass is a lot of the limiting factors a lot of the little issues that new growers have when they're putting seeds directly into their their medium without pre-soaking now I used to try and pinch the water and all sorts of stuff by a bottled water lately I live in Colorado our water is great I use tap water I have absolutely no problems and that's what I do so tap water is more than fine the chlorine should not be an issue at all okay so next soaker no so we talked about that okay so soilless or a complete soil like a living organic soil we're going to germinate right into our 3.0 a living soil and some people actually think that they they have to use like a soilless or a seedling soil what I like to do is get them off in a full nutrition right away so that when I transplant them they're ready to go some people like to start them off where they have like really no nutrients they really baby them and they really want them to be very porous so they don't overwater on accident and all that's great but I don't think any of us necessary I like to just use standard soil recycled soil whatever it is put it in the cup put my seed in and I usually have really really good results the only caveat to be is if you've got a soil that's just full of nutrients and you know a tons of nitrogen it might be advantageous to cut it with a little bit of aeration or peat or something to try to mellow it out a little bit another way to go would be just to run some extra water through it to kind of flush it out if you're using like a saltier compost something that you know has some challenges you might want to use a specialty mix but if you're using our soil all of our recipes work great for sprouting seeds Oh correct last thing you know we'll talk about male and female ratios whether or not stress is going to cause more males or more females the heat the lights soaking them not soaking them what I've noticed through thousands of seeds being popped is that just caring for them treating them with respect giving them a good environment I get really good balance of males and females more females than males on average and I think that a lot of people that I talk to that care about living soil they end up kind of blessing their seed somehow whether they say say something to them or just kind of put them in their hands and give them some love before they go plant them I've talked to a lot of growers and it seems like when they have a pack they're excited about they just talk to them they get excited about it before they plant into their soil and I don't have any scientific scientific evidence that says that you know that's something you have to do but something about the better growers I've noticed these similarities between them and they really have a passion and they communicate that to their garden so that might be the last step is just to bless them whatever that means to you before you plant these seeds okay and then to reiterate everything we talked about and just really sum it up make sure that whatever your container you have a good soil good seeds good environment from there you pack and tamp the soil so that you don't have a lot of flow and you make sure that you precondition for moisture so that you barely have to mist the top once you put your seed and you don't have to actually water the full volume of soil that way you're sure not to disturb the seed so the seed the soil everything's in you kind of cover the seed up just a little bit I only want to baby that much a quarter inch of soil over the top if you start to go a half inch or an inch deep it's too much work for the seed to do be aware of that and then the idea with the dome is to keep the relative humidity high until we see germination and then I remove the dome since I'm not going to use the insert I'm actually going to take this insert out and I'm just going to use the tray and I'm gonna line all four of my cups right in the center and put my dome on I'm gonna do that next video so I can show you anything we may have missed here but I think that's gonna cover a lot of the questions that newer growers ask me when it comes to sprouting seeds and some of the build the soil methods so I hope that helps and I guess I'll see you on the other side

Channel: BuildASoil

Views: 21,135

Rating: 4.9401197 out of 5

Keywords: Seeds, BuildASoil, Cannabis, Seed Starting

Id: drz5NcMQO68

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2018