(cheery music) (door squeaking) - I'm in my greenhouse at
Homeacres, 23rd of February, So just the beginning of
the sowing season for us. This is a zone eight climate, officially. Southwest UK, tempered by the ocean. So for example, today,
the temperature outside is 10 to 12 centigrade,
low 50s Fahrenheit. Bit milder than usual, actually, but whatever the weather pretty
much, at this time of year, I'm starting to propagate under cover, where you've got protection from the wind. It's pretty windy today, so
it's a lot nicer in here. The temperature in here
actually at the moment, is, wow, is over 20 centigrade,
around 70 Fahrenheit. That's the power of the sun already at this time of year warming a structure. This greenhouse is 12 feet wide, about three and a half meters, and 25 feet long, about eight meters. And it's mostly full of salad that we're picking for selling, in fact. I'm just using this end for propagation for over 1/4 acre, maybe
1,200 square meters of garden, very intensively cropped. And propagation, when
you get it buzzing along, going nicely, it's such a key to unlocking
potential of a garden. And today I can show you one or two things that are not swimming
along quite as nicely as I would've liked, but just
to give you some pointers on the ways to succeed
the most with propagation, and one thing is getting a good compost for sowing and raising your plants into. The second is making sure that
compost has enough drainage or general quality about it
and ways you can alter that. The third one is what kind of container or receptacle your compost
is actually gonna be in for raising your plants. And the fourth one today is about warmth. And especially this time of
year, February, late winter, getting enough warmth to
get your seedlings underway. So compost quality. This is a very interesting
little trial here, which didn't turn out how I expected. Trials are really good to
do where you compare growth. So in this case in two
different composts there. This is not a scientific trial. I wouldn't ever claim that,
but it's enough difference to illustrate some points very clearly. For example, we have here, this is a commercial potting compost. The one I use the most, and which I often recommend, it's called Moorland Gold. It's made on kind of recycled peat from a reservoir that they sieve out, and then also some green waste compost, and they add nutrients. It's organic certified, it's, you know, no synthetic chemicals. So you can see, nice result there. There's lettuce, chervil, coriander, which were sown last September, planted in there as little
transplants in October and comparison box, this is
my homemade compost (laughs) which I had higher hopes of than that. It's okay. The nutrient status is okay. I mean, if you look at the chervil, they're quite similar size. And the lettuce, not bad, but actually a little bit of
quality loss on the lettuce and rotting of the edge of the leaf. And look at the coriander, or lack of coriander in this tray. And I think this is almost
certainly from lack of drainage, and these trays, if
you look at the bottom, it's a little bit of
newspaper, which is fine, and it's clearly working for that one, but for a very dense
compost, like my homemade, probably could have done with
mixing a bit of something to lighten it up a bit. We'll come to that in a minute. Just mention this one, too. The contrast there between
the bought compost, Moorland Gold, with rocket and mustards, and the homemade. But actually, you can see the rocket, if anything, the salad rocket
is slightly larger maybe, and healthier, but I've lost
three of the mustard plants. And again, I'm pretty sure
that's lack of drainage. So it shows you can have
really good nutrient status, but all of these qualities
need to be present in order for things to work. And I can just put the
other side of the coin here, which is, this I did not expect at all, but these are some peas I sowed just two weeks ago, barely two weeks ago actually, 10 days. Peas for shoots. And I was gonna fill the whole pot, the whole of this tray. It's just a reused, upcycled
mushroom tray from a shop, which, again, lined
with a bit of newspaper. A bit of a difference here, isn't it? That's the homemade compost, different batch of compost
but still homemade, which I sieved, so to get
the biggest lumps out. There's still lots of
bits that you can see. And I think it's the bits
that are really helping, because they help water to
drain through more easily. Look at this, this is the
Moorland Gold compost, of this year's batch. And this is one big issue
with buying compost. It might have the same name
on the label on the bag, but the quality varies pretty much every year. And I sent a photo of this
to the company actually, and they've acknowledged this. Something not quite right there. And I think they're altering
their mix a little bit. But it just shows, I'm kinda disappointed to have to say this 'cause I've recommended
this one to a lot of people. It's quite expensive, and I've been hearing from one or two that they'd been having problems, and do let the company know. That's the first step. And how it goes from there, I don't know, 'cause it's not really in my hands, but that's lack of
drainage, for me anyway. You're surmising a lot of the time. What's going on here? You have to work it out. I'm giving you pointers, and I can give you a clue now about how this can be put right. So this compost I've been talking about looks like that. And we noticed when
filling the trays that, wow, there's a lot of
really fine powder here. And then I noticed when
watering the filled trays that the water was not
sinking in, soaking in as readily as normally it does. It was sitting on top
before it's slowly draining. That, for me, is a sign that
there's too much fine material. It's just a question of texture
we're talking about here. Because of that, when
I sowed these lettuce, I mixed in 50% vermiculite,
which is a natural product. Well, it's the expanded rock, basically. Heated rock to make it soft and fluffy and light and no nutrients
but water can drain around. It holds a bit of water. More than anything, it
keeps air in the mix. So these lettuce were
sown just a week ago. And these are for pricking
out, in case you're wondering. There could be a thousand
lettuce in there. You know, this is a market garden here. So that's a way to start a
lot of seeds in a small space. They won't be in here, well, they're gonna be pricked
out tomorrow, actually. Those without the
vermiculite, I'm pretty sure that all of those
lettuce would have rotted because this tray does not
have huge amount of drainage. And this is what I'm talking
about, the vermiculite. It's very, very light. There's almost no weight in that at all. You can buy it as gardeners' vermiculite or perlite, it's very equivalent. They're quite expensive, though. If you go to a builder's merchants, you might well find it cheaper because that's actually where I got it. Builders use this for insulation. And as far as I'm aware, it's
completely the same product. Anyway, I've been using it. It's absolutely fine. So that's a thought as to how you can improve
the drainage of the compost. And I'll just show you this
one, too, as a corollary, which is, I didn't mean to do this, but this is some lettuce we
sowed last October as a sample. I was just checking the
variety names, actually, on some home-saved lettuce seed and I've been harvesting these lettuces. I mean, this is how we
harvest the lettuce. We take off the outer leaf like that. That's the Moorland Gold
compost with 50% vermiculite, no feed given at any point, which shows what a good nutrient
status this compost has. I'm never calling that into question. It's just getting all these
different factors right. And the next one is what
kind of container you use, whether it's something like
this, or perhaps a module tray. So here are a couple of different trays. You can sow seeds in either of these, depends which one, what
size of seed, be good. What I wanna show you here is that difference in drainage
possibility at the bottom. This is called a seed tray, and this is called a module tray. Module means kind of cell compartment. And there are many different models of both seed tray and module tray. The thing about the seed tray is that it looks like there's
a lot of holes there, but what I find with them is that water does not
drain out so readily. And I think it might be
that the size of those holes means that water makes a
kind of capillary seal. You know, water is a amazing product, and the capillary structure around a droplet of water
can actually hold it in place and stop it draining away. I think that might be
happening with these, and it would make a
fascinating project, actually, to drill these holes a bit bigger. I think that really would improve how the seedlings would grow in there, because, look at the size of those holes, and often when I'm showing these to people who are not familiar with them, they'll say, well, doesn't all the compost drain out the bottom? Looks like it's not
gonna hold it in there, but it never does. Absolutely not. With a module tray there,
the bigger the hole it has in the bottom, the better. Look at these broad beans, for example. So they were sown 10 days ago. The reason, we didn't normally, I don't normally sow
broad beans in February, 'cause I've done it in November. We've had a big loss this year on over-wintered broad beans outside. The weather has not been brilliant. My timings were not spot on. You know, I do make mistakes (laughs). And anyway, we're doing this catch up. It means we won't get such an early crop, but the broad beans in here, they're not quite as perky as I'd like. Oh, look at that amazing taproot. It's often said that you
need to sow broad beans in a very deep container
because of their long tap root. But actually I find that, this one, these transplant fine
from trays this deep. So (laughs) save you a
bit of money on compost. You don't need to have these fancy ones filled with loads of
compost because the tap root just sort of goes round and round a bit, waiting for its moment. And then you pop it in the ground and it carries on growing, and they transplant fine from that. So these will go in the ground
in about 10 days probably. But you can see how, they're growing okay. I think one or two stuttering there, and that might be to do with this compost. This is the same Moorland
Gold rather dense compost. But I have not watered these trays since they were sown 10 days ago. So that is another factor,
actually, in plant raising. I've not watered these lettuce since they were sown
just under a week ago. When I'm sowing, when I
fill trays with compost, get it fully moist at that point, and that way you're covered then. Overwatering can cause quite a few of the problems we've seen already, even if your compost is really good. So when plants are this kind of size, they do not need a lot of water. You might even see the compost
on top looking a bit dry. That is okay. You just don't want it fully
saturated all the time. This to me feels quite heavy. So I'm happy, I'm not gonna water that maybe for a couple of days, it depends if the sun comes out much. We've not had a lot of
sun here, I must say that. We're not a sunny climate. So that influences things as well. You've got to be kind of alert to weather, which leads on to the next point, which is warmth. Seeds need warmth to germinate. The amount of warmth they
need is actually higher than the amount of warmth that the seedlings need to grow on. So that means you pile on the warmth after you sow your seeds. And it actually works really well, too. I bring them in the house, and it's not that my house is
always warmer than in here, but it is at nighttime, and a cold night will really
slow down germination, even if you have a lovely hot day. So it's very effective to
start your seed trays (laughs). If you can find a corner,
they don't need lights. You haven't got to clutter
up your windowsills with germinating seeds. You can just pop them in
a corner or a cupboard, just anywhere with nice rolling warmth until you see that first
little shimmer of light. That's when, of green, sorry. And that's when they need
light with which to grow. So that's why a structure like this. Obviously, most of you
won't have that, I know, but anywhere with as
much light as possible. In the UK climate, we've got, you know, ambient temperature is not too low. So a greenhouse can be
good, or polytunnel, but it will be even better if you can provide some extra warmth. And if you've got electric
power to a greenhouse, you can buy really good
heat mats, for example, and they're not expensive, not expensive to run,
put them on a thermostat, or in my case, this is off grid. I've made a hotbed. We did this actually
just under a week ago. And already the temperature is reading, this on the probe is 65 centigrade, that's 140 Fahrenheit,
or something like that. And this is fresh horse manure. For some reason, horse gets a
lot hotter than other animals, horse manure, with
straw, really necessary. We pack it in, we dance on it. We water it just to make
sure it's all fully moist. You also then got some gases
coming off, actually ammonia. So I'm fully ventilating in here. This is not a space heater. It doesn't actually make a huge difference to the heat of the greenhouse 'cause glass, the warmth just drifts out. But these trays catch the warmth as it's rising out of the hot bed. And so they're all pleasantly
warm underneath the probe I've got just under the pallet here, which is on top of the bed
is reading 37 centigrade. That's 98 Fahrenheit. So decent level of warmth. That's not dangerous warmth or anything. It's just really good, actually. It means that if I lift out one of these, it's feeling, actually, feeling
quite warm, but not hot. And I just know from experience
that this works basically, this level of warmth. And then we've got nice trays
here with good drainage. And that's very interesting, too, because look at these peas. These are the same sowing of pea as the ones that failed in that box. And that must be because of this drainage. So these are the module trays that I've been working on to get produced, and they've got nice
big holes at the bottom. In fact, I had a real struggle with the company who made them, say, you know, yeah, you've
gotta make that hole bigger. They were reticent at first. But I think, without that, you'd be having problems
with, for example, these peas. I know this compost is too wet. It's got a bit of mold and mildew there. That's not good. That's Moorland Gold, naughty. They're working on it. But it doesn't stop plants growing. If you see that, if you
see mold on your compost, it just means something in the
compost is going a bit moldy. Don't over-water,
linking back to that one. None of this, since it
was sown, have I watered. So no water given to these. They're fully watered at sowing time. And then the issue of light is revealed by something like this tray of radish. So you can see they've got quite drawn up. They were germinated, I had them five days in the conservatory, probably one day too long. So by day four, they
were starting to appear. I had fairly good germination here again. That's what they might've
looked at on day four. And then if you leave
them in a lack of light, or relative lack of light, like that room, a window, there's a
light only on one side, and that will draw the stems
up and you get long thin stems. And it's not ideal. You can't do that for
very long with seedlings. If that's happening to you, you've gotta work out
a way of getting them either outside in full light,
or get some grow lights, which are very pretty by the way (laughs). But these tall seedlings, we can rectify that to some
extent by putting them in deep. So all of that would be compost around the stem when I plant them. These trays are very
efficient in terms of, this is multi-sowing where average, say average four radish per cell. There's 60 cells in a tray. So that's over 200
radish in that one tray, probably more than most of us could eat in a couple of weeks in the spring. So that gives you an idea
of how many seedlings you can raise in quite a small area. And I cover all that sort of thing in my latest online course, 3A, it's all about growing
different vegetables. And one part of that is
how you get them going. Each one is slightly different. These are all cold hardy vegetables. So none of this is desperately
needing warmth to grow. It's just getting it going at this stage. And I have not, for example,
sown my tomatoes yet. I sow them mid-March. That always seems a bit of a landmark. A lot of people reference their sowings by when do you sow your tomatoes? And for me, it's mid-March I found over the years works really well. It gives them plenty of time. They're quite fast once they get going. Yeah, I hope you've enjoyed
this little look at propagation, and if you haven't done it before, have a go, try a few seeds. Maybe not on this scale (laughs). See what you can do. (cheery music)
