How I Grow HUNDREDS of Pounds of Vegetables for Less Than $40

there was ever a year to start a garden this is it my friends [Music] but if you're planning to head to the garden store and fill your car up with seedlings stop because what i'm going to show you in today's video is going to save you a whole lot of cash and give you much better vegetables than [Music] yet it's the depths of winter here in wyoming and my garden is very brown and very much dead but even though i won't start my own seedlings until march there's still plenty of planning and dreaming to do [Music] this time of year it's always so hard for me to believe if the garden's ever going to look good again but it always comes back [Music] when i first started gardening i was so intimidated by the idea of starting seeds i just didn't do it for many years you know there's that whole question of which seeds are best started indoors and then you have to figure out when to start them like you can't be too early you can't be too late and then you have to figure out the light situation which can be super confusing at first glance so i just avoided it for years until i realized how much money i was spending at the garden store unnecessarily so in today's video i'm going to show you exactly how i created a seed starting setup that is not expensive it's not complicated and it has literally saved me thousands of dollars over the course of my gardening career i first just want to shed a little light on why we would want to start seeds in the first place there are definitely seeds that i always plant direct in my garden but there are other varieties of vegetables that just take a lot longer to reach maturity things like tomatoes or peppers or broccoli and if i were to just stick those seeds right in the ground at the end of may there is no way they would be ready to harvest by the time our first snow flies i can either not grow those vegetables at all or i can let them get started ahead of time in the house while the snow is still on the ground and it's freezing out here kind of like it is today and then i'll move them out here once they have a nice start dad is strategizing how to take out the drone [Music] dad it's still too early for me to start my seeds but i do need a way to replace the seedlings that i killed in that mud room window so today i'm going to plant a few herb seeds just to get my fingers in the dirt and see some green so not all seeds need to be started indoors or started ahead of time in fact there are varieties that actually don't do well to be transplanted you just have to look at the back of the seed packet most seed packets will list instructions right on the back so for example this is some cabbage seeds and it says start the seeds for transplants four to six weeks prior to the transplanting date pretty easy tomatoes it's usually eight weeks or so peppers are eight to ten weeks hey guys i just had to pop in and give a little sidebar here after i recorded the bulk of this video i became aware that seeds are selling out way more quickly than i thought they would this year it's kind of crazy so if you have not ordered your seeds yet i would recommend doing that asap and one of my very very favorite seed companies in the whole entire world is true leaf market i got to work with them a bunch last year they're just a really cool small business excellent seeds fantastic quality fast shipping all the heirloom non-gmo varieties you could ever dream of and i just so happened to get a coupon code for you guys and i'll leave that down in the show notes so the containers you use for your seeds are pretty flexible you could really just use any sort of container you have around things you want to reuse or recycle for years i would use paper pots that i made myself and stick them in foil lasagna trays a number of years ago i invested in these nursery trays they are plastic and plastic isn't my favorite but i've reused these for years so it's not like they're going in the dumpster every year and then with these trays i get the packs the four packs that fit inside you don't have to go this route but this really wasn't that expensive either and i reuse them year after year other options are peat pots or compostable pots the only issue with these is that peat isn't a super sustainable material and so i prefer to use materials like coconut coir or other things because i just don't like the idea of using that much pink [Music] now as far as your potting soil goes you can get the mixes that are designed specifically for starting seeds but honestly i normally just start my seeds in regular old potting soil and rarely do i have an issue and it's a little bit cheaper [Music] already the seeds are planted now they need some heat and some light now you can grow seeds in a windowsill especially if you have a good south facing window however i've had the most consistent results over the years by using a system that i have set up down in my basement i actually did used to use this room that i'm in right now to start my seeds it has a big south facing window and before we remodeled there was a half wall right here where some stairs went down into the basement so i would set this board over the top of the stairs and put my flats of seedlings right here and it kind of worked but they would get pretty spindly and kind of weak because the sunlight wasn't quite enough so this is the setup i have used down here in my basement storage room as you can see all of these stuff around the edges here but this has worked like a charm for many years so the shelving is one of those baker's racks i think they're called from costco or home depot and then the lights are just those cheapo four foot shop lights and i think they're about 15 bucks a pop so super affordable now keep in mind the most important part of this whole equation in this type of a system are the light bulbs or lamps as christian tells me they're actually called but i call them light bulbs so an official grow lamp that would fit one of these fixtures is 7 000 kelvin and kelvin is just a way we measure the temperature of light but it is important now those bulbs are quite a bit more pricey so to save cash on this i simply just go get a lamp or a light bulb that is as close to 7000 kelvin as it can be and this is going to be really easy to tell because it's going to stay right on the packaging or right on the lamp itself these lamps are 6500 kelvin and they have worked perfectly and they're about three dollars each which is way cheaper than a girl light and then the only other thing to add to this equation is a little bit of heat we have this system down in our basement it is cool down here so we have to add a little space heater to this room just to make sure everything germinates but you may or may not have to do that depending on how cool your house is and then from there it's really just a matter of watering your seedlings a little bit every day checking on them and that's really it here's an example of how these numbers can work in your favor let's try tomatoes we get two packets of seed for two dollars and fifty cents each for a grand total of five bucks one light a couple lamps some potting soil the trays and the inserts that gives us a final total of 38.50 cents for approximately 40 plants average yield of a tomato plants around 8 pounds conservatively so if we do the math that's 320 pounds of tomatoes for 38 bucks seed starting can be as complicated as you want it to be or as simple and really with just the minimal investment of a couple of packets of seeds a good window or a cheap grow light and some repurposed containers and a little bit of potting soil you could very feasibly grow hundreds of pounds of tomatoes and peppers and squash and broccoli for pennies on the dollar i really believe that some things in life are worth the effort and this is one of them is it easier to go to the store and buy seedlings sure it's easier also just go buy food that's already made for you but in putting forth effort and going through the ups and downs of learning something new and growing our own food it gives us a lot more than just nourishment for our bodies so i'm really excited for this year friends the world feels a little crazy and i don't think there's ever been a better year to start a garden so plant those seeds harvest those tomatoes let's make it happen

Channel: Jill Winger - Old Fashioned on Purpose

Views: 90,553

Keywords: How I Grow HUNDREDS of Pounds of Vegetables for Less Than $40, How I Grow HUNDREDS of Pounds of Vegetables, How to, How to grow HUNDREDS of Pounds of Vegetables, Growing vegetables, market gardening, homesteading, homesteading family, the prairie homestead, prairie homestead, Jill Winger, home vegetable growing systems, growing vegetables without a greenhouse, urban farming, modern homesteading

Id: jRy0kc5vhQc

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021