How to Start Onions Indoors - Growing from seed

well hello everyone and welcome to a very exciting episode here on mi gardener today we are doing the thing that everybody loves to do that gardens and that is start some seeds yes I am so pumped because spring is not here yet but I'm going to be starting some of the vegetables that need that amount of time till spring so we're going to be starting some of the earliest of the the vegetables and that is onions yes a lot of you think that it might have been tomatoes or peppers and those are going to be in about mmm here between 3 and 5 weeks away so it's it's definitely coming up quick but it's not here yet the reason why I'm planting onions is because I'm going to be planting not only my Ailsa Craig onion seeds but I'm also be planting my giant Kelsey onion seeds that I got that came from 5.2 pound onion I also bought from West Coast seed I also had some Kelsey onions but these are not verified to come from a giant onion they're just Kelsey onions which can get giant and then I also have another pack of something else at Craigs so I have four packets of onions here and the four packets of onions are going to be planted today in pots like this I have a four inch square pot and I think it's a 4 inch 3 or 4 inch square pot and the reason why I have a 3 or 4 inch square pot is because I'm going to plant you know a pretty good sprinkling on the top and then or in each pot and then when they sprout I'm going to actually cut the the the planter open peel out the plants and pick out the strongest of those plants so I will be using all 4 packets but I guarantee you I won't have all those seeds left over because I probably have a good uh I mean there's probably a good I'd say at least Oh approximately 600 20 seats they actually tell you so there's at least 620 seeds in here there is approximately 250 seeds in each of these packets so that's 500 so I have yeah I have well over a thousand two hundred seeds so 1,200 seeds I'm not gonna have that many onions because by the time I'm done somewhat sprout some are going to you know not some are just not going to germinate as well as others and so that leaves you the strongest that's what we're going to do so let's get started here this is the mix I made in last video this is the premium super starter seedling mix that I'm going to be using for all my seedlings actually and it is just a one-to-one ratio of worm compost or vermicompost and the jiffy organic seed starting mix and then it has a little bit of crushed its crush leonardite basically it has humic acid in it and then I have Gaia green glacial rock dust in here as well as all mixed up for a really good nutrient dense mix now one quick tip a lot of people always ask me um you know what I used to plant in and I use I use the same planters over and over and over again but one thing that I do is a really quick tip for you all is if you like being thrifty I always like doing the recycle and reuse reuse recycle I'd rather reuse then recycle because it costs there's a lot more energy involved in recycling something than simply reusing it so reuse first recycle second and throw away if if need be um so I like reusing and I will get these when I arrived I plants from the nursery or sometimes I can gave and get them people throw them onto the side of the road I'll pick them up um you know one man's trash is another man's treasure and I don't like reusing things that are still dirty and so a lot of people are probably wondering why I do that but I use in dirty the reason why I don't use them dirty is because onions and tomatoes specifically can contract fungal diseases and viruses extremely easy and you don't know what's been groaning them before if you pick them off the side of the road you don't know where they been and you also don't know what grew in them previously so if there was something that was growing in here that had you know bad soil or maybe it was a bad plant that can still be on these planters here and I love reusing them even myself if I grew these last year which I did I'll still wash them out because I don't know what's been touching them what's been you know around them and I don't want to bring that into an enclosed environment like this because when I have plants that are all close together you get one plant that gets sick and they will all get sick faster than you can believe and trust me it happened it happened two years ago to one of my tomato plants I got blight and I had to panic luckily I saved it but it was not fun so this is a way you can alleviate that problem kind of make sure it doesn't happen as little as possible so getting what I was getting at is what if you want to reuse these simply all you have to do is take a bucket with a penny bit of bleach I use one gallon of water to a tablespoon of bleach I put a tablespoon of bleach in mix it around and I dump the cup in there I dunk the planter in there switch it all around scrape the edges with a brush make sure you get all that soil out and then I just let it sit out and dry after I wash it off again um because the bleach is going to dry out anything if there's any little bugs on here it's going to dry their skin out kill them it kills off any funguses bacterias molds mildews anything like that it's gonna it's going to wipe them out so that is how I reuse my planters year after year safely let's get started here I'm first going to set them out in this tray I have a holus seed tray this whole list basically means there's no holes in it I'm just going to set these uh in here they don't totally fit because it's not the right tray but I just wanted something that could hold water because the way I'm going to water these is I'm actually going to water them from the bottom bottom watering is really good especially when indoors because if you over water there's not like wind that can dry out the soil on top and there's not the Sun beating down that can dry things out really rapidly so water tends to stick around a lot more indoors so you have to be careful on how much you water especially around the base of the plant where it can rot rot the base of the plant out so I'm just going to fill these up and then I will get back with you all when it is done so I think we're going to plant the Cal say onions from West Coast seeds first and we're just going to sprinkle these right on top you're not going to worry about digging a hole or anything we're going to sprinkle these in our hand here about there's a lot of seeds in there there's probably about a good 100 150 maybe even close probably maybe 200 there's quite a bit of seeds in my hand and we're just going to sprinkle these right on top there and then the next one we're going to plant these and we're just going to pop that right there now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this vermiculite here this is a fine grade vermiculite I got a about oh I'd say 8 8 cubic or 8 8 quarts of it I'm sure to sprinkle this right on top of the of the seeds and to do this is not you know mandatory it's not you know it doesn't have to be done but for me it's crucial because I have a fungus net problem and if you do not get read of the fungus Nets they're going to be around and then they're going to be in your soil and they end up eating on the roots and they ruin germination rates so I've put about you know about a half an inch of a V or the fine vermiculite on top and it's going to act just like a soil would but it's it's coarse and it's also it's it's not organic materials so therefore the the fungus Nets can't burrow into it and lay eggs into your into your soil because they can't get through that's why you want a pretty thick layer there so I'm just going to spread this out and that's what you want to do if you have you know organic matter or even if you're planting coco coir and you just don't want to want to risk it up typically you don't have a problem if you're not dealing with organic matter like compost or stuff like that because stuff that's been sterilized like a coco coir is is not going to have anything for the the fungus gnats to really enjoy but since I'm using the worm compost in here that is that's something that that the fungus gnats would definitely you know enjoy the last thing we're gonna do is just get our spray bottle here and just mist the missed the tops here the soil is already pretty damp because of the worm castings but I just want to make sure that the the vermiculite sets down and you can also put this on a heat mat it's really not that cold in this room but if you have a colder pair your house for your germinating your seeds it'll definitely help the germination rate quite a bit it also help the germination times so make sure that you use your judgement on that for me it's not really that crucial so that is that hopefully you enjoyed this episode and hopefully in about a week or two we're going to see some beautiful sprouts coming up and then we can move on to the next part of the series where we separate and Transplant the onion seedlings so until next time I will talk to you all later this is my garden reminding you to grow big or go home and if you have any questions comments or concerns about this episode or any other episodes please don't hesitate to pop them in the comments box below or shoot them over in an email and I'll answer them promptly I will talk to you all later see ya bye you

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 352,585

Keywords: reliant, heirloom, monsanto, 100%, sustainable, tea, manure, vermicompost, growlight, worm, harvest, water, tip, homestead, migardener, gardens, flower, miracle, cooking, subscribe, howto, foot, organic, seeds, food, square, tomato, botany, simple, growingyourgreens, carrot, pepper, earth, how, tricks, grow, free, compost, bed, state, michigan, eco, castings, friendly, tutorial, vegan, raised, plants, vegetarian, tips, mi, seedlings, ez, to, migardener.com, quick, horticulture, gardening, MIgTV, garden, self, led, cfl, MIgardener, transplant, lettuce, baking

Id: NqJpY4JC-k4

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 16 2014