The Double Cup Method to Start Seeds

the double cut method is one of the easiest in most foolproof ways of terminating seeds it is extremely versatile and can be used to grow a wide variety of seeds it is easy to regulate moisture in the soil and if desired you can place a piece of saran wrap over the top to create a greenhouse effect what you'll need to successfully do the double cut method is obviously as the name implies only two cups these are is plastic disposable like red solo-style cups you'll need something like a nail or something else sharp to help poke a hole in the bottom obviously you're gonna need your favorite seeds so in this case I'm using mint you'll need potting soil and then optionally you can also use saran wrap and then I I like to use a couple small pebbles at the bottom just to help assist with drainage now to do this you're gonna take your one cup and you want to poke a couple holes in the bottom now to make this a little bit easier I'm gonna go over to my oven and we're gonna start that up and we'll take our nail and I'm gonna hold it in a pair of pliers there so I don't burn on and then what we're gonna do we're just gonna heat this nail over the flame just for a couple seconds not too badly long and then once that nail is nice and hot we're gonna take it and just poke five to six holes in the bottom of this cup and you might need to heat up the nail a couple times just to really make sure it gets in there so I'm gonna heat it up again and make sure these holes are fairly wide to the wider they are the better drainage you're gonna have once that nails hot again we're gonna go a couple more holes and I might actually go back in and widen up some of these previous holes just so that it drains a little bit better keep going keep going alright and I think that'll be about good so once you have the holes punctured into your cup you turn off that flame and then come back over here and we're gonna place this cup inside of our other Cup now this cup obviously doesn't have any holes because you don't want water leaking out and then actually one thing that I like to do I like to put a couple pebbles into the bottom of this Cup just so that the water drains a little bit better it'll keep the cups a little bit more separated and then so see there's a little bit more of a gap in between these cups now so you have more space for water to flow now you're gonna take your potting soil and you're gonna loosely spoon it into the cup all right now once we have all of our soil into the cup of so we're gonna take our packet of seeds and we're gonna open it up and then I like to do a thing that's called over seeding so basically all that means is you're putting more than one seed into the hole this basically just ensures that you have a good germination rate so we're gonna poke we're actually gonna poke a couple holes in the top just because we're growing mint and it's pretty small so put a little holes and then we're gonna take our seeds and it's gonna take a pinch and put a couple in each little hole there and cover them up just as you would planting anything there's our seeds going in and I'm gonna need a couple more here there we go all right so now that we have our seeds in the hole is so optionally what you can do if you want to create that greenhouse effect that I was talking earlier you can take your saran wrap and just cut off a little square and if you just loosely place it on the top not you don't want to like cinch it down or anything so you still wanted to be able to breathe a little bit but if you put it on the top that'll create a nice humid greenhouse effect that for some seeds you can help them germinate a little bit faster now filling this up it's super super easy all you're gonna do is you're gonna take your cup your bottom cup and we're gonna go over to sink here through some soil but anyways we're gonna fill it about half way up with water there we go right about halfway there and we're gonna come back here and we're gonna take our cup with the soil and we're just gonna set it right in there and it's gonna float now it'll take a couple minutes for this to go down but as this goes down it will [Music] basically absorb all of that water into the soil alright so now that our cup is all the way down in the soil all that water is pretty much gone all the way up into the soil and it's really moisten the soil from the bottom up which moist thing from the bottle bottom up will actually help prevent a lot of problems such as rot around like the base of your seed things once they start growing as well and then in order for it not to be overly moist we won't come back to your sink you're gonna lift out this top cup and see how its dripping there we're gonna basically let that drip until the dripping slows and then you're going to take all the excess water in the bottom cup and pour it out because we don't need that all right so you can see that that dripping is starting to slow down a little bit we might give it a shake or two just to help get that water out there we go and now that it's slowing down we can put it back into our bottom cup there and then any excess moisture that still could be in it who's all gonna drain into that bottom space that we have there now with those pebbles and this will be an excellent way to start your seeds all you have to do is once the soil starts feeling a little bit dry to the touch again just fill that bottom cup about halfway up with water let this top cup sink into it and then dump out the excess that's that's all there is to it if you guys enjoyed this video please give a like a comment and maybe even subscribe I'll see you next time

Channel: Grounded Roots

Views: 417,063

Keywords: Double, Cup, Method, Seeds, Germinate, Start, Grow, Plant, Greenhouse, Begin, How, To, Setup, Grounded, Roots, Hydroponics, Aquaponics, DIY, Budget, Indoor, Cheap, Two, pepper

Id: l4itvfvnAC4

Length: 6min 38sec (398 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020