THREE Seed Starting Crutches We Don't Want You To Use

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my Gardener Channel in today's episode I'm gonna go through three seed starting crutches that I don't want you guys to use what are the crutches well let's talk about them so it is seed starting season and a lot of you are starting seeds which is a good thing but a lot of you are also coming across these videos online that talk about kind of seed starting hacks or seed starting tips and there's some things mentioned in those videos that they're not wrong but they're crutches and in this episode I'm gonna hopefully kind of remove those crutches so that you can become a better Gardener you see if you break a bone you go to the doctor and you get a cast but once that cast is removed you then have to you know re-strengthen that bone that was broken and that's done through physical therapy and one of the problems I see a lot of gardeners making is that you're essentially leaving the crutches on right you're not actually becoming a better Gardener you're not actually fixing the problems you're just kind of relying on a crutch and you're not actually learning how to become a better Gardener and so like I said in this episode we're not going to bash these crutches we're not going to like say that they're wrong because they're not wrong they just kind of prevent you and inhibit you from being a better Gardener which on this channel that's our goal is to make you a better Gardener so let's talk about the first crutch of seed starting so the first one that we're going to talk about is by far the most popular I know a lot of you have probably heard of using cinnamon when seed starting I know I have and basically every seed starting tutorial that is intended for beginning gardeners we'll mention at some point using cinnamon as an anti-fungal if you're suffering from things like mold or mildew growth or if you're suffering from damping off which is where your seedlings grow up about an inch or two and then they simply fall over flat and die that's called damping off and a lot of these Advocates will say use cinnamon to prevent that no they're not wrong cinnamon is anti-fungal in nature but what if I told you there was reasons that is causing the fungus that you could be preventing rather than using cinnamon because think about it you're using cinnamon once you have the problem I want to get you guys to not have the problem in the first place let's prevent that all right so the first reason why you're probably having mold and mildew and dampening off is because you're over watering this tray of onions here is pretty heavy because I just watered and if I came back and watered on a regular basis even when it didn't need it that could cause mold mildew and damping off the reason why is because mold is found everywhere and when you have it in the soil here what it needs to thrive is moisture mold does not grow in dry environments that's why if you have like a bathroom and it's like like let's say you have a sink or a shower then there's like little cracks or water is continuously getting in all of the time that's where mold starts to grow right and that's where you get mildew and the same thing happens in your soil same exact thing if you allow it to dry out mold cannot grow and so what you're doing is you're actually basically you're you're doing it a favor by keeping it watered all the time and ultimately your plants do not like to grow in a swamp and so they start to show signs of damping off that's kind of your first Telltale sign that you're over watering but then the second thing is if you're growing in soil you're going to notice things like algae forming right like little green spots are going to start to pop up on your soil they might actually start to grow fuzzy mold and that then starts to proliferate and you might even start to get things like mushrooms and now that's very very far down the road but that is what happens during the course of over watering and rather than turn to something like cinnamon and simply sprinkle cinnamon over the surface and say well the Cinnamon's going to kill the mold the reason why you have the mold is the also the reason why your plants are not thriving it's just too much moisture all right so the second reason why you're having to use cinnamon to prevent things like mold and mildew is because you're not using the right seed starting mix now in our garden when we use a seed starting mix we start with a very very high quality seed starting mix the reason why is because seed starting mix has so much to do with what we talked about in the first the first point which was over watering because if you do happen to over water which is very common it's normal the the seed starting mix should be able to basically get the excess water out of the soil fast if it's holding on to that water for too long if it's not Airy it's not light it doesn't have things like perlite and vermiculite it's not very well draining it's going to hold on to that moisture for too long so when you do over water it's going to exacerbate the problem because the over watering is a problem but then if you happen to do it on a one-off chance and you have the wrong type of soil it's going to hold on to that water for too long and then you're going to get mold and mildew growth you see these these pots here these these Flats here that we have we watered these just yesterday and you already noticed they're starting to show signs of drying out now that to a lot of gardeners is like a bad thing a lot of beginning gardeners say well my soil is drying out that's bad no no having your soil dry out in between waterings is a good thing it's a good thing you really should have your soil dry out because that's what actually allows the plant roots to breathe and to grow you see a plant's job is to have roots that go out and source and find water if your plants never have to move move very far to get water and nutrients you're going to have poor root development you're going to have things like root rot and then ultimately you're going to have things like dampening off mold and mildew problems because your plants are literally sitting right at the source of the water and that's not how they naturally would grow so it's really important to have your soil dry out and typically in a Cell of this size we're finding that we probably have to water about you know once a day to every other day if this stayed wet for like three or four days straight a beginning Gardener would say good I don't have to water my plants are fine that's not a good thing you should be watering these small cells here these small cell trays about every day to every other day if they're drying out fast enough so again having the right seed starting mix is so important and knowing that Having excess water is not a good thing it's actually a bad thing so we just talked about having the right type of soil and how that kind of regulates soil moisture but there's another thing that actually helps regulate moisture and that is a fan having really good air circulation is vital to cutting down on mold and mildew growth which is another reason why you have to use cinnamon is just mold and mildew growth because there's not enough ventilation so you see if there's not airflow what happens is that soil moisture can stay longer than it should even if you're not over watering if you're just in an enclosed room and you're watering when you should and you're using the right type of soil still things can go wrong if you don't have good ventilation and that's why I always recommend in any grow room or Greenhouse that you start to add a fan into your regimen because it helps to reduce over watering it helps to reduce excess soil moisture so that you don't have things like mold and mildew growing so adding a fan is super important and then the other things that could help to kind of cut down on mold and mildew growth is not using a peat hot not using organic pots when seed starting this is a small thing a lot of gardeners turn to them because they're very convenient but they actually hold on to moisture we did a whole video on why I don't recommend using peat pots to actually start seeds in and then the other thing too is not sanitizing your trays see these plastic trays here we will use them for many seasons as long as you don't crush them and break them they can be repurposed and recycled and if you don't sterilize them they can Harbor things like mold and mildew from previous years dormant spores and if again if you make a small mistake that small mistake can make you pay dearly and one of those things is by not sterilizing your trades and so we have a whole video on how we sterilize our trays as well we just use a a very diluted bleach water solution scrub our trays down in the beginning of the Season before we start any seeds and that can help to kill off any mold and mildew spores that are kind of they're kind of hitchhiking on those trays so those are all of the the reasons why you would have to really we use cinnamon and the things that I want you to do better because yes cinnamon can absolutely work in a pinch but again it's solving the real root cause of the problem you're not I don't want you to put a Band-Aid on the problem I want you to go to the actual cause of the problem which is mold and mildew and find out why you're getting mold and mildew so that you don't have mold and mildew any further all right the second gardening crutch that a lot of gardeners turn towards are plant steaks now I'm not talking about staking up your tomatoes because tomatoes are a Vine they do need some support and it's really important that you stake them if you want to have them off the ground disease free and stuff like that but what if I told you that staking up your seedlings and even young fruit trees can actually be a bad thing you see if you take a steak it could be a bamboo steak it could be like a shishka obscure like this but if you take any steak whatsoever that is rigid and access support for a young plant you're actually you're actually preventing it from doing what it wants to do naturally which is to sell help strengthen self-strengthening is a really important process in the plant's life because what it does is it actually prevents it from snapping during a strong wind you see if you take this steak and you stick it in the pot unless you had a tomato that was growing up and it was just a Seedling or if it was like a tall lanky cucumber plant or broccoli it could be literally anything so I'm not going to go through the list because it could be any seedling if you had a lanky seedling and instead you kind of stood up against this this little steak here while it was young and said I'm going to let it grow up along this steak I'm gonna kind of support it hold it to that stake so that it doesn't flop over I'm going to be strengthening it you would actually be setting yourself up for failure in the long run because eventually that plant is going to have to graduate from this steak and it's going to have to go out into the Garden on its own and what happens when you take this steak and move it out into the Garden on its own well the stem is going to snap it's going to fall over flat on the soil it's going to not be standing upright it's going to eventually break and then you're going to have to restart everything all over again and so what are the reasons why we have a steak well it's called legginess we did a whole episode on what causes leggy seedlings but what we want to do is we want to prevent the leggy seedlings so that we don't have to use a steak in the first place because a very stocky seedling does not need support it supports itself prime example this broccoli so like I said in the case of this kale it's not broccoli it's kale these seedlings here are short and stocky see they are very very sturdy it's because they're low to the ground they have a very low center of gravity and the stem can support the leaves that are on top the problem is when they get leggy they'll get longer and longer and longer but nothing changes with the strength of the stem the stem should be proportionate to the amount of weight that it can hold up top and when it starts to get top heavy it starts to kind of droop and flop that's where a lot of gardeners will say whoa no I need to I need to correct that I need to give it up you know stand it upright and support it with something like a steak and the problem is is if you never correct it in the beginning it's always going to have that problem it's kind of like uh so when I was a kid I went to the dentist and the dentist said you know Luke has Luke has a cross bite and if we don't correct it early on it's only going to make things worse later on in life and so they they fixed the crossbite early on same thing with with any type of of corrective measure it's better to catch it early because if you catch it early it has a chance to actually kind of correct itself and grow totally fine what you don't want is you don't want to just let it go let the problem stay you know persist and then try to correct it later on because it's just too late and so in the case of leggy seedlings supporting it is not the fix it's actually going to just be a crudge what I want you to do is to add something like a fan a fan in that episode we talked about how to prevent how to prevent leggy seedlings a fan blows over top of these seedlings here and actually will strengthen them it simulates wind outside and that's why plants that you start directly in your garden are far stronger and healthier than plants that you start in a greenhouse or you know a grow room yes you do get an earlier Head Start which is great but if you don't have things like a fan you're going to end up with really kind of feeble seedlings that that once you get them outside they're going to really struggle in that strong wind and the other thing that is a reason why plants get leggy is because they're getting too dry or they're too stressed right we talk about heat drought things like that which is reasons why plants get leggy but keeping your plants stocky like this rather than having to resort to uh to support is really important it's again not the support won't work long term but having healthy seedlings is a success is a key to success as a gardener so we talked a little bit about seed starting mix when using cinnamon to prevent things like mold and mildew but we also have another crutch with seed starting mix and that's increasing drainage and a lot of gardeners Advocate using sand to increase the drainage in your seed starting mix and again using sand is not a bad thing in your seed starting mix but it's not a good thing for long term and so I'm going to kind of explain why that's a crutch and what you can do to not have to use sand so the reason why sand is not a good long-term solution to increasing drainage in your seed starting mix is because of a few reasons one sand is very dense anything that's very dense is actually going to make your soil heavier over time it's not actually going to be light and Airy because sand is very heavy in comparison to some of the other Alternatives that I'm going to talk about so the heavier it is just you know the more difficult it is to manage and also it really does not hold together soil very well because it's such a small particle but it's such a very dense particle the other thing that sand does not work very well long term in is because of that density is it tends to separate it's a lot like if you take uh either oil and water right oil and water separates there's a lot of things that separate right and you can shake oil and water up and it temporarily kind of becomes one but if you let it set for any length of time that separation does occur and in a seed starting mix that also will happen what happens is it's known as settling and because the sand is a smaller particle and it's more dense than the rest of your seed starting mix which is going to be made from lightweight material like peat or cocoa cocoa husk fiber or even compost that lighter weight material will kind of tend to rise to the top and the more dense material being the sand will sink to the bottom and that's really not great long term because what happens is it actually kind of creates a weird barrier there where the plant wants to grow in the top layer doesn't want to grow into the bottom layer and over time it just ends up with kind of a really nasty separation in the seed starting mix well long term and so what I'd rather you turn to is using things like perlite perlite as we talked about is an expanded volcanic rock it's actually really lightweight but it has a very similar density to that of compost peat moss or coconut husk fiber and so it tends to stay suspended in that mix you know if you take a homogeneous mixture your seed starting mix there is a there is a near 100 chance there will be some movement right there'll be some movement but if you take that same mix two or three years later even it's you're still going to find perlite at the bottom you're still going to find perlite at the top it's not going to have that separation like you'll have with sand and so um it is a it's a very common crutch to want to turn to something inexpensive and and accessible like sand but there are some negatives with using it long term that again just they they prevent you from being a better Gardener and again on this channel I want you guys to learn the how and the why of gardening so you become a better Gardener again sand is not the enemy it's just not good long term and so uh those are all the crutches that I kind of thought about for this episode I was watching some some popular gardening tutorials and and Tick Tock hacks and stuff and I came across a lot of these being talked about and I thought why not actually make gardeners better rather than just kind of rely on these these crutches so I hope you guys did enjoy if you did make sure to throw a thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already we got so much more gardening content coming out and if you want to check out this sick t-shirt sauerkraut kids t-shirt make sure you go check out migarter.com we have this size available it's a limited time or we have this design available in a lot of different sizes available for a limited time over at migartner.com so go check it out all right catch you guys later on that on the next episode grow bigger take care bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 39,928

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: lep0XUpkaoY

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 03 2023