- Welcome back to "Jacques in the Garden". Today we're going to be
starting a whole pile of seeds. Now for most of you, these
are seeds that are typical for you to grow in your spring garden. Here in San Diego, spring is kind of a bland
of winter into spring. So for me, this is what I'm growing now. I like to consider it the
start of my spring garden. Now, in case you're wondering
what I have in my hand here, it's actually a cup of calendula
flower from the garden, as well as a couple sprigs
of thyme and some honey. That is because I just
recovered from being sick. So little old friend of ours once told us that thyme is really good
for respiratory health and that's what I'm sipping on today. So, let's get right into it
with some seeds starting. I have a couple of different things to show you guys today,
going to be covering some of the strategies and techniques to getting some of these
seeds to grow well, and also my strategies
for succession planting and also companion planting throughout this whole entire time. Now we're going to start it off with something very simple here, which is a staple in hopefully
most of your gardens, especially if you like
eating lots of broccoli. This is Di Cicco Broccoli. This is a wonderful broccoli
that produces a standard head, so like the standard crown that you might get at the grocery store. But the nice thing about this one, and actually this is true for just about any crowning broccoli, is that it produces an
abundance of side shoots. Now, those side shoots, in my
opinion, are the real prize. They're not gonna be that
giant head of broccoli that you put on the table, but they are really tender and they grow very prolifically and they're very easy to
harvest for even like, a quick thing to throw
in your bowl of ramen, if you want a quick lunch
or just for a quick saute, dinner, lunch, whatever you want to do. Springtime can be a very
volatile time of year where you're vacillating between cold temperatures,
warm temperatures. And here in San Diego
we've had years where actually our hottest day
of the year was in spring. So I wanna make sure
that I don't cover things that only like the cold weather. Those are the things I grow in
the fall through the winter. Like everything I have behind
me now, tons of cabbages, tons of broccolis, things like that. Now the next one I'm
going to be putting in, is the Tokyo Long White onion. This is just a standard green onion. And for this one, instead of seeding it as I did the broccoli, all I'm going to do is actually just sprinkle a whole bunch of seeds right on top of the cells here. You can be very, very generous. With onions, you can plant densely, especially something like a green onion. They're very easy to separate out later, so it's not really a big deal. Now we're gonna follow that
up with another broccoli, but this is broccolini. In this case, it's a
variety called Melody, which I picked up from Johnny's. For me personally,
broccolini is where it's at. I love charring it up either in the oven, a pizza oven in a pan. It's just so wonderful.
I find that it's sweeter. The stems are generally always more tender and you still get that
nice little floret on top. So for me, if I had to choose only one, I would grow broccolini any day of the week over a standard broccoli. When it comes to the best
tasting cauliflowers, my favorite is the orange or
cheddar style cauliflowers. Currently we don't carry
one at botanical interests, but I did pick this one
up again from Johnny's. It's called Clementine. This is one that the seed is expensive. You only get 25 seeds in this packet. I don't remember the cost of it, but it's more than your typical packet. But I gotta say for whatever reason, those orange style cauliflowers
just taste so good. Now here's a new one for
me. This one is Gershwin. Again, I think this is a more
expensive seed from Johnny's, but this is a cucumber that I'm planning on
putting in the greenhouse, which is what I'm standing
next to over here. You might even see that
there's a couple strawberries over here that are almost ripe. So these cucumbers, just the test, I'm gonna put 'em in there. Now I do have some flowers here. This is the Amazing Grey
Poppy. This one's from Floret. Now you may know Floret. She has a TV show on Magnolia where she is showing all
these wonderful flowers. She develops her own
cultivars, she sells seed. And I love supporting other people who create content around gardening. So I had to pick up
some of her seeds here. Now the trick with poppies
is that when you sow them, you don't wanna bury them in soil. Now, a lot of people say that
you can't transplant poppies. I've transplanted poppies my whole life. It always seems to work well for me. It's just a matter of being patient and doing it before the roots get too big inside the container that
you're growing them in. So the seeds are really tiny and like I said, you
don't wanna bury them. And the reason for that is that they need light to germinate. So all I'm doing here, is I'm going to be tapping
the back of my hand. I could see these tiny little seeds. They're smaller than just about
anything that I usually sow. All I'm going to do now is just press them into the surface very
gently with my thumb. All that's doing is making sure that the seed is pressed into the soil, so that it could get that
soil moisture contact that helps it germinate. But I am not burying it. If I bury it too deep, won't get any light and it will not germinate whatsoever. Now this one here is a
new one to me last year, and it was absolutely by
far my favorite flower that I've added to my garden. In this case, it's called Bee's Friend, but it's actually a Phacelia. I think that's how you pronounce it. It's P, H, A, C, E, L, I, A. It's also a blue flower, and blue flowers tend to attract bees and that's why it's called bees friend. 'Cause let me tell you guys,
this thing was covered in bees for a very long time
throughout the season, 'cause of that really
wonderful long bloom time. I can't imagine not growing
this. It's so cool looking. It's so wonderful for the pollinators and it's also a really nice color. I love the texture it adds, with that kind of unrolling
frond like flower head. So if you guys haven't tried
it before, check it out. It's really wonderful. It's also a native pollinator
in a lot of different areas. So another great reason to have it. Here we have Vivian Lettuce. This is one that I
started growing last year. It's done quite well for me. This and Little gem are
now my standard kind of romaine lettuces that I go to. And what you're seeing here, something that you might
have not seen before, this is a 16 cell. So just like the six cells here, it is made by us, American Trade
Company for Epic Gardening. And the cool thing about this one is that there's 16 cells right there. So, I actually have been
testing them out for a bit now. Right here I have golden beets. Yes, you can transplant beets. I actually prefer to transplant them. Now the deal with these is
that you wanna loosen them up 'cause there's a lot of plants in here. So what I like to do is give them a nice little tap, like so. And then all you have to do
is pull up on the seedling, it should come right up, with the nice little
soil ball just like that. So it has all the same
benefits of the pruning in the sense that there's an open bottom and it has the channels that
direct the roots downwards. So right here, this is a
perfect beet transplant to put in the ground. Now you might be wondering,
why would I use this? Well, one of the reasons
you might wanna use this, is if you're growing a
lot of a single thing. That is why I brought
it out for the lettuce. If I'm growing lettuce, I'm not just growing six heads of lettuce, I'm probably going to plant 16. So I could have a night salad to harvest throughout multiple time periods instead of just having six heads of
lettuce that are then gone. For me, I like having more rather than trying to succession so. I find it easier to manage that way. So these 16 cells are really
wonderful for that reason. The other thing that's really great for is saving you on some soil. These take up a lot less soil
than something like this. And a lot of plants, as long as you transplant
them early enough, like these beets might be a little bit too big for that container now. But honestly they still look healthy, is that you could use less
soil and transplant earlier. So instead of leaving
them in these bigger cells that use more soil, you could go ahead and do a lot of things
in these smaller ones and just get them in the garden as soon as they start growing. Now obviously for something like this, I wouldn't recommend it
for long-term transplants. Like if you were to
grow tomatoes in these, that's totally fine, but as soon as they germinate,
you'd wanna pot 'em up. Things that have bigger
seeds like beans or squash, probably not ideal in this, because the seed is quick close to the size of the volume here. So for things like
lettuce, things like beets, anything that you want a lot of or things that you wanna
just get in the ground, as soon as it germinates,
this is your friend, it's going to save you
a whole bunch of soil. So again, it just put the
Vivian Romaine lettuce in and that's gonna do really,
really wonderful in these. Let's move on to some herbs. In this case, I have Long
Standing Cilantro here. Now you might be wondering cilantro, that's something they usually
like to eat in the summertime. But the deal with cilantro is that it's kind of a tricky plant. It doesn't like the heat. So growing cilantro is actually done best in the colder parts of the year. Right now I have two rotations of cilantro over there in my herb bed and one of 'em is starting to bolt. The other one's starting to size up, which means that it's time
to now start the next one. So having it in a consistent staple or is a consistent staple is really ideal. And growing it in the
colder months is going to reduce or eliminate entirely the chances of your cilantro bolting,
which is gonna make you sad. So definitely recommend
just doing it this way. Now next up we have chamomile.
This is the German chamomile. This chamomile is really delicious. Now if you drink chamomile tea, I think most people have probably had a cup of chamomile in
their lifetime at some point. Wow, these are some tiny seeds. Now the thing that's different
about fresh chamomile is that it's very fragrant. It has almost these kind
of appley like notes. It has a very wonderful sweet aroma. It's almost intoxicating to have just in the garden to smell alone, let alone to actually
drink the tea from it. It just tastes like an
entirely different thing. It's almost akin to buying tomatoes at the grocery store
versus growing them yourself. The chamomile that you get
fresh out of your garden is just on another level guys. It's so easy to grow. Now, coming up next is something that I don't know why I've
never really grown before. I have no good reason
for it. And it's spinach. This case, it's Oceanside Spinach, which Oceanside is here in San Diego. So I'm definitely happy to
see something like that. If that sounds familiar. Now if you don't know,
spinach is one of those plants that is daylight sensitive. What that means is that if you grow it at the wrong time of year, it's going to bolt no matter what. Once it gets a certain
amount of daylight hours, it's simply not gonna do anything else except produce the flower stock. So this is something you wanna grow really in the earlier months of the year, like where you have less sunlight. And again, this is one
of those things where, I think one of the reasons
I haven't grown it before, is like I've grown a six cell and I put six spinach plants out, but you don't actually get that much spinach from a single plant. So in this case, I'm really happy to make use of these 16 cells once again and get a nice 16 pack of spinach so that when I plant it out,
I'll have a proper block that I could actually
harvest for a full meal. 'Cause if anyone's cooked spinach before, they know that you could get that giant bag from the grocery store, dump it all in the pan, and it's gonna cook down
to like a quarter cup. So when it comes to spinach,
more is always better. And so here we go. I'm gonna go in with 16 and maybe this will be the year that actually it's some spinach. All right, we're moving
into some more flowers here. Some of these flowers
are a little bit early, but here in San Diego it doesn't, we're not gonna have any more frosts. We had two frosts, which
is actually I think, probably more than I'm used to here. The soil right behind me, literally in this bed was
frozen over on the surface. When I say frozen over, I
should really say frosted over. It's not like it was a sheet of ice, but you could pick up clods
of frozen dirt quite easily. So, let's just say the
nasturtiums didn't make it. So anyway, what I'm
going in with right now is a new marigold. To me it's the Kilimanjaro White. This is just looks really cool to me. I've never grown a white marigold, and I love trying new things like that. So I'm not gonna put too many. I'm actually gonna go ahead
and just do two cells, because I'm going to be putting in a lot of flowers here today. So I wanna make sure that I'm not overloading myself too early. And speaking of nasturtiums that's going to be one of
the ones that we put in next. Again, I'm only gonna put in a few, 'cause we have a lot of nasturtiums here. We are collectors of nasturtium seeds. So this is a new one actually to me, I've never grown before. It's called peach Melba and
I'm a sucker for peachy colors. I don't know why I think
it's 'cause it reminds me of the sunsets that we got here. So anything that has peach in the name, I'm probably gonna try growing. So here we go with this
Peachy Melba Nasturtium. Now like I said, they did
die over there in the frost, but in other areas of the
garden they're doing just fine and they're actually starting to flower. So to me, that's the signal
that it's definitely time to start getting them in the ground. Now next one again, we're
gonna only do two of, is the Bright Lights Cosmos. I've become a fan of cosmos. I used to, I don't know why, I just never grew them that much, but I've come to appreciate them. I like how wispy the foliage is tends to not look as sort
of dominating in the area. It has these like whimsical
tall stalks of flowers and they're just really a lot of fun. Now this is an interesting one, 'cause it has blends of
some of my favorite hues of colors when it comes
to flowers, those reds, those oranges kind of I guess
in that peachy sense again. So definitely something
I'm interested in growing. And they're very good
for pollinators as well. Now they do best in the
warmer times of the year, but actually it was just
over at Kevin's house and he has a gigantic, I
don't remember which variety, but his cosmo is like this big and it has like 30 blooms on it. So I was like, okay, well I guess that means I should start my cosmos now. This is a classic one. It's called Coreopsis Double Sunburst. It honestly, it looks a lot like a, like the flower itself, I should say, kind of looks like a zinnia. It has lots of petals, but it's actually a really
wonderful pollinator. A lot of zinnias are okay pollinators. But this one is really quite wonderful and it's very carefree. This can be perennial somewhere like here. I actually had a patch over there that I don't actually
remember what happened to it. But the cool thing about these is that they're very drought tolerant. They could take a
beating and do just fine. They're also, coreopsis can be a very common native plant
depending on your region. So for me, again, that's easy win, because I love native flowers and I love things that
require a little bit of water. So there we go. Now this is
another one of my favorites. This is a Alyssum, but this
is a new variety to me. In this case, I'm going
to do three of 'em. The reason why I really
like these six cells, is that they're very easy to
divide up into different units. So in this case, I divided those six into three different two cells. So that's three different
plants, two cells each, which is really wonderful. If I want a whole six pack, of course I just do a whole six pack. But I could also split it
into two rows of three. Like I'm gonna do right here. And this case I want to
get three little cells of these allysums instead
of doing a whole six pack. So it's just really flexible, 'cause you could just put your labels and pointing in the
direction that you're sowing. It makes it very obvious
as to what's going on. What I have next is this
tall blend of Bachelor Buns. I really fell in love with Bachelor Buns when I had them in my
pollinator patch here. And I think I had that tall variety, 'cause they were always
reaching up to the sky, filling in really, really well. And I love the mix of colors. In this case, I have a white, a pink, kind of more magenta-y one,
some blue, some purples. Really wonderful mix. So these
are pretty well sized seeds. So I'm gonna just go ahead and sprinkle them into my hand here. Actually look kind of cool,
like a little badminton. . . Well, I'm not gonna say it, but you know nothing
you use for badminton. So I'm gonna go ahead and
put two per cell here, maybe three. Now of course, even when they germinate, you can't really tell what
the color is going to be until they flower and that's
going to be quite a ways away. So just sow as many as you can
and you'll see what you get. And now one thing that you
might be wondering about is where are all the tomatoes? Where are all the peppers? Don't worry, I'm actually
waiting on the tomatoes, because we found that
starting 'em in January is a little bit too early for our season, which might sound weird to you guys 'cause most of you do start them in January in colder regions. But as I mentioned earlier, spring can be a wild
time here in San Diego. We also have the May gray, June gloom, where we have just really
cloudy, cool weather for the very early part of
summer and also most of spring. So I don't wanna start them too early, 'cause then they're gonna
just sit in cold wet soil for too long and they're not gonna thrive. But what I will start right
now is a Jewel eggplant. This is a little mini eggplant and I am gonna be starting a lot of peppers probably this week as well, 'cause they take much longer
to grow than a tomato. And actually a quick segue, I wanted to give you guys the update on the overwintered peppers that I dug out in a recent video. I put them in these five inch pots that we have from again, American tray. You can get them on our
website. I'll put a link below. They are the perfect size for overwintering peppers,
for potting up things. I'll probably end up growing my tomatoes and potting them up into this size before I plant them out on the garden. 'cause they give a lot of room for soil and they have these little slits again for the pruning of the roots. So just two of the peppers
that I overwintered here, they're looking really wonderful. What you'll notice is that
they all have growth coming out and that's totally expected. When you're closer to the time of planting them out on the garden, what you wanna do is instead of having like six
different sprouting areas or leaf areas right here,
you wanna trim them off. So you wanna start removing some and leave just one or two dominant ones or else you're gonna end up with a very messy bushy plant that's going to be hard to support. But let's get back to this eggplant. Now, eggplant is kind of a
polarizing vegetable it seems. Seems like a lot of people don't like it. But these little ones
that are more elongated, kind of like the more
Asian style eggplants are really quite wonderful. They have a nice texture, they don't tend to be bitter at all. And you can eat the skin,
which is quite nice. With these small ones, I'm really excited to
be cooking them whole and using them to make
like fun little dishes where maybe I stew them
up with like some tomatoes and onions, garlic, and I think they're just
gonna taste really wonderful. So the cool thing about these
is, again, they're very tiny. So this is a wonderful container variety. Now this is another one where it's probably a little bit
too early for most anyone. This is the Emerald Delight Zucchini. This is by far the best standard, actual true
summer squash that I've had. You've heard me talk
about the Centercut a lot. That's technically not a summer squash. It is eaten as a summer squash, but it's technically a butternut squash that was bred eaten young. But this one, it's true.
It's a proper summer squash. And man, oh man, is this
thing not only delicious, really nice texture,
really wonderful flavor. This is the one for us. It gets the job done, tastes great, and it lasts all season long. So I'm gonna just go ahead
and start two of these. I'm gonna again put
this in the greenhouse, at least in a container for now. And then I'll definitely
be sowing more of these in probably about a month or so to put them out in the garden proper. All right, we're back into
some more flowers here. And actually let's go
ahead and swap trays, but we're gonna be starting some zinnias. Now, zinnias are of course
a summer staple flower, but they can do well at
this time of year here. Once again, we got a helicopter, so I'm gonna get these sowed and we'll move on to the next one. All right, helicopter's gone and we could continue with
a very funny named Marigold. This is called Naughty Marietta. Now the cool thing about this one, the reason why I got it is first of all, it's a French marigold. Now French marigolds
are the best marigold. If you're fighting root knot nematodes, which I definitely am,
I'll tell you that much. I've been battling these guys
now for a full year or so, and I am definitely gonna win. Anyway. French marigolds are
better at repelling them than other marigolds, and
they're actually proven to do quite well indeed, sometimes better than even
conventional pesticides. Now, the other reason that I
chose this one specifically is that it's compact. I made this only gonna get like this big, which makes it the perfect candidate to plant directly underneath
your tomatoes in the garden to not only provide pollinators, something to use like those flowers, but also you still get that
French marigold benefit from the roots of deterring nematodes away from your tomatoes. So I'm growing this now to test it out, see how it looks, see how it performs, and come tomato season, I'm gonna be loading up my plants with all sorts of that Naughty Marietta. Now let's go on with a tomato. Now you might be saying, whoa, you just told me you
weren't doing any tomatoes. Well, I'm doing a couple
different tomatoes, only bush tomatoes. And again, this is something that I'm gonna be putting
in the greenhouse. This first one is called Early
Girl. I got it from Johnny's. It's an extremely well-known variety. I'm sure you guys have heard of it before. It's called Early Girl, because it is an early season harvest or early season producer. If it says that it's early. As a general rule of thumb, you could assume that that
does better in cold weather, 'cause it's designed to produce
quicker for shorter seasons. So Early Girl Tomato, one of the few tomatoes I'm starting now. The other one is another
bush style tomato, the Mountain Merit from
botanical interest. This one will go in the greenhouse. It's just so we could
have some nice tomatoes earlier in the season. The main crop won't be
for quite a while now, but I do wanna get some slicing
tomatoes on my sandwiches. This is the perfect size for that. If we get too many, we
could always make sauce, but I don't know this early in the season, I think I'm gonna be savoring and eating every single
tomato that comes my way. So very excited about that. I'm gonna go ahead and
we're only starting three, each of both of these tomatoes. Spring is the time, as I mentioned that many of you guys grow
things like brassicas, and in this case, I have Caraflex. This is a new one from botanical interest. It has a very distinct shape,
a cone head you might say, and I've always wanted
to grow one of these. I've seen these guys
around different names, different varieties. They're apparently really
wonderful for making sauerkraut. I got a couple seeds here,
definitely gonna start them. And there we go. Now, if you live somewhere like this, the just in case that I'm referring to is the just in case it gets hot, just in case it stays cold. You wanna cover your bases. You're not gonna have success in everything you do in the garden. So if you know that you're
coming into a spring season where you don't know if
it's gonna be hot or cold, try planting a little bit of both things, things that do well in the heat, things that do well in the colder weather, and that way you'll
guarantee your success. Now, this past season
was a very cool summer, so I decided okay, it's
a very cool summer. I don't think it's gonna
get very hot anymore. We're already deep into
the end of summer here. So I decided to start
a bunch of brassicas, filled my garden, and we have not bought
vegetables from the grocery store throughout the entire winter. Now it looks like that
was my last seed here. Definitely have a lot more seed starting to do this season though. But I hope you guys enjoyed that. I hope you guys learned
something along the way. I am interested in maybe making a full "All the Tomatoes I'm Growing", "All the Peppers I'm Growing" video. So definitely let me know if
you're interested in that. And if you want to know
about starting seeds and keeping them outside,
I'd also love to hear that, because I am thinking
about making that video. I don't know if a lot of you guys like starting seeds outdoors
instead of doing 'em inside. I have a couple strategies that I've developed along the years. Of course, now I have
this wonderful greenhouse that helps me out a lot, but I still love the idea
of doing everything outside in a low tech way. So let me know in the comments if you guys would like to see these. I'm gonna get these watered up and throw 'em in the greenhouse.
