S13 E21: What You Didn't Know About Starting Seeds

You’ve probably heard me say that starting your own seeds is one of the most cost-effective things you can do on your homestead. And while it's not difficult, a lot of people struggle with it. 

I'm thrilled to be joined by THE seed starting guru today, Shawn McLoughlin of All About the Garden. Never in my life have I met a person this passionate and driven to understand every detail related to successful seed starting. Shawn holds nothing back in this episode and I learned SO much. Listen in if you're ready to 10x your seed starting ability this year!

Learn more about Shawn McLoughlin here: https://allaboutthegarden.com/

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Transcript

Jill: 0:00

Hey friends, welcome back to the old fashioned on purpose podcast. So this episode is premiering in December and honestly, gardening may be the very last thing on your mind right now. I know if you're like me and live in a climate similar to mine, I put the garden to bed and I'm pretty much checked out for a while at least. But I wanted to invite you back into your garden, at least mentally for just. A little while today so we can talk about seed starting because believe it or not. Actually maybe you do believe it. It's going to be here before you know it. And actually now is the time when a lot of seed companies are going to be sending catalogs. You're going to start needing to make plans. I know I love to plan all my gardens out by the wood stove on a cold winter night. And so I want to help you get ready for that, even though a lot of us are moving more towards the holiday, holiday frame of mind. So in the past, I've. talked on the podcast here about the benefits of starting your own seeds. It's one of the most cost saving things you can do on the homestead, especially when you consider that plants like tomato starts or pepper starts there, you know, sometimes four to five bucks a piece. And if you want to grow any quantity of those, it adds up really fast. So starting your own seeds can save you a ton of money. The only problem is, is that there's a lot of variables involved. And I find that when I talk to people, a lot of them run into issues with starting seeds at home. So today I am so thrilled to have a seed starting expert with us. Sean McLaughlin is one of the founders of. All about gardening. com. He and his family live in Texas and have a massive garden and food forest on their small property. I can't wait to talk more about that and his company all about gardening got my attention last year. When I was looking for more durable, more sustainable seed trays, and then I stumbled into what he and his wife offer and learned a lot in the process. So he is going to join us today, share all of his wisdom. Welcome, Sean. I can't wait for this conversation.

Shawn: 1:56

Yeah, thank you so much for for having me. I'm thrilled to be here with my wife and I have been watching you for a long time and you know, we've we've met each other at some of the homesteaders of America event. So I was excited to be here and talk about seed starting. I could talk about seed starting all day long. And you're totally right. This is this is the time of year when we're we're absolutely getting ready for seed starting in our zone. We're down in South Central Texas. And so for us, we're probably going to start seeding in

Jill: 2:29

Oh, wow.

Shawn: 2:30

weeks.

Jill: 2:31

Blows my mind.

Shawn: 2:32

a whole, yeah, because if anything needs to be, yeah, well, it's because our zone nine, a last frost date sometimes may or sorry, sometimes February. And so if we're, if. If we don't get that late freeze, a lot of times we're going to try to cheat the system and put stuff in the ground like February 1st, and then if something, if something if we do get caught with the freeze, then we've got backup seedlings, but, so we always try to get a super early start, but we've already purchased all of our seeds and we can't wait for spring. This is a, this is. But this is a gardening dead zone right now that we can't wait to get out there. So for us, we're actually still harvesting for fall, from fall. So right now we're in harvest mode. Yeah, we're taking green beans

Jill: 3:13

That's a really fast turnaround though, like where you're still harvesting and then you're getting ready to plant again in February.

Shawn: 3:19

so yeah, for, for your zone you know, you're, you're, you've got a dead time when you're not growing. Our dead time is really the peak of summer. When it's just too hot to grow things. And then the very peak of winter and in our South central Texas climate, we really only have about two months out of the year where we can't have something in the ground or that things really, really struggle in the ground,

Jill: 3:42

it just, yeah, yeah, it's fascinates me and I'm so glad we're recording this now because, well, we were talking when we were together at Homesteaders of America in October and I was like, come on the podcast and I'm like, maybe, maybe I'll have you on in March to talk about seed starting and you're like I think, I think that's not going to work and I, and then I'm like, oh yeah, not everyone lives in the Arctic like I do. So I just always forget. So I'm glad we're doing it now. I think it's super timely. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess,

Shawn: 4:07

Yeah. I mean, if you're in, if you're in south florida, you never stop growing. And where, where we are, it's, it's really a dual season garden for sure. And then as you get up farther north, so it's just, and we're, you mentioned us all about the garden. It's all about the garden. com. You mentioned that, and we see a swath of everyone, and so sometimes when we're providing guidance, they're, they think we're crazy, because we're like, we're out here to plant our plants. They're, you know, they're huddled up for winter, but so yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a wide swath

Jill: 4:33

yeah, for sure. So start us off, give us a little background on your homestead gardens. I'm intrigued. I know you said when you were, we were talking back and forth via email, you have a third of an acre garden plot. So you basically have an acre homestead and a third of its garden. Tell us, that's like, that's impressive. Tell me more.

Shawn: 4:51

Yeah. So I'm a dad, a husband. We have four kiddos. And we live in, like I said, South Central Texas. And I, I started gardening like the first time I was a little kid with my grandpa. I have super fun memories. So I kind of was just becoming a grandfather gardener just early in life. And so we started really hobby garden gardening when we still lived in the suburbs and doing as much as we could and did a water collection system. That's about 10 years ago. And so over the course of that 10 year period, just being a hobbyist gardener became, you know, it's, it's a hobby run, absolutely a muck where, you know, we've gone from the garden hobbyist to a really a studied practitioner of some well developed garden methods. Because a lot of what we do revolves around, you know, back to Eden, if you want to go way back to some of those methods and, and Square foot gardening, and most recently things like no till gardening no dig gardening. Charles Dowding is a big influence of ours and then now we're, I'm really interested in, you know, regenerative agriculture and soil biology. It's just all about soil biology, which is really. The basis behind the no dig gardening, and that just has grown over the years, we purposely moved out from the suburb to do kind of what we consider like a half homestead. And so we live in a small town. We don't live out in the middle of the country. We live in a small town and we have about an acre and this old house is built in 1865, but we just saw this giant yard. Giant compared to what we had in the suburbs and we said this is that's the spot We're going to be able to start our garden and we just grew it little by little over over the years We've been here seven years now And so the first garden went in I I think I basically took a bunch of ivy off the side of the house And then we put in a garden and and it wasn't it's it was the first of many and every year It just kind of gets gets quite a bit bigger. We probably have a third of an acre under cultivation between The we have a raised bed garden system. We've just started a new victory garden and then we have a food forest and we have about 60 varieties of fruit bearing plants in the food forest and then you know at any given time in the In the garden, you know the proper vegetable garden We probably have about 30 to 100 varieties depending

Jill: 7:07

It's so impressive, that's so impressive, and I'm right with you on the soil biology. Anyone who's listened to this podcast this year know I've turned into a complete nerd over that. I can't stop talking about it. Everyone's like, what are you excited about right now? I'm like, soil microbes! Because that's the dorkiest

Shawn: 7:22

the dorkiest level of garden. I'm like this far away from, from buying a microscope so I can look at my own soil micros. You know, that's how you know it's you've come full circle. But kind of what, what drove it for us is Jen is my wife's name is Jen. She runs all about the garden. We just became really passionate about growing our own food. We just saw a lot of weird stuff and without getting too political, we just wanted to have control. It's not less, you know, it's less so about being self sufficient because we're not, we're not on solar power. We don't have a well, right? And so we're still dependent on a lot of the systems, but we're just, we're taking back what we can. And we have great control over this incredible food source. And so that's just become like a driving factor. We have a goal of, of trying to basically have about 80 percent of, of everything that we consume comes from this spot. And we want to show people how to do that. Where they're at, you know, whether that is a decent size yard, if that's all you have, I mean, showing folks that you can do this. And so we're lucky to have chickens. We're allowed to have 10 chickens within the city limits. And so we have 10 chickens and then we have our kids signed up for, like, 4 H clubs. So then we can. Do some other things. And so we were trying to basically produce as much of our own food as possible. And we did it step by step. We're, we're still not there. We got a lot, a lot of ways to go, but we basically looked at our grocery list and said, number one, what can we live without? And then number two, what can we make on our own? You know, what can we start to replace? So like I can stack up all the tomato product I need for a whole year in a spring season, and that's off the grocery list. And so we've kind of done that little by little one item at a time. And that. The group of what we're now producing has gotten a lot bigger and the group that

Jill: 9:04

love it. And I honestly, I really, Love that we have more folks like you coming up in the homestead movement Because people need to see you don't have to have 50 acres to do this you know, not everyone can have 50 acres. We can't get 50 acres to everyone in the country There's not enough room So like we have to figure out how to do this With our food supply issues like you mentioned Like people need to figure out how to do this in backyards and on one acre plots and on half acre plots And so I think you people like you are so inspiring in how you've utilized what you have I love it. I absolutely love it.

Shawn: 9:34

Yeah, it's super important. You know, now more than ever that people grow their own food and it's a bit of a, of a lost art. You know, I mentioned Victory Garden and I was, I'm all into that right now. And so I was doing a little bit of research during World War Two, which is when that term became popularized. There were, there were 18 million gardens in the United States and 12 million of them were in cities. And so they're exactly what we're talking about today. And we used to have a whole culture that understood how to do that. And, and, and now we were trying to recreate it really. And I think a lot of folks are, are resonating with that story. And so we, we've become super passionate about

Jill: 10:10

Oh, I love it. Okay. So seeds starting. I think most people know why they should start seeds, why it's cool and important and cost effective. But for someone listening who is still on the fence, they're just like, it seems like a lot of work. I have to start months ahead of time. I have to babysit them. Give us like your two minute elevator pitch on why you should start your own seeds.

Shawn: 10:29

Yeah. So I, I, I want to have control over what varieties I'm planting. I want to have a diversity of, of varieties. If I'm going to the big box store, I'm only going to get three different types of tomatoes. And most of them are going to be hybrid and there's thousands of tomatoes. The, the quality and taste of, of heirloom non GMO seeds is completely different from, from what else you're going to get. And so. You know, the whole process of seed starting really starts with seed selection. You know, we can, I can recommend where, where we go, I can share where we go. But what we're really looking for is non GMO heirloom seed so that we can also do our own seed collection and have true to form plants when we are seed harvesting, you know, when we're doing seed collecting.

Jill: 11:11

Yes. I think that's great. I think that's, yeah, that's awesome.

Shawn: 11:14

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, starting your seed, starting your own seeds other than the money is really being able to control what your end product is without being pigeonholed into what's available at the store. And really in the grocery aisle too. I mean, if you think about the number of things in the grocery aisle compared to the number of things that we have in our garden, you just, you do not have a breadth of variety of this nutrient base that you can pull from anymore. And then we really used to have this. I mean, this is you used to have. Local nutrient rich food that was specific to your area and that's what you ate and that turns out to be the best thing that you can grow and the best thing for your body is when you're, you know, there's a reason you're in this environment and what comes out of this environment as well suited toward you and that's, there's really no way to duplicate that without growing it on your own. It's kind of like, it's really good to have local honey. It's really good to have local vegetables, and the more local the better, and if it's in your yard, that's, that, your yard knows what you need. When you walk around in your yard, you, you, if you, you can have a nutrient efficiency, and your garden will supply that for you because you're within that environment. It's, it's a pretty amazing thing. It's, you know, you back, back to the microbiome and soil, soil biology stuff,

Jill: 12:20

it is. You want a rabbit hole. Yes.

Shawn: 12:22

There's 15 pod, there's 15

Jill: 12:24

a heck of a rabbit

Shawn: 12:25

right?

Jill: 12:25

Yeah.

Shawn: 12:29

Yeah. So you know, I've, I've got some, some talking points. We can talk about seeds. We can talk about the germination process, which is something that people kind of get hung up on. And then we'll go into some of the tools that we use the seed starting trays and some of the, the do's and don'ts and how to avoid mistakes

Jill: 12:42

Okay. Yeah. Let's just take us through dive in. Go for it.

Shawn: 12:46

Sure. So, so, you know, after seed selection Like I said, we love non GMO and preferably open pollinated and heirloom. So we're getting pretty specific. If we can be picky, why not? And, and the seeds aren't any more expensive when you're buying the best seeds really than not. So I go for the best. The next thing to consider is basically like, what are you going to put your seeds in? Which is, you know, I call soil or the soil medium that you're going to use. And. Probably the most important thing is that consistency is key. So whether you use your own compost, if you're comfortable with, with, if you're producing your own compost or you're comfortable with that, then you could use that. But what we really want is, is consistency, both consistency and texture and consistency in you know, quality in aeration, consistency in. nutrient base. And the reason I'm looking for consistency is because I want a repeatable process with as few variables as possible, right? So that when, when I do run into some issues that there's very few things that it could be. Usually it's because I didn't water enough and that's why they've flopped over. Right. And so if I can eliminate some of the unknowns, you know, whatever is in the soil medium, it's going to be reflected in the plants. And I want to, I want to have a better understanding of what that is. And so we tend to use tonight. And this is great for beginner gardeners. We tend to use a store bought seed starting mix. In fact, we pretty much use it exclusively, even though we make our own compost. If you were to use your own compost, I would, I would highly recommend sifting it. A great way to do that is you take a two by four, cut it into four 24 inch sections, Nail it together into a square and then attach hardware cloth on the back of it. That's the half inch by half inch stuff and shake that compost, that store bought compost or your own compost through that sifter so that you can get. a finer texture because tiny little roots can't hold on to a, you know, even a half inch chunk of wood and that reduces root ball density, which makes it more likely to have transplant shock later. And so consistency is key. For that reason, we use a mix of coconut coir, peat moss and And vermiculite, so vermiculite for water retention and coconut coir for drainage and peat moss for a little bit of nutrient. There's lots of If folks have a problem, there's a whole peat free movement, which I totally get, but there's also some great peat free soil starting mixes. The key is just being able to use something that you can That you know is gonna be consistent every time. What we found with using compost as a medium sometimes is each batch is a bit different. Because it's coming seasonally out of the garden typically and so That that may not be the best following compost for the next season. In certain cases, it could be a great compost for your spring garden because it came out of your spring garden, but may not be the best for your fall garden or the garden in the middle. And so just we just found with compost that it could, there was a lot of unknowns. Sometimes it was too woody and it would retain a ton of water, and there's just really no way to stop it from becoming a water battery. So unless you're really. Good with your own composting you know, or you have a very well known, well sourced prepackaged compost and you sift it, I would, I tend to use a seed starting mix. That, that will remove a lot of pitfalls. And we find that with our spring garden, basically about 35, because of the seed starting trays we use, they're, the modules are small on purpose, they're soil efficient. We find that about 35 bucks will get us through an entire season. So basically 35 bucks in the fall, 35 bucks in the in the spring, and that's our entire year. So we basically that's a 70 input plus the seeds is our

Jill: 16:31

Okay, it does. Yes, a couple questions on this because I have gone back and forth over the years and I think a lot of people get confused when you go to the garden store because there are the seed starting mixes and then there's the potting soil and then there's potted plant mixes and there's raised bed mixes and there's like a ton of options. So we don't have to go into all of those for every type of gardening but specifically when we're talking about starting seeds. So you're getting like the seed starting medium that's It's not potting soil, but it says seed starting medium on the front. Okay.

Shawn: 16:58

says seed starting mix, yeah. And we actually use a Jiffy, like believe it or not we, and this one is very readily available, we use Jiffy organic seed starting mix. And there's other, there's other good we live in a small town and so it's easy for us to go grab it and we don't have as many sources. Amazon obviously has a ton of sources. You're looking for something that has aeration and water retention and some amount of nutrient And you want it to be super consistent and the finer the better what we like about that seed starting mix is it's a very fine Grained, you know, very very Fine textured product and it's the

Jill: 17:31

Okay. And that's, and so I will admit I do not, I use potting soil to start my seeds. Is that okay?

Shawn: 17:38

It's okay. That's it's totally fine It is no it is. Okay You know the why it's funny, when I first started gardening I got you know Some seeds some potting mix and it had the little white balls and I

Jill: 17:48

I know it does look like styrofoam.

Shawn: 17:50

styrofoam in their It's vermiculite, and that's great for, it took me a while to figure that out. I was like, I'm not putting styrofoam in my garden. That's vermiculite and it's great for water retention. It's basically a water battery. As long as it has the qualities that it's, it's a, it's finely textured. That you can, you can understand how water travels through it, how long water lasts, and that may just be, you have built that knowledge based on that item, that's fine, that is consistency. That's the consistency we're looking for. If that process works for you, use it over and over and over again, so when something goes wrong, you know it's not that one thing that you've used 20 times. And if that, so if that's your perfect compost, and you're the compost queen or the compost king, great, use it. And use it all the time, so that. The goal is just consistency. And for us, the quickest and easiest way, and for a lot of gardeners, quickest and

Jill: 18:36

And the difference though, like if we were, why they have, like, maybe why they created seed starting mixes or why they would be preferable is, I'm assuming it's finer texture and just like, cause I know that the potting soil mixes can be like, there's more chunks in it sometimes. Sometimes you have to kind of sift through. Is that what the big difference would be?

Shawn: 18:53

Yeah. Yeah. So one thing that I would say for potting mixes is that they're specifically formulated to, to allow water. To move through very, very quickly and and to a certain extent, it's depending on what you're using. So folks are going with these like four inch pots, which a lot of times they do, they'll reuse the things from the store. Because why not? And there's, there's a bunch of reasons why not to, but that, that's a pretty significant amount of, of soil that you're then placing into the garden that has a different. texture than the soil in the garden itself. Does that make sense? And so you've got this potting soil that you're then putting into your, your garden bed and that's a completely different soil medium. And You normally, if you're using it in a very small module tray, so it's a, you know, like the ones that we have, so it's a very small amount of that potting soil. It's not going to make an appreciable difference, but if you're using a larger size, you're going to end up with pockets of your garden that have different aeration and water flow. And so, yeah. I'm good with it as long as it's on a small level, and it's gonna work. I guess probably one of the things I should say in the beginning of a talk like this is that there's a lot of info here, and I would never, I wouldn't want anybody to get overwhelmed with it. Instead, I tend to think of it like, you know, you could be like me in high school and pass with a 70, but if I had put some best practices, if you just add a point here and a point there throughout the process, you know, it adds up, and now you're in the 90 range, and now you're having a whole lot more success. And so a lot of this isn't just super hard, fast rules. It's not, you don't have to be legalistic about it.

Jill: 20:22

they want to grow. Yeah.

Shawn: 20:23

you know, that's what seeds do. Yeah. And they'll, they'll grow with or without you in many cases. But if with these best practices, if we think of them just as beneficial add ons to, to a process we're already doing, we can get ourselves up into those, you know, a plus kind of levels. And so as we talk about some of this stuff, very, very little of it is, you know, hard and fast, you got to do it this way. Yeah. We're really just talking about best practices, so we'll try, you know, hopefully folks can just kind of pull things here and there to add to their own, you know, benefit

Jill: 20:52

And that's my goal. I think you nailed it is like I've grown hundreds of pounds of tomatoes or whatever with just fumbling through, you know, putting them in the windowsill, random potting soil, random containers. But I think for people who are ready to really understand what's going on and get a little more granular and really up level, I think you, you said it well, it's just, this is that deep dive. You don't have to do all this, but when you know it. So, you know, knowledge is power. It's going to help you be better, do better, have better results.

Shawn: 21:17

Yeah, if you do, if you do a few things, well, it's, it's really, there's going to be a major difference. And especially if you get into the realm where you're, you're trying to make a move where you're actually going to get serious about producing your own food. This is when you really start to, you really need to start to dial in your processes. You don't have to. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect. Like I said, the seeds, the seeds love to grow, but it's, if you want to get high production, especially, you know, you need to understand what a good seedling looks like and what good seeds look like and how they should germinate and what to, what to not do and, and so that you can get up to that next level for sure, so that you really have consistent results in the garden. I say the, I guess the next thing probably is there's, there's quite a few tools not, not a ton, but there's some, some like to have and some must haves within the. The seed starting

Jill: 22:02

Can I ask one more question back on the soil, just before we go into the tools? So you said, you start with a seed starting medium and then you mentioned compost and then you mentioned a coconut coir, peat moss, vermiculite mix. Would that be an either or? Like, if you were potting up, are you potting up into straight compost or the coir mixture or where do those other pieces come in?

Shawn: 22:23

Yeah, so for folks that are, for folks that are going through a process where you're kind of starting small, I was, I was recommend starting as small as possible. In the smallest module that you can grow that seed in and then, you know, potting up in a reasoned in like a staged way, as opposed to, I don't want to go from a tiny module up to like a big one. And so It's depending on how long you need to be in the tray, you're going to need to amend if you're starting with like a seed starting mix, it's going to be nutrient poor. Maybe that compost has an advantage in that case because it's it's more nutrient dense but the downside is a lack of consistency. When we do pot up we're then amending with a liquid based fertilizer which I will get into more of that detail later but I tend to want to pot up into something that says close to what it's going to be on outside. So, I would, I would prefer compost over a potting soil. If I'm potting up potting soil is specifically for things that live in pots. I mean, that's what it's best for. You can use it. I mean, we use it for other things too, but that's what it's best for. It's going to be in a pot for a really long time, or if it's going to live permanently in a pot, then I'm using potting soil. If it's going to be in a garden then I'm using, I'm trying to use garden soil, especially when I started to get into a much larger potting size. If I'm, if I'm starting with a seed starting mix, like you can totally go into a different medium. Just I want that medium to get closer and closer as the longer the plant stays in the, in the tray, the more I want that soil to begin to look like what it is outside. Because we're building, basically we're building habit in that plant. And the, the more I can match what it's going to really live in, the better. And so it's for a, for a gardener up north who's doing a lot of potting up, just keep in mind that I want to start moving into something that looks more and more like what I have outside. And so maybe that would look like taking that coconut coir that I started and then mixing it 50 50 with like a compost or a garden soil so it still has a lot of those aeration and drainage properties, and it's getting closer to

Jill: 24:28

I've never thought of it like that. Yeah, that does make sense. I've always just been like, well, garden, here's a bunch of new stuff, random stuff. So that makes sense that you're trying to match it as much as possible.

Shawn: 24:36

Yeah, so it's a different look for somebody in a, in a warmer climate where I'm a lot closer to the planting date in some cases than you will be, or somebody in Florida like zone 11. I mean, all they're doing is starting to consistently consistently start seeds and then get them out in the garden as fast as possible because the weather's fantastic. Right. In your case, you, you, you need to be a bit of a doctor about walking the seedlings through the process and I'm kind of somewhere in between. Right. Certainly in the winter, we're doing a lot of early prep, and so we do a lot of potting up in the fall, it's already nice outside, and I'm, I'm worried about heat, like, I'm waiting for the summer heat to tail, and I don't have to spend a ton of time in the trays in fall, I spend quite a bit less time in the trays, and so we're just, I'm going from the smallest module directly into the ground but, and, but that seedling hasn't had a lot of time to become, you know, stuck in its ways, I guess. Whereas yours, after it's been in a tray for maybe eight weeks, and you're really trying to get an early start, and you've got plants that are this tall, that, that plant is, is kind of set in its ways. And so I want to, I want to have this little difference in whatever it's in today, and it's

Jill: 25:46

Okay. That does make sense. Yes. That's great information. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for addressing that. Okay. On to tools. Take us through tools.

Shawn: 25:55

Yeah, so I'd say probably the, the number one, well, they're, they're all pretty important, but warming mats, lights, and seed starting trays. I mean, something that I could actually put my seeds in, whatever that looks like. I'd say that I'd consider a warming mat a must have. And I, there's few things that I'll say that about and I'll get into the nitty gritty of why and we can look at germination rates and that kind of stuff. But the brand we use is Vivosun. They cost about 20 bucks. We've used them for, I think we've, we've had, the oldest ones we have are now seven years old and they're still kicking. And so we started with one and now we got a stack of them. So so warming mat is a must. It's going to dramatically increase germination rates and there's a lot of good reasons we can get into later. Lights are a big one. And for the folks that are starting out, I'd say

Jill: 26:41

Yes, that's such a devastating statement, Sean. There's, you're breaking

Shawn: 26:46

is. Why can't I just put it? I know,

Jill: 26:48

Yes.

Shawn: 26:49

right. That was my whole plan this season. Somebody out there is grabbing something, you know yeah. So no, that's not enough light. So seedlings they really need a ton of sunlight. You're either, you either need a greenhouse with full sun and a greenhouse brings its own challenges because greenhouses have pests and greenhouses are, can have inconsistent temperatures. And so Or you need artificial grow lights. For best results, those lights should really be full spectrum LED grow lights. I've seen, you know, some people have some success with other types of lights and, but, but that's, this full spectrum LED lights are really the best. You know, putting it next to the window isn't going to be enough light. The seedlings are going to get super leggy. Leggy is basically when you have a long stem with a, you know, real spindly and it wants to fall over and a leggy seedling is going to be a weak seedling. And it's going to have to face a lot of stuff. Once it goes outside, you want it to be as strong as possible. So I consider lights Either you're providing full sun via a greenhouse or you're going to have some kind of artificial light, but you start small, you see what works for you, and then you kind of keep adding to the system. Ours is now an embarrassing level of complexity that you wouldn't want to get to, but ultimately that's where you're going to end up if you're really going to pursue it. But, you know, the great thing about gardening is you get to be at whatever level you want to, you know, if you need, if you want one bed and that's all you can handle, go for it and make it the best one you've ever had. The next

Jill: 28:09

Yes, I do. Actually,

Shawn: 28:10

do you have any

Jill: 28:11

it is a big topic. We don't have to, I mean, I just don't have a lot of people who get stuck on that because they'll go, okay, so here's, maybe I've caused part of the problem because I have fluorescent shop lights. We got at Lowe's like, I don't know, eight years ago and I've been using them every year, they work great, I put them on a. That's bad.

Shawn: 28:27

that part

Jill: 28:28

Okay. No. Okay.

Shawn: 28:30

No, I said edit this part out. No, no, I'm kidding. No, be honest.

Jill: 28:34

so people see that I put it I have it on my blog and I talk about it and then they go to try to find them and then they get stuck and they some I don't know if they have those kind anymore. They're like T3 just like fluorescent lights, but then they go and there's like, is that

Shawn: 28:46

Yeah, yeah, that's,

Jill: 28:47

kind? Okay.

Shawn: 28:49

yeah, yeah, it is. They you know, there's whole kinds of, you've got like commercial lighting folks with long row houses that are doing indoor, you know, seed propagation and they're fulfilling nurseries. And that's a, there's a ton of traction for those

Jill: 29:02

Yeah, yeah. Something like that.

Shawn: 29:03

T4, T5 now. I don't, I don't use those. The real ones, the ones that are really good are really expensive. I just, I've used a different, I've, I've used a bunch of different types. And the ones that just give me the most consistent results are full spectrum

Jill: 29:17

They're specific. And are those a little pricier? Because what I've had people say, they read my blog post, and then they go try to find them at their Lowe's or Home Depot, and they're like, oh my gosh, this is outrageous. But,

Shawn: 29:26

so I just bought four foot long, uh, 80 watt grow lights. So they're at the home gardener level. They're not at the commercial level. And they were about 41 bucks a piece and I got five of them. So it is kind of an investment, but I could have started with one. It's just I just made gin like a giant seed starting station. We're really excited about it I'll show it at some point. So i'm revamping but up until now i've had smaller Grow lights and I just kind of kept adding them one at a time If I was starting out I could probably get a 20 grow light a 40 Or sorry a 40 grow light a 20 warming mat and you know 20 bucks worth of seed starting trays and then all I needed seeds and soil and so i'm so i'm you know my first My first foray into this, if I'm dipping my toes in the water, is about 80 bucks, right? To, to get a decent garden started,

Jill: 30:21

Okay, that's helpful. Yeah, I think I just, I feel like I've confused people because I can't find what I have in there. It's like this whole convolute. I'm like, it's super cheap to set up seed starting and they're like, not with these lights. So, thank you for that clarity. Yeah,

Shawn: 30:33

Yeah there's a ton on Amazon. It's a bit of a, of a, you know, you gotta be careful, read the reviews. The ones that I just got are called Sunco. And I did, I spent way too long looking

Jill: 30:44

This is your thing though, it's alright. It's just

Shawn: 30:47

went through a whole half day. Yeah, yeah, I went to a half day. Yeah, but that those are the ones I ended up on. And I'll, I think we talked about this before we started recording, but I'll, I'll build a resource page for folks that are looking at this and try to give a lot of this stuff. You know, we'll just leave the highlights for them. So if they need some, some

Jill: 31:04

that's going to be super helpful. Okay, awesome. Next on your tool list. Sorry, go

Shawn: 31:09

So, right. So the big one and the one that's this one's near and dear to us. That is seed starting trace. And, you know, when I said the hobby ran amok, basically I got so into gardening that I ended up starting an entire business about revolving around seed starting trays because I was so tired of the 72 cell trays from the big box store. And so when I mentioned seed trays you know, and That's pretty much, that's like our wheelhouse. That's what we sell at all about the garden. com. We have 13 different seed trays on our site for various reasons, ranging from like 77 cells to 15 but really of those, most of our garden, because of the zone that we're in go into two different sizes, that's a 60 cell tray and a 40 cell tray. And so when I'm talking about trays, I'm talking about this kind of thing where it's got individual modules. I'm going to fill this thing with soil and that's what I'm going to put my, my seeds into. These are super, super durable. Wherever, wherever, I guess, you know, the different tray sizes all have different uses. Like I said, we really only use like a couple because of where we are. You could probably use. a smaller one to start out with and then you'd pot up into something like as big as We have some that are like kind of root trainers. We have some that are 15 cells that are almost the

Jill: 32:26

Oh, wow. Those are huge. Okay. Yep.

Shawn: 32:28

that one is that? Yeah, it's 28 cells. Like you can do cuttings in the tray like that. We have one that's a 15 cell that is almost the size as a four, like of a four by four pot. You know, it's that standard four inch, it's 3.75 inches top anyway, three, 3.75 inches in, in about the same depth. And so that way you have like 15. Four inch pots in one hand as you're walking up to the garden instead of having all those individual pots and i'd say like no matter where you get wherever you get them Whether you there's there's when we first started the business. There was this was impossible to find I mean, it was just those 72 self limsy trades at the store there's a few other folks out there and what the takeaway should just be I would highly recommend a Rigid, very sturdy seed starting tray. Again, it kind of, I talk a lot about consistency. It goes back to being consistent. I, you know, I want a repeatable process. It's not because. If I mess up, it's not going to be because of this tray that I've used 15 times. The ones that we have are UV stable, polypropylene, food safe, and they are designed to last for 15 years. I have a funny video where I actually ran one over with a car. And it was, the joke of the video was I was supposed to, you know, put it through the paces and it could make it. And, but don't run it over with your car, it was going to get smashed. But, but I ran it over with a car and it didn't break. So it's still usable. So the joke didn't work, but it still ended up being funny. And. You know, like you said earlier, you've used a bunch of different things, you know, I see a lot of people will use toilet paper trays where you use paper, a cartons, you know, reuse what you have and I totally get it and I'm okay with it. You know, you're again you're introducing variables like you might have glues or dies within those things. And, you know, if you put if you put a ceiling in red dye, it's going to die. And so if you've got red writing on the back of an egg carton that red dye is going to see into it. It's going to get pulled in by the water. And red dye is a killer for plants. You can yeah, so so you just got to watch out that I just prefer to not have the The variables that I have to worry about so I can just work a simple process and and get consistent results you also get like inconsistent water retention, which is also a problem with some of those like you know, paper pots that you put the plant into and then just put it directly into the garden. You want to you never have to take it out of the pot. There's a lot of water retention inconsistencies because of the way that products made and it also causes lots of root binding. They say it grows right through, but roots have a hard time making through it, especially in the early stages. And so again, the takeaway is just whatever you do find a super rigid. So multi cell module tray. So yeah. Basically what, no matter what, wherever you get it, it needs to be consistent, repeatable, it has to produce firm root balls, it needs to promote feeder roots rather than tap roots, and we'll get into some of that as we talk about, you know, how to use the trays, but and you have to be able to remove the seeds without transplant shock. It needs the plants, seedlings need to come out of the tray easily without, without any stress. And that's why, you know, I, like, I rarely say never, I would, I would tell people without Question. Never use those 72 cell trays from the big box store,

Jill: 35:36

they like the little, they're the tiny, tiny ones, like, they're just like, right, I'm trying to visualize, because I've tried those, they're very, yeah,

Shawn: 35:43

Yeah, they're pretty small and they're pretty small. And, you know, you, I think they're like nine bucks. They're not even that cheap and they come with a 10 by 20 inch tray underneath. And the module cell tray goes on the inside. And then sometimes they come with a little dome over it, right. And that's kind of like the seed starter kit. But that's kind of the worst, that's the worst process that you could, you could ever go through. I think that's probably a gardener killer right there because people use that product and then they think it's them. I'm just a bad gardener. I don't have a green thumb and really the product there's, there's a bunch of terrible practices built into that item. And nobody knows. Why would you know not to use it? Or you have to use it very, very carefully. So I tell people stay away from that completely. The last tool in the arsenal that we, that we use, that I would say, this is definitely a like to have, and you can repeat, you can do this on your own with other ways, but it's a bottom watering tray. I, we use a bottom watering tray under every seed starting tray. You know, we have the benefit of having a ton of them, but but this is what that looks like. And basically the tray. sits inside that bottom watering tray so that I can water from the bottom. You can accomplish, so I definitely recommend bottom watering. But you can accomplish, you can still bottom water without a bottom watering tray. Like you could do that with a cookie sheet. You can drop a tray into a cookie sheet with water on it. And you just want to remove that, the tray out of the water after you've, it's whipped up the water. So I do recommend bottom watering. I do recommend bottom watering trays. They're easy

Jill: 37:12

Okay. I have,

Shawn: 37:13

forever. So and so the takeaway

Jill: 37:15

go ahead, finish your, finish your tip. I have, I have questions. So finish your thought.

Shawn: 37:19

Yeah, I was going to say basically that, yeah, basically the takeaway, you know, just, just to simplify that is, you know, You, you would really love to have a warming mat. You should probably have one. You need a great light source and you need just high quality, rigid module trades for best results. Again, all this stuff is about best results. Not, not

Jill: 37:39

Yes. Okay. Are you ready for my questions? I have some questions. These are, this is what I've been waiting to talk about. So I will be honest, when I first found your trays, or you sought me out, or I sought you out, I can't remember how it happened initially. I was just looking for a way to have a more sustainable seed starting, uh, material because I've used the cheap greenhouse, not the 72 ones, but 70, but like the, I don't know if they're two inch, it's like 48 to a tray. I've used those forever and I try to reuse them, but they don't last long. for more than a couple of years and then they crack and I'm throwing them away and they're getting stepped on and it's just trashy, right? So I'm trying, and I was trying to figure out how I can produce less waste from my garden. And so when I came across your trays, I'm like, these are rigid and these are amazing and they're going to last forever. But I didn't realize until I talked to you this last October, like there's a whole science behind it. They have larger holes. And then you talked about the bottom watering. So why, why is that so crucial to have? Like, you were telling me how the other ones, I think it was the roots, or there was something there that I was, that was really interesting.

Shawn: 38:39

Yeah, yeah. So, so I guess that kind of leads into the, to the, like, we'll, we'll skip, do you want to skip germination? We'll go right into that and then we'll talk about germination in a second. So, yeah, what I, what I was talking to you about was, and this kind of goes back to never use a 72 cell tray. So whenever, whenever we water plants, we, the tendency is to basically pick up that tray and dump water into the bottom. And the plants end up, the seedlings end up staying in that water a lot of times. Also those 10 by 20 trays have these rivulets on the bottom that hold. Water. And what happens whenever water is readily available to a plant is it produces a taproot. It says this is my water source. I need to, I need to put my resources toward using this water source. So the plant just assumes that that's its long term spot to find water. And then it says send out a taproot. So we never, I never want my seedlings in contact with water. After watering similar to outside. I mean, you got a spring shower and everything looks fantastic, right? The water doesn't stay there forever. If it floods, everything dies, right? And so, but we're basically creating a flood in our seed tray if we're keeping our seedlings in water contact all the time. And so the bottom watering has the bottom watering trays that we use have fins on them that elevate the tray. So we're wicking up water. But what I tell people, because whether or not they have the trays is, If you're gonna do Once you do your bottom watering,

Jill: 40:02

chair so that

Shawn: 40:03

you lift that tray up and you get it off of the water source, so you put it somewhere where it can be in Where air can be in contact with the bottom of the tray. And that goes for whatever item you use. Water it, get it away from the water, get it in contact with air if you can. And so what those large holes at the bottom, like you mentioned, not only does it make it so that you can really easily get the seedling out without hurting it, but it allows for air pruning. So,

Jill: 40:28

Yes,

Shawn: 40:54

You know, it doesn't have it's spending all its resources on building that taproot and set to the detriment of those microfilament roots. And so then you have a plant that you're putting into the garden and it doesn't have an ability to uptake nutrients very well because it's not poised for that. It's not ready for that. Instead, it's got a super long taproot and you take that plant out that seedling out that taproots hanging down. And then when you go to put it in the garden, you crush that taproot and that equals instant transplant shock. You don't have a good roots that you want. You have a tap root that you don't really want or need because it's water source. It needs to go find its water source somewhere, and it's not going to be in the same place it used to be because you just took it out of the tray. And so you don't have the type of roots that you need. And the only good root that you have, that taproot, gets crushed when you plant it because you got to

Jill: 41:39

yep, in there.

Shawn: 41:40

it's like eight inches long. And so if you've ever picked up one of those trays and you go, look at all these roots! You don't want any of those. You're better off cutting all of those off. So if you do use a different type of tray and you end up with taproots,

Jill: 41:51

Things I never knew. I mean, I've grown seedlings. I've, it's worked, but like, little did I know. So this is fascinating. Yeah. When you told me that in October, I was,

Shawn: 41:58

Yeah, and preferably cut them off the day before you plant them. So they have time to get over the fact that

Jill: 42:03

parts. So, okay.

Shawn: 42:06

Yeah, yeah,

Jill: 42:07

Awesome. Yeah. Cool.

Shawn: 42:10

Any, any other questions on the, on the water? We can, we'll, we can get into some depth about, about, you know, packing the trays with soil and, and watering the, the, probably the next logical thing is, is some, some stuff about germination because germination is probably a big area where people get a, get a little bit frustrated. Yeah.

Jill: 42:30

Yeah, go for it. Yes, yes,

Shawn: 42:31

Sound good. So basically like, so understanding what seeds need to germinate is the key to mastering that like the germination step. And so for a seed to germinate, it needs warmth and moisture at the same time. So warmth and moisture at the same time. And one without the other leads to delayed germination or weakened seedlings. If they do germinate or total failure to germinate basically, you know, you killed the seed. And so to germinate seeds at a higher rate, we need to keep them consistently warm and consistently watered together at the same time. And if you think about it, what you're mimicking is, you know, if you think about spring, right, you get a nice spring shower. The ground outside has an ability to maintain a level of moisture. consistently. So when it rains, it seeps into the soul and it's going to be there for days. It might be there until the next rain, right? And so the soil is, is well moist and at a really nice level of moisture for a long time. And then after that rain, you get those nice warm spring days and now the seed has. Consistent moisture, consistent warmth and what happens? Everything springs up out of the garden. You start to see your daffodils. You start to see your bulbs come back. Probably the weeds got there first. Right? But everything starts to germinate when those 2 factors come together and so mimicking creating that environment. You know, again, what we're trying to do a lot of times is look at what nature is doing and bring that into this controlled environment for best results. So. Mhm. What we want to do is get warmth and water consistently at the same time. That's the key to germination. If you do it at different times and it's not going to work out for you when I mentioned like why warming mats were a must. So germinate, it's basically germination rate and time to germinate. So, you know, if, if the seeds are good, assuming that the seeds are of good quality, they're not too old or they haven't been mistreated, right? A germ, a warming rats, warming mats going to give you germination rates at like 90 plus percent so that, you know, if you've got a tray with 60 cells in it and. But, you know, if you've got a 50 percent germination rate, that's a difference between 30 plants and like, you know, 57, right? If you're at the high germination rates, and so it's just a lot, lot more likely to germinate because you can control that warmth over a long period of time. If you think about the environment, the seedling is in, it could be your kitchen. Right, but you know, maybe you just have a warming light and there's a lot of heat fluctuation there, like maybe it's on the kitchen counter, you turn the stove on and it gets hot, and then the AC kicks on and it gets cold, maybe it's a nice day and you open up the windows and the cold air comes in, and so you're really throwing that seed tray into, and the seedling, what can happen is the seedling goes, oh, it's warm and it's wet, and then suddenly it's cold, and then it doesn't, You know, you're going to get a weak, a weak seedling. And so the germination mat, the heating mat allows you to, as long as you're watering, allows you to basically keep that super consistent. And the time is basically we can go with one of the big ones like tomatoes. So a tomato at 50 degrees can, will take somewhere around 43 days to germinate. But a tomato at 86 degrees will take six days to germinate. So the same tomato seed, and that makes a lot of sense because the tomato doesn't want to pop up too early, you know, sometimes you get a volunteer tomato, they seem to pop up like usually a bit late and you go, Oh man, it's a tomato. It's not gonna work out. Right? Because it's too late. You're never going to get to fruit. Well, it's job outside isn't to get it's to get to fruit and then fall over and die and make more tomato plants. Right? For us, we want to make a perfect tomato. And so getting an early start on germination with the seed. The, the warming mat will cut like the difference between you just doing it, say on the kitchen counter, you get half as many plants and then maybe it takes 14 days to germinate because it's around 60 or 68 degrees. And that's a whole week off of your growing season. So the, if I can get it to germinate in six days versus 14, then I've, I've literally now a week ahead of time. And so that's the difference between for you putting a plant in that's this tall versus one that's this tall because it, it took, you spent so much time in the germination stage. So warming mats are super, super important. The key takeaway there is just seedlings need to be consistently warm and watered, and the best way

Jill: 46:34

Can you just restate the temperature? I think you said it and I missed it. Whether we're using a warming mat or just making sure the temperature of the room they're in is proper. What are we looking at in terms of a range?

Shawn: 46:44

Yeah, so, so the yeah, the ideal range is like 77 to 86. And up to 95. I mean some, you don't get as much reduction in days as the temperature goes up. 77 is kind of like, Where it starts to get really good. So, for example, the difference between, like, cauliflower at 68 degrees is 6 days at 77, it's 5. At 86, it's also 5. And so, you know, if, if, which is, it's hard to keep your house 78 degrees, who wants that? You know, I know, I know we'd be turning on the AC if we were 78 degrees. And so that's really where it needs to be, and that's a hard temperature to maintain. I mean, that's, that's what the sun's going to do to soil outside, and that's why

Jill: 47:29

Yeah.

Shawn: 47:29

will germinate on their own, but it's hard to

Jill: 47:31

That's why the warming mats do make a lot of sense.

Shawn: 47:34

without a warming that, yeah, carrots, carrots are 10 days at 60 degrees and six days at 86. So really in that, like, if I, if I had to give a number to anybody I'd say 80 degrees, what the warming that does is it brings up the temperature about maybe six to seven degrees depending on the warming that. And so if your, if your house, if your AC is set at 72, then the warming that's

Jill: 47:54

That's about perfect. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That's helpful. I think that's what gets a lot of people is not realizing. I know. Right. Right. Right. Just enough to take the edge off. Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn: 48:03

Yeah, yeah, it's enough, right? Exactly.

Jill: 48:07

I think I'm good. Yeah. I think that was, that was super helpful. Yeah. I know. I know when I first started that got me, cause I had him in our basement and I didn't realize it needed warmth and in addition to light. And so I was like, why is nothing working? And it was just what you've said. So I think a lot of people miss that until later.

Shawn: 48:22

Right, and it, you know, the, the warmth and water, they're going to trigger that seed's response to start growing. If the warmth triggers it to grow and water's not there, it dies. And if the water triggers it to grow and the warmth isn't there,

Jill: 48:39

to have both.

Shawn: 48:40

aNd so that's, you know, you really got to put both of them together. And so, You know, that's why a lot of times you just stare into that tray and then five survivors pop up and out of 30

Jill: 48:49

Yes.

Shawn: 48:50

they got too cold or too dry. That number one killer inside a seed tray pre, pre, like pre eruption stage before you see leaf in the germination stage, number one killer is the lack of water. So they can never go dry. You really got to make sure that the, the soil medium has some level of moisture.

Jill: 49:05

that brings me, I want to kind of circle back on the bottom watering and I want to play devil's advocate a minute because I've, I've heard the bottom watering a lot, but I'm also like, okay, so especially outside in the garden, right? We have sprinklers that sprinkle from the top and I get people who comment on my pictures like, Oh, no, no, you have to do it from the bottom. But I'm like, well, nature does it from the top. So how, like, what are your thoughts on that?

Shawn: 49:27

So, so nature waters from the top, but nature also dries from the top usually pretty quickly. And so, but nature also does things like freeze at the wrong time and burn. And I, so I don't necessarily, I. I'm mimicking nature a lot, but I'm also, I'm also stewarding the garden, and so I'm, it's okay for me to make it even better, and there's a lot of opportunities to do that. So, I bottom water in the tray because seedlings are pretty fragile. If you were to plant seedlings outside and then a crushing rain comes in, they're most likely going to die. Or they're going to be extremely weakened, they got to spend a lot of time recovering, and now you've lost a week in the garden, right? It's similar in the trace. They're, they're just very fragile at the early stage. Sometimes the seedlings are really, or the seeds are really tiny, and I make this perfect tray, and then I dump water on top, and it washes them all around, and now I've got them stuck on the side instead of in the middle, and so there's some benefits of bottom watering there. Bottom watering Especially if you're doing it in an elevated way, it prevents, you know, overwatering so that it can drain out. When I'm, when I'm first putting something out in the garden for the first week, week and a half, I'm absolutely not watering from the top. I don't need the plant. I don't want to, I don't want the seedlings to have to deal with anything other than just making new roots and growing and getting off to a good start. And so I'm definitely watering at soil level. For all of my new seedlings, and so we do some we do top. We do water from above definitely in the summer by the time the summer comes around, although the plants are well mature. And they can, it's not going to hurt them for a drop of water. Sometimes you put in a new seedling and maybe it's dealing with a little transplant shock, you dump water on the top of it and it's just like laying down on the ground and you're like, just survive. And I want to avoid that. So I don't, when it, when the plants are very, very young, I'm not top watering outside. And bottom watering with in the seed starting process helps the top level of the soil is going to dry out first, which is what we want. So that we don't have mold mildew and fungal issues if it's over wet. We started to see mold, mildew, fungus, and then the seedlings have to overcome that if they do which means that they're not growing when they're dealing with, it's kind of like when you're sick. And so we want to avoid that.

Jill: 51:36

Okay, that makes sense.

Shawn: 51:38

After that, after that, we top water all the time. And, and so does the rain.

Jill: 51:41

Okay, that yes, that's helpful. I mean,

Shawn: 51:43

just in that early

Jill: 51:44

yeah, that question I when I had Austin from home study on a couple episodes ago, we were talking about that kind of fallacy of like, well, natural, natural, natural to a point where sometimes nature is a lot harsher, and things die a lot more, you know, in that realm. So we

Shawn: 51:58

I'm trying to keep them

Jill: 51:59

yeah, acknowledge that, pay attention to that, but also go, okay, how can I steward? Like you said, so great answer. Thank you.

Shawn: 52:04

Right, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, when it, it rains and there's a nice breeze you do the same thing in the inside and there's no breeze. And so, you've got a lot of moisture retained on that. You know, on the, on the leaves. And one thing that just a while we're on it. One thing I never top water is tomatoes. I never, I never water a tomato leaf

Jill: 52:23

Why?

Shawn: 52:24

in the garden. I'm always watering at soil

Jill: 52:26

is it for?

Shawn: 52:27

tomatoes do not do well with

Jill: 52:28

Okay. Okay.

Shawn: 52:29

Yeah, that's, yeah we basically, we always want to keep tomato leaves dry.

Jill: 52:33

Okay. Good to know.

Shawn: 52:34

Hopefully after it rains, the sun comes out real quick. And the, the more that that happens, the more tomatoes you're gonna have or the better tomatoes you're gonna have. Tomatoes also really like, uh, periodic water and then to be dry. Tomatoes do best when they get water and then they're dry.

Jill: 52:49

Okay. Awesome. Sweet. All right. Thank you for answering that.

Shawn: 52:52

the one thing I don't top water.

Jill: 52:54

Okay. Yeah.

Shawn: 52:57

Um, yeah. Okay. So the next thing was once. So once I guess we can start with, we can talk about how to actually use the trays that we use or really any rigid seed tray in general. Once we've decided what our soil medium is going to be, and for us, that's that coconut coir mix. We're, I'm going to use the trays and I'm going to pack them really well. So. You can't compress the other thing. The other thing I like, I guess, about that, that store bought thing the coconut coir is that you can't really compress it. I mean, it will, you can get it once it's moist, it will hold its shape, but then it will immediately fall apart if you were to press on it. And so you really want to pack the trays well with whatever soil medium you're using because roots like something to hold on to. Yeah. And so I packed them really well. And then I'm usually either I'm pre moistening. I usually pre moisten the mix so that when I do bottom water it, it doesn't pull like dry soil doesn't fall out the bottom. If it's moist, it will retain its shape and won't fall into the bottom. And so I like to pack the soils really well. I like to pre moisten so that I'm not immediately, I'm not bottom watering basically when I'm seeding. I'm starting with moist trays and then they go directly onto the, to the warming mats. There's probably a lot of questions around how often to

Jill: 54:10

Yes, for sure.

Shawn: 54:11

And the short answer is when it needs it, I guess, but I, so never allow a block of soil to go completely dry. That's obvious, you know, I, and I've, I mean, I've done it. I've walked in and everything looks like the poor, unfortunate souls on a little mermaid, right? I think we actually did an Instagram video with that song in the background. We had killed the whole seed tray. So it happens. But so never allow it to go dry, completely dry to the touch of the top is a good thing, dry to the touch of the bottom is not. So dry to the touch of the top is a good thing, dry to the touch of the bottom is not. You need to definitely water real quick. Depending on the size of the seed tray module, so this one that's a little smaller is gonna need water more often versus this one's gonna have a lot more soil in it, and so it's gonna be able to retain water for longer. You know, we're watering as, as often as every other day and as infrequently as every maybe four or five days, depending on the seed module size. So once you've potted up, you may only be watering once a week, as long as you're able to retain the moisture. If you're in a soupy If it's in a real windy spot, or if you're trying to toughen up your plants by having some kind of oscillating fan that helps them to create stronger stems, you may be doing some evaporative work there, and so you need to keep an eye on. The, the water level. You'll get the hang of it. Basically, if, if you can go in just a quarter inch into the soil and you still feel some moisture, they don't need water yet.

Jill: 55:34

Okay. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah.

Shawn: 55:37

Yeah. I, I think probably another big question would be light. How much light and like what the positioning

Jill: 55:46

Do you, and I'd love to know if you shut it off at night or do you? You do. Okay. What happens if, how bad is it if you don't? Maybe sun. Some person who shall remain nameless doesn't shut them off at night. how bad is that?

Shawn: 55:58

So there's probably a lot of questions around how much light. Seedlings need so seedlings need more light than full grown plants, sometimes as much as 16 to 18 hours. We run our lights on a timer, 16 hours on, 8 hours off. Plants don't need to rest at night. They'll just continue photosynthesizing with light. Which is, you know, I mentioned they grow, 24 hour day. You know where the sun doesn't go down there's a period in there where the sun doesn't go down and plants plants love the sun and so there's really no there's never too much sun There can be too much dry as a result of too much sun, but but there's no too much sun There's just more of a minimum and I don't like to have the led lights on because they're kind of purplish and you know Makes my house glow

Jill: 56:44

Sure. Yes. Yeah. Good.

Shawn: 56:47

so 16 hours on eight hours off and later on For you as you're potting up after they've started to create maybe their first or probably their second set of true leaves, you can bring that down about 12, 12 on 12 off.

Jill: 57:02

Okay, that makes sense. That's good to

Shawn: 57:04

So the plant starts out with those little dicot leaves and they all look the same and you're not really sure what it is. Once they start to make that true leaf and when they make that true leaf that looks true to its form. So on a tomato, like a rule of thumb for me is once I see that second leaf set, I could reduce that down to 12 12 on 12 off.

Jill: 57:21

Okay. Okay. Yes, it

Shawn: 57:23

they need more sun in the earliest, in the earliest stages. Once they start to produce a couple of leaf sets, then you can back off some of the sun. If you, when I think about the LEDs is they're just super efficient. And so the difference between going 16 hours and 12 probably isn't much on the electricity bill.

Jill: 57:38

Yeah, that's a good consideration, too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Shawn: 57:41

Yeah, so if you want to keep them long, you're not going to hurt them, but if you want to taper it off, just because it bothers you that they're on so long, then you can taper it off to 12 and 12 after they've done the second leaf sets.

Jill: 57:52

Awesome. Okay. I might need

Shawn: 57:54

And that's that's how we use

Jill: 57:55

I have my lights in the basement, so it's easy to forget they're down there. I mean, if they were up in my main part, I'd totally shut them off at night because it would annoy me too, but I always forget they're down there, and then I leave them on, and I, yeah. Probably could get better at

Shawn: 58:07

Yeah, so we have, we just have ours, we have ours on a timer. We just have an external timer. So all of the lights come into a single hub and then that hub is plugged into the timer.

Jill: 58:17

smart. Yes. Very smart. Okay.

Shawn: 58:21

Because I don't, I'm, I'm not, I'm going to forget them too. I don't ever turn them on and off. I just let the system do it. And then the other thing would be distance. So, uh, like how, how far do you want the light away from the seedling when it's, when it's growing? The general rule is like you need 20 to 40 watts of power per square foot is ideal. So if you had a four foot space, then you'd want to have an 80 watt lamp or 80 watt grow light. And you'll see the, like, some of the big commercial lights are as much as 200 watts, and they might be 12 or 20 inches from the top of the plant. But what we're using at home normally is 60. I use 80 80 watt 4 foot long. And so I have them as close as like 4 to 6 inches from the top of the plants. I don't want the plants to go searching for light when they search for light. They get leggy. I want that light to be right in front of them. So they just go straight up. And more light is better than less light. Another way that you can amplify light within your seed starting system as you can you know, put aluminum foil on, On the back inside. So if you were doing it a little cabinet and you had to grow light and you had, you know, 1 little tray, you could, you know, line a cardboard box with aluminum, put around it. It's not that pretty, but that's a way to amplify light. If you're using. Maybe a light that's not as expensive if you wanted to get like a starter light and you felt like maybe it wasn't powerful enough, you can try to amplify light that way in general. I would just say by 2 instead of 1 so that you've got full coverage on the tray. So, if you're going with a really small 1, that's 20 bucks, you probably buy 2 of them and it ends up being 40. Anyway, depending on the size, because what you don't want is a lot of light on a certain part of the tray and no light on others. And so the ones on the outside end up trying to creep, they're moving toward the light. So we want some consistent light.

Jill: 1:00:07

That's a, that does make sense, and I never thought about that aluminum foil trick, but that's super smart.

Shawn: 1:00:11

Yeah. And like, that's why sometimes you'll have some really nice plants in the middle and then the other ones are all springy and long because they were, they spent a lot of time looking for light and when they're looking for light and they're building stem, guess what? They're not building. They're not building roots.

Jill: 1:00:25

There, there you go. Yeah. Okay. Makes, yeah, that makes total sense. Things you don't think about until, yeah.

Shawn: 1:00:31

yeah, that, and that reminds me, I talked a little bit about doing a midment. So because we use that coconut core, it's, it's somewhat nutrient poor and we use Micro life is the organic fertilizer that we use. It's, you know, a water base. We added to the water when we're watering and it's important to use the, the, the one that's for roots you know, for root production instead of foliar production in that early, early stage. And then, if for you in a later zone, in a higher, more northern zone, where you're actually growing plants, see, I'm just growing seedlings and try to get them in the garden as fast as possible. You probably spend another, you know, maybe four or five, six weeks longer in a tray than I do. And so you're putting them up and you're, you're interested at that point in making leaves. And so then you want to switch over to a foliar, one that's dedicated to foliar growth. Does

Jill: 1:01:17

That totally makes total sense, yes,

Shawn: 1:01:18

So root grow, give them a root grower when they're trying to grow roots, give them a foliar grower when you want them to grow leaves.

Jill: 1:01:24

And that's even when you're using like a potting soil with fertilizer in it, that's to still go ahead and use your water

Shawn: 1:01:30

I mean, it's a, that's a tough thing to say because there's such a dramatic variety of quality in, in the store about products. If you, if you've got one that that's working and you're seeing positive results, maybe you never have to do an amendment at all. I'm always doing the amendment because we're using coconut coir and it's, it's basically just a growing medium. And it's got some of the It's got some peat moss in it, or if you did a peat free one, they're probably gonna substitute something else, that's the nutrient base, where it's It won't be peat, but it'll be something in there. And that's But it's still short lived. I mean, it's not gonna work for three straight months, right? If you're using potting soil, maybe if it's got a slow release kind of thing, then it's got plenty of nutrient base, and we don't wanna over Overfertilize them. But if we're just using like a coconut coir, vermiculite, peat moss mix, which is what a lot of people do, then we may have to amend a little bit, certainly later in the process.

Jill: 1:02:25

okay, yeah.

Shawn: 1:02:26

So that we probably got to the point. Do we feel do you feel like we covered enough on what we're doing while we're in the tray?

Jill: 1:02:34

yes, I think

Shawn: 1:02:35

that we spend

Jill: 1:02:36

that is, yeah, excellent. Yeah, do you want to transition into, like, Hardening off, how we get them into the ground without killing them? Because that's another pain point I know for a lot of folks.

Shawn: 1:02:45

Right, right. So I think the number one thing to remember is the seedlings don't like change. They don't want change

Jill: 1:02:52

Like humans,

Shawn: 1:02:53

want change

Jill: 1:02:54

humans don't like

Shawn: 1:02:55

yeah, and they don't want, they don't want change in moisture level and so you got to remember they've been inside, they've been sheltered, they probably haven't had like If you're, if you're firing on all cylinders and you've got your fan going and you're really amping these things up, then they may be, they may do a little better, but if you're like most people, you're going to grow your seedling and then maybe you don't wait as long to put them out there, or maybe you, you know, you don't harden them off the way you're supposed to, but Just remember they've been sheltered and we so we want to start to slowly move them to the environment that they're going to be in. So number one, the best time to plant in my experience is in the evening. So what happens if we're planting in the morning is it's kind of cooler in the morning and then it gets really hot and then it gets cooler again. I'd rather have them in the evening so that they can spend their first 16 hours outside in a cool evening, a cool night and a cool morning before the heat starts to slowly. Come off. And so they've got, so if, if I don't have a bunch of time to harden off every single time I'm going to plant in the evening for sure. And if I have time to hardening off to harden off, or if I'm really wanting to do it, then I'm, I'm usually doing it a day for every 10. Well, a day for every 15 degrees or so difference. And so if it's 70 outside and it's you know, 85 or 70 inside and it's 85 outside. Then I'm going to want to harden off for about a day, and I'll probably do that a day's time, and I'm probably going to do that over the course of maybe a little starter for a few hours in the best part of the day on day one, and then I'm going to double or triple that time on day two. Before they go to the ground

Jill: 1:04:33

Okay, that's a good, yeah,

Shawn: 1:04:34

and hardening off hardening off can be the same day as long as it's not too hot. If the weather's nice, you got to use your judgment. I may, I may let them harden off in the morning and they've been outside for 8 or 10 hours before I actually put them in the ground in that evening, get them out there early. As long as I know that the weather is going to be nice and I said my heart hard enough. I might have done a shorter hardening off period the day before. And then I might hard enough during the day that I'm actually planting it's rare that I'm going to 3 days of hardening off. I don't think plants really need that much. Go in your later stages, again, the plants get set in their ways, and so it's a bit, you gotta couch that a little bit for where you are, and so if it's, it's also, it also may be dramatically colder in what you consider spring versus what I, I mean, spring down here might be

Jill: 1:05:21

Oh, no, no,

Shawn: 1:05:21

and we're like, oh, it's nice outside, right, and so you might be, you might be planting into 45 or 55 degrees, and that's a pretty big difference, so your, your hardening duration might end up going to a couple days. And you're just picking the best parts of the day to do that, and you're avoiding the bad weather. I would say in general, if you've got really healthy plants for, for the folks that are in like zones eight and warmer, that hardening off may only be a day or you can, we've certainly, there's been times when we've gotten away with no hardening off because the seedlings are just really

Jill: 1:05:51

okay.

Shawn: 1:05:52

The biggest thing is just avoiding plant transplant shock. So yeah, hardening off is a, is a definitely a best practice. Depending on where you are, you can get away with shorter periods.

Jill: 1:06:01

That's good to know. I've, I've always thought it was like, it had to be a week or, you know, it felt like this huge cumbersome thing. So I like that you're

Shawn: 1:06:07

yeah, I

Jill: 1:06:08

doesn't have to be that long. You know, not always.

Shawn: 1:06:11

I don't, I have, we have personally never hardened off anything for more than a couple of days. I mean, they're resilient. I mean, plants are resilient in general. And really what we're trying to do is just give them the best possible scenario. But that doesn't mean that You know, if we mess up a little bit or we don't hard off long enough, they're all going to die. It's just if if I can get everything to align just right, and we have the best harvest ever. But, you know, a few things that don't go perfect here and there. It's going to be fine. The plants are going to survive for you. Maybe hardening office, you know, 2 to 3 day tops. I don't see a scenario where you need to harden off longer than

Jill: 1:06:45

awesome. Okay, good to know.

Shawn: 1:06:47

YeAh. And so the, I'd say the number one thing and really it leads to when I say that, you know, we want to get the plant ready for the new environment's gonna be in, and it's been relatively sheltered. Really all that translates to is transplant shock. And what we're trying to do, the number one killer is transplant shock. We're trying to avoid transplant shock at all costs. It starts with the seed tray and the formation of that root ball, and the ability to get that seedling out of that seed tray really easily without doing any damage. It starts again with the soil medium. If I have chunky soil, the roots can't hold on to, the root ball falls apart, right? See roots get moved and they're exposed, that's transplant shock. The root hanging down at the bottom that gets crushed, that's transplant shock. The drastic temperature difference, that's transplant shock. And really, planting is all about how to avoid transplant shock. And if I've done the best practices leading up into it, there's a, there's a lot fewer things for me to, to get transplant shock from. One of the, one of the major killers when we're moving from the tray to outside is moisture. Never plant into dry soil. You can think of this like if you had water on the kitchen table and you took a paper towel next to it, what happens, the water moves to the dry spot and it gets sucked all up. And so if you put your seedling, you had that seed tray watered maybe the day before and the moisture level is just right and you put it into drier soil, the moisture immediately leaves the root ball. And so the The seedling says I've dried out immediately, not in a gradual progression like it normally would over the course of the day as moisture leaves, but instantaneously, and it's instantly shocked. And so always, we always water the soil well prior to the planting. So that's for for us that typically looks like watering in the morning. If it hasn't rained already, if the moisture level isn't where we want, sometimes it is, but if it's dry at all, then we're watering in the morning in preparation for that evening planting.

Jill: 1:08:39

That makes sense. It does. Yes. Yeah. And I, yeah, I've seen that happen. So yeah, the moisture I know is super key.

Shawn: 1:08:45

you know, some early mistakes we made, we'd plant 35 plants, and maybe we'd move on to the next bed, and then an hour later, we'd come with the hose and water it, you know, and for that whole hour, those plants were like, what, what are we doing out here? And so, now it's, the soil is moist before the plants go in we're watering, basically, it's watering into an, going into an environment that feels very similar to what it's been in.

Jill: 1:09:08

Yes.

Shawn: 1:09:09

The other thing is soil density. So, We use a trick where, so we've got this perfect root ball, the soil medium is good, the roots are undisturbed, we're able to pop it out perfectly, the moisture level in the soil as well is, is matching what it was in the tray. We, because we do no dig gardening, We use a dibber to plant and a dibber is basically, you know, a rounded stick. We've got some really nice ones that I love. They're just, they're handmade heirloom items. You can accomplish the same thing with a stick that you want to whittle. You want it somewhat rounded. The benefit of, using a dibber or compressing into the soil as opposed to spading out of it. If you think about the way that a spade goes into the soil, what happens is it compresses the soil along the back of the spade. So this soil gets compressed. And then when you come out, what happens to the soil on the other side, it gets opened like fluffed aerated. And then you put the seedling or you put your little plant in there and the roots go to the easy soil and it produces lopsided root system. Does that make

Jill: 1:10:14

does, I hadn't thought of that.

Shawn: 1:10:15

So when, yeah, again, You know, you can do that and it's not detrimental. It's like, not like you killed the plant if you did it the wrong way. But again, here's another point, you know, it's add two more points. And now we're at 97, right? When I use that dibber, it consistently compresses the soil all around the entire cavity that I'm about to place this, the. The seedling into and it's compressing the soil to a similar degree when we talked about unpacking those trays with soil. It's compressing the soil to a similar degree as the soil is compressed within the tray and that seedling doesn't know it's been transplanted.

Jill: 1:10:52

Okay.

Shawn: 1:10:53

So I'm picking, I'm picking the right temperature. I know. So I'm picking the right temperature. I've got the right moisture level. I've got no transplant shock. The soil is the same density and the, the seedling just starts growing immediately and. We, we went back to time saving. So I saved a week on germination. I took care of the seedlings properly while they were within the tray. So they didn't have to overcome things like it got too dry. And now they spend all their time healing. Right. And then I put them outside and rather than. Getting a week of transplant shock where they, where they pause and don't put on new growth there, we see new foliar growth within 48

Jill: 1:11:34

Yeah.

Shawn: 1:11:35

And so I've saved a week on the front end and a week on the back end, and that's two weeks of your growing season. And that's a dramatic difference. Between the tomato being at the right temperature and able to set fruit. So it's got flowers, but no tomatoes because it's too late now. It's too cold or it's too late. Now it's too hot. But I jumped the gun with my seed starting on the inside and a perfect environment. I put it outside and immediately started growing. And that's a, that's a big difference, especially if you're dealing with a shorter season where you're coming up against winter,

Jill: 1:12:03

Oh yeah. That's for me. That's huge. Yeah.

Shawn: 1:12:06

Yeah. You have a short season. Two weeks is a, is a, is a game changer in your world because we also never know when an early freeze is coming. So like. You know, that might be the difference between, you're looking at the weather and now you have ripe tomatoes ready to harvest versus tomatoes that didn't, it took

Jill: 1:12:21

Oh yeah,

Shawn: 1:12:22

if only we had that extra week back. And so we're really taking, extending the season with, with best practices there. Is that, did I cover everything on,

Jill: 1:12:30

Yes, yeah, that's just those little details. Like you said, I think it's just, you can do it without them, but just so that's going to up level for a lot of people if they can just start adding those little bits and thinking more and, you know, just, yeah, it's, it's pretty fascinating.

Shawn: 1:12:44

Yeah. So the next thing I'd, I'd talk about would be seed saving. I, that's, there's, that's a whole nother topic and there's books written on it. And so it's a little bit different for, for each type of plant, you know, you're the way you see the tomato or save a tomato seed is different from the way you'd save a jalapeno seed. Right. But in general, I'll basically just be a seed saving advocate and I'll give you a couple of of things that I think are, are important to, to understand about saving seeds versus purchasing them. It's a bit next level. So. We still certainly buy seeds regularly. But one of the, one of the best things about seed stavings is that you can do basically generational selective breeding within your own space. And so, you know, I can go out there and. I made these seedlings in the tray and only the best ones went into the ground, you know, the ones that got stuck in the little seed. I'm sorry. Get over it. It died. I pulled it out. I know it's, it's, it's hurtful. I worked hard for that thing. I hate to pluck it out. Or, you know, I, I've got space for 10 plants and I have 20 seedlings. I'm going to pick the best 10, right? So they've lived the best life. These are the best 10 plants. I put them into the ground. One of them made the best tomato of the season. That's the seed I save. And that seed goes into my garden the next year. And it's that much better. The other thing that, that happens, and this is just part of, you know, the natural process of all plants is it becomes hyper acclimatized to the place where you're growing it. So for me in Texas, it's my tomatoes are more drought tolerant than if I just buy tomato seeds, new tomato seeds and I can do that season after season. So not only with seed saving, not only am I picking the ones that I like the best that are already proven to give me results and the best seeds went in. They made the best possible fruit, and now they can also deal with maybe not enough water because it's a bit hot here, or they can deal with it's a bit windy where I'm at. And so these plants will end up making thicker stems as a result, and so you'll get you know, plants that are basically hyper acclimatized to your, they become the Jill winger tomatoes and everyone wonders like, well, what is it? Well, I've been planting that same cherry tomato. I've been planning a cherry tomato in succession now for the 7 years that we've been here. So, and I've done that. Twice a year, so it's it's the 14th generation of a cherry tomato and they're filling up our whole

Jill: 1:15:11

that's so cool. That's so cool. That, but what a legacy though, as a home gardener, what, I mean, you could,

Shawn: 1:15:16

Yeah, totally

Jill: 1:15:17

wild with that. I love it.

Shawn: 1:15:19

birds eat them and they they're popping up everywhere. I nobody has figured out

Jill: 1:15:24

Yeah.

Shawn: 1:15:24

Nobody has figured out it's me yet. So, you know now they're gonna know like oh That's where those cherry tomatoes

Jill: 1:15:29

The world is

Shawn: 1:15:30

those things pop up everywhere. I I I tend to, sometimes I seed them and sometimes I just go pick the best ones that popped up on their own and I put them in a row. I'm like, you're ready. At this point, I don't need to selectively save. They're all perfect. So that's, that's one that I, that I may or may not have to ever seed save again, but they're here every year. I guarantee they're going to be, I just don't know where they're going to be. So if I can, I can play wild card tomato every once in a while with that particular, it's a coyote, it's a popular, very popular coyote cherry tomato. But I mean, it, it grows in like bunches like grapes. It's unbelievable. Every fruit sets. It's

Jill: 1:16:01

Yeah.

Shawn: 1:16:02

So, and that's just the, the, and I've got probably another six or eight things that we've, that we do that with that are trailing behind it. But that one's definitely the leader. It's like, this is where this thing grows. This is the, the South central Texas cherry

Jill: 1:16:16

The ultimate.

Shawn: 1:16:17

If anybody else had it, it would grow forever. And we're, we're going to end up doing that with, you know, 30, 40, 50 different varieties eventually. When it comes to seed saving, so after selection, it, it comes storage. And then there's, there's probably just a number one. It's, it's worth some, some small amount of research to figure out, like, how do you save certain seeds? A tomato is a great example. Tomatoes need to ferment before they will germinate well. And if you think about the way that makes a lot of sense, because the tomato falls on the ground and it gets kind of rotten, and those, they basically, you know, Become fermented in the, in the tomato, and then they germinate really, really well. So you need to ferment your tomato seeds, which can be a bit challenging. You basically have to take all that pulp out and leave it, put a little, a cheese cloth in a Mason jar and kinda let it get in a little bit rotten. And then you clean them off and then you dry them. Seeds should be completely dry before they go into storage. So I won't go into all the details of the different seeds starting other than that tomato tidbit, but I'll let people research some of that stuff. Or maybe it's a topic for another day, but mostly just. Make sure that you understand the process for that particular seed saving and then that the seeds are completely dried before they go into storage, which kind of leads into storage. So now that we understand what causes seeds to germinate,

Jill: 1:17:32

Don't do that for storage situations.

Shawn: 1:17:34

which is warmth. Yeah, no, it's really, yeah, it's a, it's a full, it's once you start to think of it in this way, it really becomes a full circle kind of thing. You know, they need warmth and they need moisture. So we got to avoid warmth and moisture. If you think about, you know, what causes them uh, to not germinate is the application of heat or moisture separately. Right. And so if, if for instance, your seeds are stored in, in uh, inconsistent temperature, like a garage, Or a shed or some people use little plastic bins and then they've got all their seed packets in there and maybe that's okay in the, in the closet, right? Or maybe that's okay under the bed because temperatures are relatively consistent unless you got a pier and beam house, it could get pretty

Jill: 1:18:11

Yeah.

Shawn: 1:18:12

and then it gets pretty warm. And so seeds, you, you and I probably have a concept of what warm is, but seeds don't. Warm to a seed just means warmer than five minutes ago.

Jill: 1:18:22

Oh, okay.

Shawn: 1:18:23

All right, if you think about it. So if it's if it's 65 degrees and suddenly it's 80 degrees for whatever reason that seed that may trigger that seeds process to go. Hey, it's time time to grow and then it's in a seed packet, but there's no water. And that seed dies in that seed packet and then you've got a seed packet with like three viable seeds by the time you use it,

Jill: 1:18:45

Yep.

Shawn: 1:18:46

right? Because we don't want to create that trigger event. It's the same reason I don't take seeds out to the garden. Like we've talked a lot about seed trays and growing inside. There's a lot of stuff that gets direct. So in a green bean grows fantastically by itself, put it in the soil, poof, you get green beans. And there's quite a few things that are, that direct so well. I prefer to do anything in a tray that I can do in a tray, which is almost everything if I'm avoiding transplant shock. Yeah. If if I'm, if I'm planting outside, I'm never taking my seed packet out there, you know, and the tendency is to take your green beans and everyone has done this with green beans. You take the whole pack and you pour them into your hand and then you set it down, probably on top of the soil that you just

Jill: 1:19:27

And then you accidentally spray

Shawn: 1:19:28

and the sun is beating down on it.

Jill: 1:19:31

Yep.

Shawn: 1:19:32

The packet gets hot. And it gets wet and then you're like, oh, it's a little moist, but i'll just put it back in the tray In the rack, you know, and it's literally wet those seeds are toast. I've done it a hundred

Jill: 1:19:43

I do it. I do it every year, every year.

Shawn: 1:19:45

We're were you there? Were you there when I did that? Yeah I have done that too and I did You don't you don't think about it until somebody tells you so yeah, you basically want to avoid all heat fluctuations and all moisture fluctuations. A great way to do this on a small scale is to take, like, a Ziploc bag, tape it to the back of your refrigerator, put your seeds in paper seed packets, and drop a couple silica gel packets in there.

Jill: 1:20:10

Oh, that's a good idea. Okay. Yeah.

Shawn: 1:20:12

Mm hmm. I have a outdoor fridge and that's where we keep our seeds year round. So the only fluctuation in temperature is when somebody opens the refrigerator door and it's not enough to, to cause. And so you, you might keep seeds viable five, six, seven years. It's a reason why they keep seeds in the, you know, the, the world seed vault is in, you know, in the Arctic or whatever. So there's no fluctuation in temperature. So you can kind of mimic that same thing. So avoid all the things that make seeds germinate and maybe overthink it a little bit. If you're trying to do some seed storage. Be pretty fastidious about not letting temperature or moisture get to those

Jill: 1:20:45

yeah, because it's so annoying when you're ready, when you're ready to plant and then you're like, Oh, I had, you know, 10 percent germination rate. I don't know why, you know, so like, if you can avoid that, why not?

Shawn: 1:20:54

You planted 12 and you got three and they're never in the right spot either and now you've got unused space in the garden And you and you got to start over and and now you're back to that I lost two weeks on on my green beans because bad bad germination rate, you know I think that's I think that's about it we've got some exciting things coming up here. Like I mentioned, The victory garden. So we've just laid out a giant. 27 by 15 in ground victory garden plot. And we're actually going to be going through the process of, of what a victory garden would have looked like.

Jill: 1:21:25

Oh, cool. Yeah.

Shawn: 1:21:27

along and all that starts with seed starting. And for, I think a great thing, especially for folks that are up North, this is going to come out and we're going to be shortly after that, if you, if this came out at around December, it is really kind of time to start thinking about seeding. We'll, we, we will be seeding pretty much immediately after. So we're going to go right into our. Deep dive seeding, seeding process on Instagram and YouTube where people can actually kind of see some of these concepts that we talked about in practice and the way that we do it at our house. And so they're, they're, they can kind of follow what we do and hopefully have similar success at whatever, whatever level they can do, whether it's a single plot or a bucket on the, on the back porch, whatever it is

Jill: 1:22:09

Yes.

Shawn: 1:22:09

do it together. It's gonna be fun.

Jill: 1:22:10

I love it. This may be the most thorough interview I've ever done. And you are a

Shawn: 1:22:16

I mean, I hope it doesn't get too long. I don't, I don't know who wants to watch an hour and a half movie of me blabbing about, there's somebody

Jill: 1:22:24

something, no, they will watch it. I know my people, they will, they will listen and they will watch, but I mean, I just love getting past, like, we all know that we're not, we all, but a lot of people have the basic info already, you know, the standard, and I love getting into that deeper stuff that you're not hearing everywhere. I love the little tweaks you can make. So this has been fantastic. I think I said the name of your company.

Shawn: 1:22:41

a great format.

Jill: 1:22:42

I said the name of your company incorrectly at the beginning. It's all about the garden, not all about gardening.

Shawn: 1:22:47

All about the

Jill: 1:22:48

FYI guys

Shawn: 1:22:49

about the garden.

Jill: 1:22:50

allaboutthegarden. com and it's the same name on YouTube and Instagram.

Shawn: 1:22:53

Yeah. YouTube. It's, it's small. So you have to put the little at sign. So you have to go at all about the garden to find it. And then on, on Instagram, it's at all about the garden picks because somebody has all about

Jill: 1:23:05

I know it's so competitive on the

Shawn: 1:23:07

they won't,

Jill: 1:23:08

It's so annoying.

Shawn: 1:23:09

I keep asking them like, can, can I have the name please? And they won't respond.

Jill: 1:23:12

No.

Shawn: 1:23:13

probably think I'm crazy. They probably think I'm crazy. Like why is this guy trying to ask me for, I've explained myself and they just, it's frustrating.

Jill: 1:23:21

it's rational.

Shawn: 1:23:22

So all about

Jill: 1:23:22

if you're listening to this and you own All About the Garden Instagram, talk to Sean.

Shawn: 1:23:27

Yeah, it's just a personal. It's just a grandma. I mean, it's just her and her friends. She's, you know, it's more power to her. She got, she got there first. Yeah, she got there first. I'll send her some

Jill: 1:23:39

there you go.

Shawn: 1:23:40

or some seed trays. I'm willing to

Jill: 1:23:42

I like it. I, I do it. So I'm just saying

Shawn: 1:23:45

and then I think we touched on it, but I'll definitely build that resource page for folks and get you can provide a link to that resource page and we can go through some of these kind of hot topics.

Jill: 1:23:54

that would be awesome.

Shawn: 1:23:55

that's also a great way for them to engage with us. While they're there, they can sign up or they can email us and we can answer questions here there and kind of get them started.

Jill: 1:24:04

Yes. And we were going to put that link in the show notes so you guys can click right over to that. I just want to say, like, Sean is not paying me to say this. The seed trays are really good guys. Like if you're like, I've tried, I've tried the egg cartons. I've tried the toilet paper tubes. I've tried the homemade ones. I've tried soil blocks. I've tried the cheap greenhouse trays. Like these take the cake. They will last for a long, long time. I don't have to throw them away. I don't have to worry about it. And the, like we were talking about, the end result is superior. So they're worth the investment. Go check them out. All different sizes. But yeah, I genuinely love the trays.

Shawn: 1:24:37

They're a total game changer. I'd say that when we, you know, we were already getting pretty good at gardening when we started to put in this really kind of formulaic repeatable process that it absolutely changed the way that we garden. Total success. It's, it's, it's a, it's a really big deal. Whatever it is, you're just looking for consistency and then that way you can make small tweaks and just get better and better at it.

Jill: 1:24:58

Amen to that. And all, all areas of life, I think, and

Shawn: 1:25:02

Yeah, absolutely. The good thing about gardening is there's like, I'll never get to the end of it. It's just, There's always something else to, to check out. So maybe one day I can just garden full time. That's my dream. And

Jill: 1:25:15

I think that's a

Shawn: 1:25:15

I can just garden all day long, yeah, that's where it's at. So, like I said, I'm trying to be my grandpa. That's it. One day I'll get there. Hopefully I can get there before I'm actually a grandpa, but that's the goal. It's just a garden all day long. Let's do

Jill: 1:25:28

I think you're well on your way, so keep on truckin I feel like it, I think you're, you're

Shawn: 1:25:32

getting there. Yeah,

Jill: 1:25:33

Yeah, so.

Shawn: 1:25:34

I'm getting there.

Jill: 1:25:36

Oh my goodness. Well, Sean, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. This was fantastic. I can't wait for everyone to listen. You know, everybody, again, just go check out the resource page, because this was a lot of info for a podcast. This is a lot of information. Yeah, so go, he has, he's going to have it all put links in it and all the stuff, the materials and tools he talked about, that'll all be there. You can check out the trays and everything else they have to offer. So yeah. Thanks again, Sean. This was fantastic. And y'all, we'll talk to you on the next episode of the Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast.

Shawn: 1:26:06

Thank you. It's a pleasure.