We Tested 8 Seed Starting Mixes, Here's What We Learned

Please keep making these, they’re unbelievably informative for me as a consumer

Algorithm knows I turned 35 huh.

Anyone else here 9 months later dreaming up a 2026 garden? 👍

I buy the cheapest general potting mix I can find and do not sift, but, as soon as the seeds germinate, I use a very diluted organic liquid fertilizer every time I water and the results have been very good. I figure nature does not pick and choose where it germinates so I do not bother with the sifting. Very good video! As consumers these types of videos are very informative!

Not only is this informative regarding potting mix, y'all's comments on how each plant looks is extremely helpful, too! Comments like the water retention, height, colors, and root observations provided a lot of insight moving forward with my balcony/container gardening and seed starting!

My favorite kind of garden content. Experimentation + sharing knowledge = happy garden nerd here!

One method I've seen in my area (I've not tried) is using a potting mix with fert in the bottom half of the cell with true seed starting mix on the top half. The top half has enough "fineness" to help the seed germinate - then as the seedling grows and sends its roots down, it hits the mix with nutrients. I get it's a total extra step - but so is filtering out forestry material or adding extra nutrients to an otherwise sterile mix. For me, I add fine vermiculite and worm castings to my mix at the start, then fertilize (low dose liquid fert) once 2nd or 3rd true leaves appear. And it works great. That said - I LOVE these experiments you're running. Please continue. Thanks!

Since you guys test so many soils and stuff, you should consider keeping records of the pH of each and how they perform. I'm just getting started gardening, but have a massive professional science background. I noticed that nearly ALL my plants were struggling. Slow to sprout, sprouts were slow to grow or died easily, same with transplants. I know soil pH isn't a new thing, but didn't expect to fuss with it. With the problems, I decided to test soil pH and water pH, both were acidic in the ballpark of 5.25-ish. I know peat is also acidic, around 3.5-ish with my testing. The 2 that had alkalizing agents(calcium silicate, and dolomite lime) did decent, with the calcium silicate winning. I don't know if pH played a significant roll or not, but seems like with all the peat flying around, these mixes are probably a little acidic, so the bioavailability of nutrients(if there are any) is reduced. We know pH matters, but with you guys forever doing tons of experiments, it would be interesting to see HOW MUCH it REALLY matters. You could even retroactively apply pH measurements. For example, you could go back and measure the pH of each mix used in this video, and put that with your notes, and go back and do the same to multiple videos, eventually making a video on "How much does pH really matter?" after you have a lot of data to look at.

I've been adding extra worm castings to my seed starting mix with great results, never had thicker whiter roots than after I started doing that - great video!

This video really should had a summary with cost vs performance pick / analysis