Don’t Make THESE Seedling Mistakes

My mom taught me to use potting mix on the bottom of seed trays then seed starting mix over the seeds. It allows for more economic seed starting on starting a lot of plants.

I just use blended dried leaves and ground soil (1:1 ratio) with some bone meal as my seed starting mix. Never really understood the appeal of seed starting mixes to be honest. I tell my seeds from day 1, i'm not the best gardener so this is survival of the fittest.

I noticed quite a boost in health for my plant babies when I started testing out bottom watering certain trays with a compost tea made from worm castings. The chosen trays of starts did so well I adopted it as my common practice for all of my starts a few years ago. I think so many times we can be afraid to try something different from what we were taught or what we've heard is the proper way. Growing up my grandparent's garden was all till, miracle gro, space plants so cultivator can fit between, and so on. Now I plant everything pretty close and still have loads of successes among the few failures. I'm going to attempt grafting tomato plants this year! Saying it here because literally 80% people in my life get that glazed over look when I start talking plants. 😂

I only recently learned the power of having some compost/worm castings in your seed starting mix. HUGE (pun intended!) difference in size from those that were grown in a sterile mix. Plus, they need less fertilizer when they start geowing robustly!!! Win-win!!

What I love about the epic gardening seed cells is they make transplanting things with tap roots SO easy thanks to the larger hole at the bottom! So I've had no issue with like my sunflowers. (No, I was not paid to say this 😂 just a fan.)

We've been learning a lot about gardening from the Epic Gardening team! I am a teacher who has started the journey of getting clean food to our small community and my students love your channel! Thanks for helping make the tricks of the trade accessible to everyone! Ps: My students love the Kevin and Jacque Duo and call them the "Sprouts twins"

Another myth, though you touched on it, is one tomato or pepper seedling per container. I'll start maybe 10 or 15 seeds in a 2-inch container. After they get their first set of true leaves, I'll separate them out. Saves so much space! I also stopped using seed starting mix which saves me money. Potting mix with a good dose of worm castings works great for me. Considering a lot of farmers sew right into the ground, why are home gardeners being taught to be so overly cautious!? Thank you for clearing up these myths.

another banger of a video guys! Loved how Kevin addressed the sterilizing soil. It makes me so sad to see videos when they are microwaving the soil lol bc soil is supposed to be FULL of life. For instance, like Jacque’s trick of adding castings to his soil, that just adds a nice boost of soil fertility and is beneficial to the very diverse and complicated soil food web! If anyone is interested in knowing more about the ecosystem in our soils, I recommend the book called “Teaming With Microbes” by Jeff Lowenfels. Such a good read about the complexities of soil and how they interact with plants! Btw, this isn’t a promotion, I just really like soil science….its neat

Another upside to the multiple seeds per cell is that you can select the fastest growing or best looking of the group to move upwards.

the way kevin pronounced cotyledon like a dinosaur 😭