Introducing a new 2GH podcast feature - Herb Of The Week. This week's herb is Garlic.

Summary

The conversation between Jamie and Carol covers various topics such as Carol's busy week, health benefits of cranberries, Jamie using leftover vegetables in stir-fry, and her custom flat top grill. They shares tips on saving money by making ghee to store butter and recommends buying cheesecloth from cheese-making product suppliers.

They also discuss the benefits of garlic as a potent antibiotic and how to incorporate it into one's diet.

The hosts discuss gardening tips and starting plants from seeds, including the importance of research, lighting options, and trays. They suggest starting seeds in recycled materials, like paper pots, and giving constant attention to the seedlings. Jamie advises against saturating plants and suggests watering from the bottom instead. They also explain troubleshooting tips for when a batch of seeds doesn't grow and suggest winter sewing for cool season crops. Lastly, they discuss gardening tips, seed planting depth, and the importance of adjusting techniques to fit one's zone and climate.

Jamie suggests using a low-tech method of counting back from the last frost date, as well as using high-tech tools like the SeedTime app.

Jamie advises new gardeners to visit a local nursery and research lighting and equipment options. She also provides tips on starting plants from seeds, emphasizing the importance of moist soil, proper labeling, and fertilizing with fish fertilizer.

Jamie suggests using minimal water and watering from the bottom, thinning the plants, and gradually exposing them to outdoor conditions. The article also discusses reasons why seeds may not grow and alternative methods like winter sewing.

#GardenPlanningTips #LowTechGardening #SeedStarting101

Jamie is the gardener of the 2 Gals. She's been doing it for a long time and she's very good at it. In this epsiode, Jamie will explain many of the techniques to begin a successful gardening season... before the real growing season even begins.

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] "Unleashing Your Inner Homesteader"
• [00:00:30] Making Cranberry Juice for Kombucha Mix
• [00:05:32] "Going Back to Our Roots: Why I Use More Lard Than Anything Anymore"
• [00:06:25] Making Caramel from Leftover Whey
• [00:09:14] Making Ghee and Wash or Throw Used Cheesecloth
• [00:14:09] "What is Ghee and How to Use It"
• [00:18:08] Exploring the 'The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies: The Healing Power of Plant Medicine' by Claude Davis, Sr. and Nicole Apelian
• [00:19:35] "Garlic: A Tasty and Beneficial Addition to Your Diet"
• [00:23:42] "Get Creative with Garlic: Ideas for Enjoying This Flavorful Ingredient"
• [00:26:16] "The Power of Garlic as a Natural Antibiotic"
• [00:31:13] The power of food as medicine
• [00:36:25] "Herb of the Week Feature: Garlic"
• [00:38:29] Tips for Starting Your Spring Garden
• [00:43:57] "Trying Out Onion Gardening: Taking a Risk Two Houses Down"
• [00:44:17] "Organize Your Planting Schedule with SeedTime App"
• [00:48:47] Tips for Starting a Seed Garden with Limited Space and Equipment
• [00:54:38] "Optimal Plant Growth Tips"
• [01:01:15] "Tips for Starting and Maintaining a Garden"
• [01:05:59] Adjusting Seedlings to the Elements: The Importance of Hardening Off
• [01:11:12] Winter Sewing with Milk Cartons and Jugs
• [01:15:28] "FindingYour Zone for Success"

Call to Action and Facebook Page Mention for Two Gals Homesteading Podcast"

Links mentioned

• SeedTime App
• Cultures For Health

Carol & Jamie of 2GalsHomesteading.com are your homesteading co-hosts. Jamie practices homesteading skills in town. Carol homesteads on the farm.

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Whatever your passion . . . Avid Armor will Guide you there.

Until next time... Put some Kefir on it!

Thank-you PeteCoSupply.com

PeteCoSupply.com is a generous supporter of this podcast. Their sponsorship gift allows us to pay for the hosting of this podcast. PeteCoSupply

PeteCoSupply.com is a small, family-owned business located in the heart of farmland in central Iowa. We take pride in providing you with the best service and products in one place. We bring over 25 years of customer service experience, strong relationships with vendors, and strong product knowledge to one place. PeteCo Supply is where Quality Meets Service, and we're dedicated to making your shopping experience seamless. PeteCo Supply is a financial supporter of this podcast. The financial gift pays for the annual hosting fees neccesary to distribute our episodes. We work closely with our vendors, distributors, and manufacturers, who will often ship the product directly to you. Although we're looking to expand our services, we only ship within the United States at this time.

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Mentioned in this episode:

PeteCo Supply

PeteCoSupply.com is a small, family-owned business located in the heart of farmland in central Iowa. We take pride in providing you with the best service and products in one place. We bring over 25 years of customer service experience, strong relationships with vendors, and strong product knowledge to one place. PeteCo Supply is where Quality Meets Service, and we're dedicated to making your shopping experience seamless. PeteCo Supply is a financial supporter of this podcast. Their financial gift pays for the annual hosting fees neccesary to distribute our episodes.

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Transcript

Alright. Okay. So Jamie's going to take over now and she's gonna we're going back to gardening again.

That time of the year. Yep.

We've talked about getting your seeds, planning your garden and planning your garden, your seeds. Getting your seeds.

Now you got your seeds. What are you going to do with them? You need to decide if you're going to start your seeds inside, if you're going to buy start your plants at the store, the nursery, or you're going to direct seeds. Seed.

Oh, yeah. Direct seed.

Direct seed into the ground. Because some things you can start ahead of time and some things you can just start in the ground. And I do both. So first, we covered this in the last podcast that we'll do it again. You need to find your last frost date in the spring. And for us, that's around May 4. If you don't know what yours is, the old Farmer Almanac website, you can go in there and plug your zip code in and it will tell you your zone, your frost date. They'll give you your altitude. I did not know that until I was looking around. If you're going to be pressure canning in this summer, this fall, you need to know what your altitude is. So if you need to increase your pressure when you're pressure canning oh, yes.

Or even point.

Even time. Sometimes hot water bathing too, you'll have to process a little longer because of your altitude.

Okay.

Elevation. Elevation.

Elevation. Elevation. Yeah.

And stuff. And then you figure out which seeds need to be started, when. And the best place to get that information is the back of your seed.

I just can see even on the back of the seed thing, it tells you sometimes what zones and stuff, doesn't it? Sometimes it has a picture of the United States on there. We're talking the United States now, I don't know about other countries, what they.

Do, but I do know the packages have or if you're flipped to the opposite end of the earth. I don't know how to help you if you're in Africa or South America. Sorry.

Yeah, but anyway, they have information on it.

They'll tell you what zone you are. No. It usually will tell you to start two to four weeks before your last frost date. And so that's why you need your last frost date. And there are very low tech ways to do it. And that's the way I've done it up until a year or so ago is you just take a calendar, go to your bank here in the United States, you can almost go to every bank and get a free calendar this time of year. And our banks are actually thrown them much.

You need a calendar.

You need a calendar because they have so many. And so all you do is look at your seed packet. This is a little time consuming, consuming process is you look at the back of your package, you look at your tomatoes, and it says four to six weeks before your last frost date. So you find your frost date, and you count back four to six weeks. And I always go to six weeks, because then if I'm down on the ball, I got two weeks leeway. And then I write down there, tomatoes, start, tomatoes, march, whatever. So then you make your list. So the first week of March, you need to do this. The second week of March, you need to do that. And so you do that with vegetables. Or if you're like me, you got flowers thrown in there, too. Because actually this year I want to grow onions. But onions are 100 days long. They take 100 days to mature. And actually I'm going to start because normally I would go to the nursery and buy pre started. I wouldn't buy sads, I would buy pre sprouted or pre growing onions. And sometimes I would lose probably about ten, maybe 15% of those, because if I bought them with intentions of planting them, and it's like, okay, I can plant these Saturday, but then Saturday's weather is not favorably. They have to sit and wait until it's warm enough and dry enough for me to plant them. And so they'll sit, and you're not supposed to sit them in water, or you're not supposed to replant them in a pot. And so you will lose some. So with starting my own, I'm hoping to be able to just to pull them out of the seed path, out of the seed tray and then break them. Because onions, you can pull them apart and rough up the roots, and they still grow.

Okay, because see, when I've planted onions, I've always bought like the set of 50. That's not what you're talking about.

The plants.

Well, they're a bundle of those. Is that what you're talking about?

You mean like the little onions that didn't grow much last year onions? There's onion plants and then there's onion sets. Onion plants looks like a green onion. It looks like a bunch of green onions.

Okay?

That's what I've done.

But they're dry, kind of. Yeah, they're not totally dry. Yeah, but they're like dormant would be.

A better word to and if you leave them sit around, you will lose them.

That's how I have always done onions. I've never tried doing seeds. I've never tried any of that growing up.

We always did set now onion sets that they are onions that were growing and then pulled and allowed to dry. And so when you plant them, though, you're growing a second year onion, and you run the risk of them blooming, and the plant will send energy into making that flour, and you won't get a ball. But if you're looking to save onion seeds, that's the way to do it. But you can only have one back to you can only have one variety, otherwise you will end up with hybrid.

That makes sense. Yeah.

So if you have two different types of onions you're going to end up.

With, you don't want to have red onions and yellow onions.

No, you want to have just one.

Okay.

And unfortunately, living in town, what are my neighbors growing? Plays a big deal in him.

Yeah, that's a good point.

So I have a neighbor two houses down that they have a garden, and they would have onions there, I think. I've never gone over to the garden and said, oh, what do you got going? I'm not that good of a neighbor with them. Otherwise, they're the only garden around me. So I could probably get away with I might risk it, and I might try it this year.

So that's a fun experiment anyway.

So you got the low tech but then there's the high tech way that we talked about last time. We talked about my Ctime app, which is and I forgot to say it's a web based app. It's not an app that you can download from Google Play or Apple Store yet. They're hoping to in the future. But if you have a browser, the way I use it on my phone is I have my browser, my Internet browser on my phone, and I'm logged into their website on my phone.

So you need to be connected to an Internet internet data, something you need.

To be to be able to use that. We can put a link, I'm assuming.

Rich yes, sure.

We can show comments like we did last time, and so that's how I'm doing it now. And it tells me it's like I plugged in my frost date and everything, and it tells me this is when you need to start. This is the week that you need to plant the seed, and then it will tell me when I need to transplant that outside.

Okay, so here's a question. So you go in there and you're like, okay, I'm planting onions, or I need to start my onions. And it tells you you need to start it on February 14. I'll just pick it up, pick a date. You put that in there, and you're like, does it have a reminder so that something pops up on your phone that says, hey, it's February 14.

Did you know you're supposed to plant your seed?

You if you need to actually go in there and look?

But it has a to do list. It has a to do list that you can pull up and say, this week you need to plant your onions. Start your onions from seed. Start parsley is another one you got to start in February.

It doesn't hook up to your Google Calendar.

Whatever.

Yeah, I have stuff that comes through on mine, some of my bills and stuff. And if I get an email on it, google picks that up and goes, hey, you know what? Your electric bill is due on the second or whatever it is. And wouldn't that be handy?

That would be handy. I will suggest that to them because they're always looking for a suggestion.

Just a thought that if you don't open up the app and you're not thinking about, oh, gosh, gosh, you know how time gets away from you and you're like, oh, crap, it's already oh, I should have done that?

Maybe if you depends on it. Some people I know that they do both, they will have a paper. I probably won't do a paper one this year, but I will probably print out a two list, and then I may manually put a reminder in my calendar. But that comes back to schedule. What's, your schedule or your planner? You put a reminder in your planner and check your seat app.

Yeah, there's ways to be rendered, but how handy would that be if you get the information plugged in there that it sends and you can put a reminder.

You can put tomatoes, and then you can sub, you know, varieties. So, like, if you have different varieties.

That you want to grow not all tomatoes grow. This is the same. Just you would probably start a station here. Listen to me.

You're out in the barn there, girl. So they're all different maturity date, but you start them all pretty much the same time from seeds because that talks about getting them ready to go outside. And usually a maturity date is from the time you transplant them for tomatoes anyway.

Well, I shouldn't tell you I've actually tried growing seed and stuff like that. I've done it a couple of times. Yeah, my second year definitely went better than my first year, but for me, it was just easier to buy the plants. That's okay, too. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're looking to do seeds, jamie is going to tell us here.

Yeah. I'm going to say if this is your first year gardening, this may not be where you want to start. Because if this is your first year garden, I would go to your local nursery and ask them varieties and stuff about. Yeah, they're there to answer your questions and stuff, and you may not get any. If you go to a big box store, you may not get as much help from your local nursery. They're very knowledgeable, and that's their business. They want to help you, and they want you to have a good thing but to start. But you're very limited at a nursery and a box store with varieties.

Yes.

So if you're wanting to branch out into different varieties of plants, that's when starting your own seed is awesome.

Yeah. Because not always do they carry the heirlooms and the zebra striped tomatoes and the funny color.

They taste great, but you don't use.

There'S not enough demand for them, so you're not going to find them there.

They're businesses to make money and they're not going to make money on those, right? There's not as high as much demand for them, I can see. But anyway, so one of consideration you need to start with is, do you have the space to do this and what equipment do I need to start this?

Starting seed? That takes some space.

Space and time. It's like having a two year old that you got to take care of a baby, toddler baby. So you need your seeds, of course. And so hopefully you have your seeds bought already or they will be coming soon. And don't plant seeds that don't like to be transplanted like a corn seed. Corn will not grow from a you can start it and stick it in the ground, but it's not going to be real happy. It's going to get shocked and it's going to be set back.

You know, that's like a really good point that some just you need to dress, sew. There are some plants you just better.

Off drexwing, waiting until it's warm enough and then just planting them in the dirt. And then you need a place to put so you need a place to put your seed trays, be it a shelf, a window seal that's got a lot of wide ledge on it. And if it's a window, it needs to be a window that gets lots of sun. So I would suggest south. But then you want to make sure that it's not too cold by that window, if that's where you're going to put it. Windows, it can work. It's a little more struggle with the window because you can't control the light because there's going to be days there's no sun. And if it's a draft, if you 100 year old house and you haven't replaced the windows, they could be drafty, and that draft will stunt your plants, too. So that's a consideration. So you want it warm, too. So if you're going to put it by the window, is it warm so that's the draft things and is it going to get enough light? Or you could use or shelving or heat mats to help germinate. I've said before that I have a hot water heat system in my 100 year old house, and so I have wide radiators that I use as my heat mats until, depending mart, if it's getting warm enough outside and my furnace isn't running, then I don't have my heat mats. So then I have to bring out my heat mats and use those to germinate my seeds. It's because most seeds want it to be warm to germinate. So that's a consideration. Once you do have, you're going to need lighting. So if you're using a south window, fine, great, that works too. But then what you need is a source of light. I use just shop lights, four foot shop lights that my husband now has put Led lights in, and that works great, except for the shelving unit. I'm using a cheap $15 shelving unit when we bought it probably ten years ago, 15 years ago. And the four foot shop lights are bigger than shelves. And so it was really hard to raise and lower them. So I'm going to buy some different ones this year that you don't have to because they're LEDs. You don't have to move them up and down.

And they say I was going to say because that's what we did. We use shop lights, and Rich just built like a four shelf scrap lumber. We did that. And we had chains hanging so that we could move that up and down. Because after the first year, I learned that you need to put your light.

Very close, otherwise you're going to leggy your leggy plants.

And you'll talk about that we'll talk.

About that light in a bit. You don't have to, because if you go on Amazon, you've got the gamut of grow lights if you type in. And it doesn't have to be nowadays because of LEDs, it doesn't have to be grow lights. I mean, it's got to be a broad spectrum, full color light. And I did watch a video.

Yeah, I would think you'd want you want a light that was daylight, the.

Equivalent, but it's like warm. And he talked about the spectrum of light and stuff. He wanted a new, more blue light, but more blue than the other. You want a wide spectrum, but you need to look into that. So research. This is what I have come up with for this. When we said, let's cover this, and it's like, okay, do this. How do I do this? So when you take your practices and have to put it on a paper to translate to somebody else. So that's one thing. You have to look at your lighting. You have to have some lighting. So we're just going to say have some lighting. Do some research.

Do some research on what's going to work best and having the Led, because I kept my lights on all the time.

Yeah, but then you got to try to remember, too. Yeah, that would turn it so you.

Have to remember after go to the bathroom to go downstairs during the lights. Yeah, see, I'm reading my notes here. So it's like the trays. You need the trays to put your seeds in. So those you can buy seed trays like you would find at a box store nursery. Or you can recycle something. My first years, I used plastic meat trays that I had rinsed out, and I just put sprinkled seeds on them, grew them, and then later on I did separate them and then put them in bigger pots. And then I have a wooden dowel thing that I bought from some seed company that I can make paper pots out of newspapers, newspaper strips. And so there's things like that.

That one where that's the type of thing where you can just drop that whole thing and you don't even have to disturb your plant at all.

And I cut a bunch of strips and then I sit and do this in front of the TV and I just throw them in a paper bag. And when the paper bag, usually a full paper bag is enough for what I need for the year, things like that. If you can do it, like low cost. I've heard people doing toilet paper rolls. I've done that, but I did not like they didn't seem to hold up as well.

I've heard of people using egg curtains, not the styrofoam ones, but the paper ones.

And you would have to pot those up fairly quickly because you look at how much soil is there. So if you're starting these pots in March, the end of March, beginning of April, that's six weeks for a tomato. That's six to eight weeks that it's going to survive in that dirt. And if that's not enough, you're going to need to bump them up into a bigger pot at some point in that six weeks.

That's one of those where you can just you can drop the whole thing in there.

It'll just decompose, which is I like. Which I like. And that's how you can do some of those plants that don't like to be transplant, like cucumbers or squash. If you start them in something like that, it is much easier to transplant them.

But you're not disturbing those.

You're not disturbing the reps. But I still would not do corn. There are some things you just start in the dirt, like peas. Peas don't transplant very well because as they grow, they get tangled. And to bring them apart and separate them, you rip the plant and you basically kill your plant. And then you need your starting mix. I use sterile seed starting mix because the companies I use an organic one, and those have been sterilized. I don't know if they bake them or how they sterile.

Sterile, I have no idea.

So that kills the fungus and stuff in it. Because of the dampness that you have growing and you're indoors, you have less chance of a fungus growing on them and killing your seedlings. Jill Winger from the Prairie Homestead website. Now she uses regular potting soil, and she had an issue last year with her potting soil, not having enough nitrogen, and she lost 150 tomato plants and had to start over. Yeah, so I use that and then about two weeks into it, I will start fertilizing with a fish. Fertilizer.

What? A fish?

Fish.

Okay.

It smells a little bit, guys. It smells like fish and stuff, but it's a really good a lot of nutrients in it. So those seedlings, after they get up a little bit, there's not that much dirt there when you're starting them. So they need to be fertilized and given food.

You said two weeks.

About two to three weeks. I will start fertilizing fertilizing because the seed, the seed has the nutrients in that seed for that plant to pop out and start growing up to its like first true leaf. I would start for license after that. And then another thing is you need to have a fan. You need to have a fan of some sort. I like an oscillating fan. Or if you're using a box fan, you need to rotate your plant because it's like growing on the inside. There's no stress on them. Stress makes all of us stronger. And so having a fan that blows on your plants, it puts stress on the stems and it makes the stems stronger, where if you don't and you take it and put it outside, they can't take the elements outside and so then they will more likely die on you. So you need to have that fan. And then it also helps with a fungus. It helps dry out the surface of the soil and so it'll help control some of the fungus. But then you've got to be careful that it doesn't dry it out too much. So that's where they're a baby, they're a toddler. You got to watch them all the time. And then you need a way to water your fertilizer.

I was just going to say watering.

I use a weed sprayer that has not had any chemicals in it because when you're planting, it has that fine mist so that you can mist your seeds down but not blow them out of the sails. But then once they get growing, then I have a watering can just like a house plant watering. And then I water them from the bottom once they're up and growing. I love the weed sprayer for keeping the surface moist so that they will germinate.

So you're just spraying a little bit instead of watering them and you're misting them.

And then I like it because you pump it and you hold it. Whereas I was using a spray bottle. And if you have a lot of.

Trays, your hand can get tired, I would imagine.

So that's the thing. This is the way I'm going to how am I going to do this? I'm just going to say it the way I do it. Get out of a place. You can make a mess.

Okay?

So if you're not going to want this in your kitchen, don't start it in your kitchen. I do it in the basement where it doesn't matter that it cement floors and it's easy to clean up. We have a craft table, spill water.

Most likely you can have dirt, fertilizer, stinky fertilizer, dirty fertilizer.

So yeah, have a place you can do that. And so you want to start out you want to start out and get your seed starting. Mix moist. You want it moist. So the way you pour water on it and just like how you test your garden to see if the soil is too wet, you take a handful of it and squeeze it. And if water runs out, it's too wet, you need to add more dirt in it and take some of that moisture out of it, out of the masses. But you want to squeeze it and you want it to hold together, but you want it to break apart really easy because you want that soil moist for the seeds to be able to germinate. So then I take that soil and I filled my seed trays, whatever I'm using. And then you want to lightly tap it down. I poke it in with my fingers. You don't want to pack it down, but you want to tamp it down so there's not a lot of ear pockets inside it. And so then you plant your seed. And the way I plant my seed is I poke a hole in with my finger or a pencil, depending on the size of the seed. And then you put your seed on there and then you sprinkle dirt or either push a little dirt over it or you sprinkle a little bit more dirt. And then one gal that I watch on YouTube, she has started using vermiculite on top of her soil to help with moisture retention. I'm glad I have somebody that sits.

And listens to me.

And then I usually put two to three seeds in each sale, depending on how old your seeds are, not every seed may grow. And so I always put a couple in there just to guarantee or have better odds of getting a seed to grow in each sale. And if you get a sale that a seed doesn't pop up just if it's been a week or two and nothing's grown there and if it's really a big concern to you, just poke another seed in there. It will just be behind a little bit, but it'll catch up eventually. If you have a cell that doesn't grow, don't stress about it. Label your stuff. So you can either buy pre made labels I usually plant by the row in in a tray. And my favorite thing to use is an old mini blind that the string is broke on. And then I take them, cut them into the length that I want and then slice them in half so they're small and I can stick them down in each cell. And then put my dome over it for when I want to see my humidity dome over them. And so I know what each row. Because even though I may have a piece of paper and I labeled my trays, this is tray number one. I don't always want to sit and pull out that piece of paper going, what is that?

Okay, so you basically mark your rows just like you do like your garden.

And sharpie marker is okay. But if you can find a sharpie laundry marker, they're really good.

A laundry marker?

Yeah.

Okay.

Called a laundry marker. And then they make garden markers that are supposed to be just as good, but they take a little more effort to wear out even outside. I have markers that I use every year or see row markers and stuff that the marking will stay on it for a couple of years.

Okay.

And so that's what I use. And then after you plant them, cover them, put your vermiculite on top. Then you missed them. And then I put them in my tray. And then I put a dome on them to help hold the humidity in to help with. And then I go put them on my radiator. Put them on your seed mat so that they're warm and wait. But then you need to check and set your timer up. I put my lights and my fan on a timer. So that's kind of one of part of the automated of my day, so I don't have to do that part. But I do have to go check on the water. I check each day. I check my plants. Is anything growing? Does it need to be moved off the seed mat? Does it need a little bit more water because it's dried out? It's been a week or so. It's just like a kid. You got to check on them all the time.

Okay, so you said you have a fan running.

Yes.

But you have a dome on top of your okay. Explain the dome and how we work.

I put a dome on. So I plant them, put them in my seed trays, put the dome on them, and then I put them on my radiators. I don't have the fan on yet.

Okay.

And so then I take mine when they sprout, I take them because my radiators in my dining room, and so that's where I put them. Then once they sprout, I move them back to the basement, put them on my plastic shelving, and then I turn my fan on.

Okay. So the dome is now gone.

The dome is now gone.

The dome is only on there to help keep the moisture so they can.

Sprout and heat and stuff.

Okay. Yeah.

I need somebody to help me ask questions so that people understand me and keep them moist. Don't saturate them. You don't want to saturate them because if you keep them too wet, they won't get oxygen in their ruts, and so then they will suffocate, basically, just like we do with no oxygen. I said watering. From the bottom once they're up and growing.

So how do you do that?

I use just a watering can. Anybody can do that.

So when you say you water from the bottom, do you have a tray underneath there? And then you fill that tray so that they can just take what they need. So you're not watering from the top?

No, not after they're up and growing. I water them from the bottom and I don't fill the tray. Like, this is one of those things. This is second. I don't even think about it anymore. I never fill it all the way up because they won't use it. I just put a little bit so that the bottom of the seed cells that are sitting in the tray can touch it.

So it's better to keep it under and maybe water more often yeah. Than it is to just fill it up. And I don't have to worry about it for two weeks?

No. Yeah, you kill them stuff, because that's when you're going to have those saturated plants and they're going to die.

Got you.

So now that you have your plants and they're growing, so it's been two weeks, they're upgrowing, they've got their first set of leaves. I actually wait probably until they're a little taller. So now you've got three plants in.

This little half inch cell. Yeah.

And so I will go in and thin, and I don't pull. I have a little plant nipper. You could use a craft scissors or whatever. I go in and cut the ones that I don't want. I look and see which one is stronger, which one looks like a better plant, and I cut the ones that aren't as strong.

Okay. So why wouldn't I want to try to go in and break that all up and go, I've got three plants. I'll just move. I'll take two out of there and put them in new cells. Why wouldn't I want to do that?

You can do that. It's a little more time consuming. But not all plants like their ritz disturbed. Okay. If you do that, you run the risk of killing three instead of just two. And I know it's hard for us gardeners to kill plants on purpose.

That's what my thing is.

But there's three babies, and so there's not enough space or nutrients there to support three plants. And so you're better off getting rid of two of them so that you have one strong, healthy plant to put outside. But it's hard for his plant mama or daddy to do that. But that's what we have to do. And then sometimes there's like, what were the plants last year that I grew? There were some flowers. The seeds are so tiny that you can't control how many you put in there. And I had 20 plants in one cell, and so I just started on the outside of it with my little giving it a haircut? Yeah, giving a haircut around it saying until I got it down to just two or three. And so then once you thin them, so then you're in the process for four to six weeks, eight weeks, it's probably going to be ten weeks with my onions and parsley. And so you're just taking care of them. But then when it comes time, it's like, oh yeah, it's time to go outside. It's getting warm enough. And so you need to do what they call hardening off. You need to adjust your babies to being outside in the elements. Just like when we have our kids and they're teenagers and they're going to go off, you got to prep them to be pushed out of the nest. And so you need to take them outside. Granted, you've been using the fan to harden their stems and stuff and so you need to take them outside and get them used to being out in the real world of the real wind and the real sun and stuff. But you don't want to do it. Push them out there and leave them out there for two weeks and they go fly. No, you leave them out there for I do start out and leave them out for like all day. So I'll take them out in the morning once it warms up and then I will bring them or cover them in the evening. I have little mini greenhouses that I set out on the northeast side of my garage where it will get morning sun, but it's in the shade in the afternoon, so I go out and I put them all out. Once it's warm enough, I put them out in my mini greenhouse and I'll go out and zip it up. And so they stay open all day. So they're getting the wind and everything. They're kind of protected, but then they're getting some of it. And then once it's warm enough, I leave it open all the time and then that's all I do. Some people insist that you need to put it out so they're getting the full force. Well, I don't have the space. And when you have, I will probably end up with like ten trays to pull tin trays out and sit them on the ground or somewhere all day and then to put those tin trays back at night. I don't have time for that. So this is my solution. They're getting some elements and there's some things you can do when you put them out in the garden. You can protect them with milk cans. Milk jars, I was going to say.

My mom used to use the metal coffee cans. Coffee cans.

So buckets with the bottoms, I've done that. Cut the bottoms out of them and stuff like that. So there's ways to do that. And so then that's it. And once they've been outside for a week or so, adjusting to the true elements and the weather in your area, then they're ready to go in the ground. And so that's it. That's how I start my seedlings. And I did want to go back, and there's so what if you had seeds that did so if you have a whole batch of seeds that don't grow, like, you have a row that didn't come up, why did that not grow? And so number one is probably, how old are your seeds? I mean, looking at me, I need to watch that. Because I grew one year just two years ago, because I took I took a few years off from starting my own seeds. And so I had old seeds, and I thought, well, I'm going to put them in and see if they grew. I had, like, three tomato varieties that did not grow. And so how old are your seeds? That's the number one reason. And you can do a germination test, which is just like we did in grade school, take a paper towel, wet it, and put you like ten is a good number, because then it's easy math. You know, put ten seeds out and see how many grows, and that will tell you what your rate of germination is. And so if if it's not 100%, but it's 50%, you know, you need to double up on your seeds. I would put four seeds in that sale instead of just two or three.

Okay.

So you have better odds of, is it warm enough? Is your soil warm enough? Grated in the house that you're trying to control that. But if you're plant even outside in the garden, did you plant something that didn't grow? Was it warm enough? Was your soil warm enough? If the soil is not warm enough, your seed's not going to grow. Did your soil dry out in the house? I mean, that's the thing out in the garden, too. Carrot seeds are a tough one. If the carrot seed dries out, you lost it. If you plant it, water it, and you don't get carrots growing in a week. It dried out too much, and you've lost it. And you need to replant. And then it's just like some seeds just take longer germinate. Another case inside, did you have dampening off when you've kept your seed too wet? And then you end up with a fungus growing on top of it. You will watch it, and the stem of your plant will just start shrinking, and then it'll shovel up and just fall over. The odds are you're keeping it too moist, and so you need to be back on it. You're taking too good of a care on your plant.

Okay?

It's like you're overfeeding it or over watering it, and you can replant it and just start over. And so that's what it is. But then we didn't cover legginess when we were talking about we talked about legginess, and that is when your plant is looking for it's not getting enough light, and it's looking and reaching for the light. So if you are using a window seal, one of the easiest ways to help that is rotate your plant every other day or so. Turn your plant trays so that they have to move back and forth. And so that's another bit of exercising, helping grow stronger stems. But then too, they don't reach so hard because if they get too legy they're not going to grow, they're not going to survive. And you basically just start over. Oh, I know what else there's another way. I've only done it once and I played with doing it again is winter sewing.

I have read a little bit about winter sewing.

Winter sewing is where you take a milk carton or a milk jug or water jug. They make them big enough and you cut them open but leave a hinge and you poke drain holes in it. And then you put potting soil, potting soil, not seed starting soil because seed starting dries out too much. So you put soil in there just the same way. Put your moist soil in there, put your seeds on them, cover them and then you close it up and you tape it shut. Usually with like a duct tape, some strong tape because they're going to have to hold up to the elements outside. And then you take them and you sit them outside, preferably a south side of your house. And that's all you do.

And what's the time frame for, let's say for our zone, which is four B. So when would I do this? In January? I'm doing this in the fall.

You could, it depends if you have more time now you could do it, you could do it now instead of outside. And the philosophy is that they're like a plant outside. They will wake up when they're ready to and then you want to make sure that it's a plant that can handle cold temperatures. So like a tomato and pepper that it's going to get below freezing, they won't handle that, they'll die. But if it's pre annual or if it's an annual like kale kale snapdragons, a cool season crop that can handle cold temperatures are great candidates for that. If you don't have the time to sit in putts with making sure they have water lights turning off fan to send them outside. And the only thing is if you live in a zone that doesn't get enough rain, you may have to come along and water them, check on them every few weeks here. I don't think we'd have an issue because we get enough snow. Because you leave the cap off. Leave the cap off and say what? So that they will vent, they won't get too hot. But then if you do have snow, like we have snow out there today, it will get a little snow in there and that will be their little bit of moisture. But they won't get over saturated as long as you don't put them under an eve that will drown them. That's my issue, putting them someplace where they won't drown, because all my south facing walls of the house have an eve.

Okay.

So they might drown if I put them right up against the or right now, I'd have to dig out the snow to be able to set them up there.

True.

Because there's drifts on the south side of my house. It's like 2ft deep. That's another way to do it. Any questions? Anything you can think of? I forgot.

Can we go back for a second about if, say, your seed doesn't come up in your cells, so does planting depth have a yes.

Your seed packet wealth of information will usually tell you how deep to plant them. Otherwise, a general rule is double the size of the seed. So, like, cucumber seed is bigger than like a tomato seed. So a tomato seed you're barely pushing in, and a cucumber seed you're going to push in a little harder. Or then you have some flour seeds that are hardly there, and you just sprinkle them on the top because they need light to sow, and you don't even need to you just need to push them into the soil. You don't even need to cover them.

Okay.

The one I'm thinking of is alyssums. I grow lots of alyssums. And you just sprinkle them on the top of the soil, tap them down very lightly so they're making contact, and that's all you do to them. And so that's a general so double the width of the seed. So that's how you if the package doesn't say for some reason you don't want to plasten too deep because then they may not have enough energy to push up through the soil to the surface. Okay.

I thought seed depth made a difference.

So that's like outside so like a sunflower seed, you're going to plant deeper than you would a radish seed. Anything else you can think of I may have no, I don't think so.

I think you've covered it really good.

And this is an opinion. Everybody has one.

Yeah. I was going to say this is what works for you and that you've learned over the course of time and some things that work for you may not work for somebody else.

Yeah. If you're in a different zone than me yeah. You're going to have to learn what your zone is and how to grow in your zone. I've always said if I moved, I'd have to relearn how to garden. If I moved out of Minnesota, zone four. Yeah. I'd have to relearn everything.

Yeah. Well, look, the person that commented on our post today about our Ghee, and she asked about pressure canners and she said she was in Phoenix, Arizona, and she only has a spring and a fall garden.

Yeah, because they do actually, that's my brother's girlfriend.

Yeah.

And I just I just like, well, yeah, they fry. Yeah, I've talked to Ernie in the summertime, they, like, fry everything. Yep. So she she will plant in the fall and she gardens she gardens opposites than we do. So she's gardening right now. Yeah.

It's weird.

Yeah, it's weird to have somebody kind of what do you mean you don't have a summer garden?

Because that's our mentality here. We don't have a winter garden.

As we're going in and starting to plant, they're finishing up.

It's very interesting.

Yeah.

Kind of fun to talk to people who are in other parts of our.

Country anyway, because my brother, he lives in Texas, and he's, like, going in the summertime. I don't hardly go outside in the summer. I have no grassimo. It's all burnt up. And he goes he goes, what's the difference? Okay, you stay in the house all winter, and I stay in the house all summer. But that just sounds wrong. Exactly. Like summertime. You're supposed to be outside and enjoying the sun.

Okay, I think we've covered everything.

I think so too.

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