Video: Seed Starting Basics

It’s time to talk about seed starting! I know that beginning and seasoned gardeners alike want to hit the ground running so they’re ready for this year’s growing season so that’s the topic for this week’s video.

I should to warn you in advance that it’s longer than most of my videos but seed starting is such a useful skill that I really wanted to make this an information-packed video. Last week, I asked my Facebook followers what questions they have about starting plants from seed. The response was terrific and so were the questions.

In this video, I was able to answer the majority of them. There were occasionally some questions that were very specific to an individual gardener’s situation, so I answered those directly in the comments of my Jan. 23 Facebook post. I also plan to do some short follow-up videos about seed starting in the coming weeks, so that should help as well. I promise to keep you posted.

Because this is a long video, I thought you’d appreciate having a timeline so you know exactly when I start talking about each aspect of seed-starting:

Timeline:
1:58 Information on seed packets
3:49 Seed starting resources
10:43 Susan’s book bonus
11:47 How to test seeds for viability/Germination test
14:05 Seed-starting Q&A begins
14:23 Q. Why start seeds indoors?
16:20 Q. Soil mixes to use
17:11 Q. What to do about fungus gnats?
19:21 Q. How to prevent damping-off syndrome?
20:50 Q. When to use seedling heat mats?
22:17 Q. When do I fertilize seedlings?
22:37 Q. Lighting
24:54 Q. How to harden-off seedlings
26:59 Basic seed-starting equipment
35:08 Seed-starting step-by-step

And finally, here’s the video! I hope you’ll enjoy it and that there’s plenty of information in it to guarantee you’ll be successful.