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00:00:00If you've started a garden in the past and had some successes,
00:00:03but also a fair amount of failures,
00:00:05then this is the video to watch because we're going to take this one-year-old
00:00:08garden behind me, troubleshoot it, improve it,
00:00:11plant it out with some fresh live seedlings,
00:00:13but also start seeds from start to finish.
00:00:16I'm standing here not at my own garden,
00:00:17but in Santa Ana, California at my brother's house,
00:00:20because last year we came up and built this garden together from scratch.
00:00:25And this year we want to improve it.
00:00:27And also it's his first season he's ever going to start seeds.
00:00:30So we're going to take you through that entire process.
00:00:32But first we need to summon the Epic Brother.
00:00:36Works every time. My brother. What's up? How you doing? Good, good.
00:00:40Last time people said we were twins. This time you wore the glasses.
00:00:43So I think maybe not. Yeah. We're just mixing it up a little bit this time,
00:00:46I think. Who's more handsome? Put it down in the comments. Let's go. Anyway,
00:00:50so Bright, we set this up last year. You had some really good success.
00:00:54You even added things like passion fruit, et cetera.
00:00:57But I want to walk around with you and talk about what you didn't like,
00:01:00what didn't go well, the things that you have questions about.
00:01:02We'll put together a plan to improve it.
00:01:04And then we'll take you through like the whole process of starting your very
00:01:06first seeds for a vegetable garden. Okay. Let's do it. So Bright,
00:01:10we're here at the Humble Garden.
00:01:12I see a couple of things that we did do last year that are still here.
00:01:14So the strawberries. Strawberries, super well. A lot of strawberries.
00:01:18You can see like they're just popping runners everywhere. It just blew up.
00:01:21Had to prune it a bit back, but we got a lot from that.
00:01:23I'm seeing some sadness here. Yeah. So hit or miss on the herbs.
00:01:26Some were doing well. Obviously, rosemary is still doing well.
00:01:29So we'll get some herbs and we'll start some herbs. But what about these beds?
00:01:33So last time we were here, we put some lettuce,
00:01:35I think cabbage or broccoli or something like that. How did these do?
00:01:38Not super strong. I think we were able to get a little bit out of it,
00:01:41but those definitely weren't a success I'd say overall. Okay.
00:01:45That bed we ended up switching to flowers and then that was a bit of a struggle
00:01:49trying to dial those in, get those working out. So that's something,
00:01:52I'm not sure exactly what works there. And what were these for?
00:01:55What were these trellises for? Those were for squash, which did do a great job.
00:01:59We got spaghetti squash in there and we got a few decent sized ones. Oh,
00:02:03there's even still a little bit of a pepper going on here. Yeah.
00:02:05So we had sweet peas and tomatoes, jalapeno. Honestly,
00:02:10that bed across the board, anything we put there did really well.
00:02:12It worked. And then the big change to me is you put in a passion fruit wall on
00:02:16the backside here. And that has been doing very well.
00:02:19What didn't go well that you want to fix? Flowers,
00:02:22I think trying to figure out like how to get something going there that we can
00:02:25actually, you know, pull some flowers out of. Okay.
00:02:28And then I think some of the stuff we chose wasn't great timing and we just
00:02:32were like, Oh,
00:02:33let's get some spinach and it was like in the summer and that's not going to
00:02:35work out in hindsight. I'm noticing even here, like these are brussels.
00:02:40I don't know when you planted them,
00:02:40but they're definitely getting the classic Brussels sprout treatment of aphids.
00:02:44So what we're going to do is first thing I'm noticing is not a lot planted and
00:02:49it's mid February, early March.
00:02:50We could definitely plant some stuff right now today. Okay.
00:02:53Which means we probably have to amend the soil a little bit.
00:02:55We're too low on these beds. Yeah. The tomatoes after ripping those out,
00:02:59it was like just, just sunk. Yeah. Well, first year, last year when we built it,
00:03:02you're building the bed from scratch, you're putting the soil in.
00:03:05It's going to have a natural sink. This first year,
00:03:07it always sinks maybe four or six inches or so, which is totally fine.
00:03:11So we're going to grab some bags from the nursery.
00:03:13We're going to hit the nursery. We'll get a,
00:03:14we'll probably plant two of these beds out. Okay.
00:03:17We'll start seeds for the other ones. Great.
00:03:19And then we'll answer any questions along the way.
00:03:20So let's hit the nursery, Bri. All right. And we'll come back. Great.
00:03:24Bri, we're here a year later at the Armstrong Gardens in Tustin, California.
00:03:27Last time we were driving around the whole city trying to find enough soil.
00:03:30This time we only need like four bags. Yeah.
00:03:33And we'll talk about what kind of bags we need. Okay.
00:03:35We have a pile of soil here, Bri. What questions do you have?
00:03:37So we had to get a ton of soil last time to fill everything.
00:03:40And now I guess, how do I choose what to get next? What to top it up with?
00:03:45Does it match? Do I need to pick it based on what I'm growing?
00:03:48Like how do I figure out what I'm supposed to put in there? Okay.
00:03:51So here we have different mixes for different purposes,
00:03:56but then there's also like components.
00:03:57So like compost or perlite or things that you would blend together to make a
00:04:01soil. Since we already blended the soil last year,
00:04:04all we really need to do is bring that level up with something good.
00:04:09That's already been made. So I found one bag of this, which is Fox Farm.
00:04:13I don't think you remember,
00:04:14but last year we looked at this and said this would probably be a little too
00:04:16pricey to make the whole bed out of. Yeah. In this case,
00:04:19this is perfect because we only need, oops,
00:04:22about four or five bags of this. Okay.
00:04:25And the reason it's good is I'll just read the back for you like we did last
00:04:28time. So you've got some forest products, peat moss, perlite, loam,
00:04:33and fertilizer, basically what makes a good overall mix.
00:04:36But there's a bunch of inherent organic nutrients in here, fish emulsion,
00:04:40crab meal, shrimp meal, earthworm castings,
00:04:42kind of like fertilizer to kickstart it for the season.
00:04:45So I wouldn't have to like add anything to the soil to like make it good?
00:04:48You don't have to. I mean, you could,
00:04:49and we might when we plant out the vegetables that we're going to pick.
00:04:52But for now you could plant directly into this and you'd be fine.
00:04:55We just need more bags. Okay, cool. Let's scrounge them up.
00:05:02Okay. So we need to get some veg. We want to plant a couple beds out,
00:05:05maybe two of them. So what are you thinking for the season right now?
00:05:09Well, I guess what,
00:05:11what is good for the season first and then go from there, I think, ultimately?
00:05:15Yeah. Yeah. That is the way to do it. So it is mid-Feb right now,
00:05:19early Feb. We're in Santa Ana, California.
00:05:24So you can tell by the sun, we could get away with planting right now.
00:05:27A lot of people watching, they're watching and it's a bit snowy,
00:05:30if it's this time of year. So it's all based on frost zones or frost dates.
00:05:35Okay. So there's your first and your last frost.
00:05:38Your first frost is in the fall.
00:05:39First time that the ground gets hard enough that you really can't work it and
00:05:42plants will get killed by the cold. Your last frost,
00:05:45counterintuitively is in the spring because it's the last time that happens
00:05:48before you get into spring and summer. In our climate, we don't have a frost date.
00:05:52Technically it's January, but even then you barely ever get it here.
00:05:56And so what that means is you can plant most things,
00:05:59but there's still the weather patterns that would make it a little bit more
00:06:02advantageous to plant something like we see here, like this lettuce.
00:06:05There's a bunch of herbs. Celery would actually be a great pick right now.
00:06:09So things that like a little bit more of a crisp climate.
00:06:12You probably wouldn't get maybe tomatoes,
00:06:13peppers started right now in February in the ground.
00:06:16We'll probably start those when we get back to the house and do a whole seed
00:06:19starting session. So let's just go around and just pick a couple of things here.
00:06:23We already have brussels in, I guess. With those, with the aphid issue,
00:06:27is that something that should be like replaced?
00:06:30I'd reset it. Yeah, I'd reset it.
00:06:31Cause so this Brussels sprouts are a brassica crop.
00:06:34They're actually the same species as broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage,
00:06:39kohlrabi. It's the exact same species, just bred for like different features.
00:06:43And so they all get hit by aphids all the time.
00:06:44And once they're at that stage that yours were at, it's too far gone.
00:06:48There's so many aphids eating that middle part that they're probably not going to
00:06:51make it. And it's, you know, $6 to get six more.
00:06:55So I think that's a really good choice.
00:06:57You just have to watch for the aphids on this.
00:06:59Otherwise the same thing is going to happen, you know?
00:07:01So these look pretty solid to me.
00:07:04We'll put these in the mix.
00:07:06And then if I'm picking a starter,
00:07:09what should I be looking out for to like not choose?
00:07:13Or like what should it be where I'm looking at?
00:07:14Like within the starters?
00:07:16So what you could do is you could say, get the best value for your dollar,
00:07:21right? So you could say, okay, well, you know, this one maybe is a little small.
00:07:24Do I want a bigger one? I'm looking at this right here. This looks decent.
00:07:30I would usually inspect, especially on something like a Brussels.
00:07:33Do I see anything on the underside of the leaves?
00:07:36Oh, cause they could already have aphids potentially?
00:07:38They could have aphids or they could have cabbage worms is another thing that can
00:07:41hit these. And so you're looking for are there little holes?
00:07:44Like I don't really see any, I see a little one right there.
00:07:48But for the most part, this looks really healthy.
00:07:51And I'm looking like, like, is that an aphid right there? Or is that just a weed?
00:07:55Yeah. So you want to look for health and see if there's any bugs on it.
00:07:58Or just like wilt, you know, sometimes all these actually look really good,
00:08:02but I don't know,
00:08:03maybe if you come over in here and take a look at this lettuce,
00:08:06sometimes they'll overgrow the container a bit cause they've been sitting too
00:08:10long. And they start to look a little weird. It's like, why buy that if you don't have to?
00:08:15There's a better option, I guess. Totally.
00:08:16If I can buy one of these for $5.99, right? Yeah.
00:08:20And I'm seeing... That's not your first choice. And take a look,
00:08:23like look how much is in here.
00:08:25How many lettuce plants do you think are actually growing there?
00:08:27It's gotta be what? It's like 12 maybe? Yeah. Is it that many?
00:08:31Like it's a little crazy to me that it's sold in this way when I can go right
00:08:35over here, like I just showed you.
00:08:39And I can buy this for $6.99. So $1 more. Yeah.
00:08:43And I've got one, two. A lot cleaner growth. Yeah. And these are all individual,
00:08:47see how they're all individual lettuce? So this is just six. Okay.
00:08:50Whereas there's actually like 12 in one thing over there. Yeah.
00:08:54So it's kind of misleading. Plus also,
00:08:56I imagine it's harder to like get that apart cleanly. You almost can't.
00:08:59Like there's just too many. You know what I mean? So you want lettuce or no?
00:09:03Yeah. Lettuce. I think if it's going to grow,
00:09:05I think it's worth the shot right now. Yeah.
00:09:06I do think we got to spruce up the herb bed. The herbs are right here.
00:09:10So what do you want to grow? Okay. Well the basil, that's being pulled, right?
00:09:15We got to pull all the basil, 100%. Yeah. Basil's looking rough.
00:09:17Some right there if you want. Okay. I know cilantro we did try doing.
00:09:22It did not work so well, but definitely something we would use.
00:09:25So I think we would definitely want to do cilantro again. Okay.
00:09:28We'll do cilantro. Cilantro is actually good to grow at this time of year.
00:09:31It doesn't do well in the heat. It does better in cooler temperatures,
00:09:34which is right now. So this is perfect.
00:09:35So I might recommend going in with like oregano. Oregano.
00:09:40Cause you're never not,
00:09:41you're never going to not want this just in case. We did have oregano.
00:09:44That also didn't end up going super strong.
00:09:48I think it stayed there for a little bit,
00:09:49but just kind of like was in a clump and didn't do anything.
00:09:52Maybe we'll like loosen it up a little bit and plant it in a different area and
00:09:55it'll do better. We'll see. You said broccoli would do well right now too?
00:09:58I think that would be cool to grow. You guys use that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
00:10:01So broccoli is going to be, why don't you pick one?
00:10:03This one's got a little buds already. Is that, would I want that or is that?
00:10:07No. No. This is a, I mean, being honest,
00:10:10this is a complete waste of money if you bought this.
00:10:12Cause the second it's starting to flower, which is,
00:10:15a broccoli head is just a bunch of unopened flowers. That's all it is.
00:10:17If it's at this point right now, it is not going to produce.
00:10:21It's just not going to produce. It's already doing it.
00:10:23So that would not be the choice. Yeah. Yeah. Total no.
00:10:26But it looks like there's some other broccoli over here. What is that?
00:10:32Premium crop broccoli. What do you think? That looks pretty good.
00:10:36It looks decent to me. Yeah. Nothing's budding. Cool.
00:10:39For flowers, we brought in Kim, Brian's wife. Kim,
00:10:42I know you've got something you have your eye on right now. Definitely do.
00:10:46I tried planting ranunculus before, but it just didn't grow.
00:10:49It just kind of died.
00:10:50So I don't know if there's a specific trick to it that I'm maybe missing out on.
00:10:54You know, it's not my expertise to have a ranunculus, but let's,
00:10:58let's grab a couple. Do you like the white, the cream white? Okay, we'll do that.
00:11:01These would, these would be good in like the corner of a bed.
00:11:04Give a little accent to a bed. They grow a foot tall, a foot wide.
00:11:06So you just pop them in here and there.
00:11:08Like maybe we do it between the broccolis or something. Oh, cool. Yeah.
00:11:11So grab, grab whatever you want. Anything else down this row you're looking for?
00:11:15I do like, I forgot exactly what those white ones are called, but yeah.
00:11:19We'll get some stock.
00:11:21And do those grow kind of similarly to ranunculus? I don't even know.
00:11:25Let's see. Stock 15 to 18, 6 to 12. Pretty much then. Yeah.
00:11:30They might even get a tiny bit, tiny bit bigger. We'll see. They're just younger.
00:11:35Okay. So we'll grab one of those. These,
00:11:37I know we're going with like a white theme here, but this is alyssum.
00:11:41This is a really nice like plant to put on the side of a bed because it falls
00:11:46over in like bushes and just smell it.
00:11:49Oh yeah. It's like honey, you know? Oh, okay.
00:11:52So generally for flowers, do you want it,
00:11:54do you want them in the same beds as the vegetables or just a single like flower
00:11:58bed specific? I mean, it's both work, both work. If you were,
00:12:01if you were clearing out like an area of the garden and the ground,
00:12:04a lot of people would do like an annual flower bed.
00:12:07Like a bunch of our friends on YouTube love to do that. But for me at least,
00:12:11I mix them into a vegetable bed to like color it up a little bit.
00:12:14This in particular, alyssum will bring in a ton of small beneficial insects.
00:12:19These guys might bring in some larger ones, which if you had,
00:12:21let's say tomatoes maybe or peppers or squash that wanted pollinators,
00:12:26this brings them in, which is nice.
00:12:28And then you can just play with the heights cause these will be a lot shorter
00:12:31and you get more of them.
00:12:32So you can kind of mix and match and like sprinkle them throughout.
00:12:36And yeah, I mean, these look pretty good to me. You happy with them?
00:12:40I am. Yeah. And then you go those together or do you just want them to have a
00:12:44whole patch? Yeah. I mean, you could,
00:12:45you could do a whole patch of them if you wanted to,
00:12:46but we'd probably want to like pepper them out in the garden.
00:12:49The brothers of Spiritu are back from the nursery wearing the same clothing yet
00:12:52again. Copycat. I'm an inspo, I know. Anyways, we're back. We had some lunch,
00:12:57we had some food.
00:12:58We are ready to go on planting out the garden before we get to our major seed
00:13:02starting session later on. Brian,
00:13:05what questions do you have at this point?
00:13:06Cause you've never replanted a garden for the second season really. Yeah. Um,
00:13:10well, one of them is after,
00:13:13irrigation wasn't in the last time we did the video. So I did that after.
00:13:16And I don't know if I set it up like correctly.
00:13:18We can look at that like how much it needs to be dialed into exactly what you're
00:13:21growing and that kind of thing. I kind of just winged it and it worked okay,
00:13:24but I'm sure there's probably improvements to be made.
00:13:26We'll take a look at this and then we also need to fill these beds up. Right.
00:13:29So it's a good time to look at the irrigation because we're not going to dump
00:13:33soil all over the top of it.
00:13:34So that's one of my questions was like,
00:13:35does it need to be sitting on top always? Basically?
00:13:39It doesn't need to be sitting all the way on top.
00:13:41You could like say you had like some mulch or some wood chips you put on top,
00:13:44you might want to cover the irrigation. But in this case,
00:13:46if you're going to be planting, you know,
00:13:48up here cause we're about to put this bag of soil on,
00:13:51I don't want the irrigation sitting below the part of the plant.
00:13:55So let's just go ahead and lift this. And this is actually a little bit low
00:13:58already. So this is a good, good excuse.
00:14:01So what you've done here is you've used drip line.
00:14:05There's drip tape and there's drip line.
00:14:06Drip line is the thinner stuff and you just kind of swirled it around.
00:14:09Like this is actually a really good way to set it up. So you have your elbows,
00:14:13you have a, what's called a header row of the main line.
00:14:15So this is just getting the water here. And then you kept it simple.
00:14:18You didn't even cut it to size. You just kind of just wrapped it.
00:14:21Cause I thought maybe it wouldn't be enough water if I ended it there.
00:14:24Cause there's only so many places the water comes out.
00:14:26So I didn't know how much needs to be there.
00:14:28The way I think about this is if I had a plant that wanted a lot of water,
00:14:31I might put it right here. Cause I have more emitters on this section.
00:14:34Or you could just cut it right here in the future and put a cap on.
00:14:37It doesn't really matter. But to me, this looks pretty solid.
00:14:40It's a very simple setup. So here's what we'll do.
00:14:43We'll take the lines and we'll just bring them off. So here we go.
00:14:47All we want to do, dump on top.
00:14:49So how tall are we like, do we ideally want to go pretty much up to the brim?
00:14:53In a world where we don't have mulch,
00:14:54which would be like wood chips or straw to put on top,
00:14:57you can fill it pretty darn close to the brim. In a world where you do,
00:15:00then you may want to leave an inch and you'd put some of that on top afterwards.
00:15:03Why would I want to use the mulch or something on top, I guess?
00:15:06So let's say once we plant in, you know, lettuce here or something,
00:15:10the soil is going to be losing water out of the top from evaporation, right?
00:15:14And if you put on mulch, it's going to help lock in some of that moisture.
00:15:17It just slows down the rate at which it dries up basically.
00:15:21Slows down the evaporation and it also helps keep the soil temperatures cool.
00:15:24So if I mulched it on top, would I then want to water less a little bit?
00:15:29You would need to water slightly less. And I would say,
00:15:33don't overthink that though.
00:15:34Oh, like it's not impactful enough that it's worth trying to dial it in exactly
00:15:38or anything.
00:15:39With this type of irrigation,
00:15:40you probably run this two to three times a week for 20, 30 minutes.
00:15:44Whether you have mulch or not, you're in a good spot.
00:15:46I think maybe then that's part of where I'm going.
00:15:48I think mine right now is running twice a day.
00:15:51That might be a little much.
00:15:52But I think I need to change maybe because the summer I think I may have had it
00:15:55and I need to revisit it. It's definitely a little cooler now than it was.
00:15:59Do you have this thing on like a timer or something? Yeah. Okay.
00:16:01So on the timer,
00:16:02what you can do is just set a reminder a couple of times a year as the
00:16:05temperatures change to check and see how, like you can just look,
00:16:09you can dig down on the soil, see, hey, is this like absolutely soaking wet?
00:16:13Cause you kind of want the soil to be a little dry at the top before you water
00:16:17again. Otherwise you probably are overwatering.
00:16:19What that can do is that can cause stunted growth on the plants.
00:16:22So now we've got to get rid of some of the stuff that we don't need anymore.
00:16:26So we'll rip out these brussels. These are the ones that have the aphids on them.
00:16:29Grab brussels. But you know what?
00:16:31We have six more and they're going to grow way better and way faster now.
00:16:34Oh, good Lord. Wow, that's actually down there, huh? What? Okay.
00:16:38That's some healthy soil. Look at the roots. What is happening here?
00:16:40That is a crazy root ball. You know what? These,
00:16:45these plants were trying to grow, but the aphids stopped them. Oh.
00:16:47You would have had some monster brussels with a root ball like that.
00:16:49Do you try and salvage the soil from this or is it not nutrient rich enough to
00:16:53deal with it? No, it's totally good. Here's what I do.
00:16:56I take it and I just bang it on the wall. Oh, okay.
00:16:59See, I guess that's a little bit easier than trying to dig it up.
00:17:01And what that does is eventually you're kind of only left with this and there's
00:17:06not much left of it in there. You just give that a toss.
00:17:13If you see any weeds, Bri, you can pull those out too.
00:17:15Cause if they get to a point where they produce a flower,
00:17:18they might produce seeds and then you've got more weeds.
00:17:25So we are topped off with soil. We need to start some seeds,
00:17:28but let's get the stuff we actually bought in the garden. Okay. Okay.
00:17:31Let's tackle the herb bed. Okay. All the basil's got to go.
00:17:34So this stuff isn't what we planted last time, right? No.
00:17:37So that stuff wasn't doing well.
00:17:39So we got some new basil, threw that in here.
00:17:42And then also this is kind of looking real weird. Do you know,
00:17:45do you know what you did wrong on this one? Uh, not quite. Okay.
00:17:48So look how many basil plants are coming out of the same.
00:17:52So every one of these is a separate. Do you remember at the nursery we were just
00:17:56at when I showed you that one lettuce at home? It's basically the same situation.
00:17:59So you could have split this up and planted them individually and it would have
00:18:03done better. And it's just a mistake. It's all good.
00:18:06It's cause the nursery's crowded that way. It's confusing for a beginner.
00:18:09It's hard to know which, how granular each plant is in some cases.
00:18:14It's like, is every single one of these different? In this case,
00:18:16like it's rare for most plants to have many stems coming from,
00:18:21from one area. Usually it's one stem, right? And so in this case,
00:18:24what I really think they do is I think they cram a bunch of basil in it to make
00:18:27it look full. So you'll buy it. And then you plant it and then this happens.
00:18:30And then you'll go back to the nursery. Cause you're like, why did you curse me?
00:18:33So we'll toss all this out. We'll get some, some new basil in,
00:18:37as well as some other new herbs. But we also, this rosemary is looking good.
00:18:41I think we need to keep it, but we need to cut it down to size. Okay.
00:18:43So do you know how you might prune this down or no?
00:18:45I guess if I had to wager a guess. Yeah, give me a cut. I mean,
00:18:49well I'd cut that crap that's already broken it looks like.
00:18:52So that's an easy answer right there. Yep.
00:18:53So that's that counts as damaged, the three D's, dead, diseased, damaged.
00:18:57So that's a damaged. I don't see much else dead or diseased, I guess.
00:19:03No, it's all pretty healthy. So now you get into this, the shaping. Yeah.
00:19:07Maybe you want to cut it down to size, right?
00:19:09So one thing you can do is you can bring about a third of the height down
00:19:14safely on most plants. And so when I look at it,
00:19:17I'm looking to create some balance. And so in this case,
00:19:21I think it's a little heavy here.
00:19:23It's a little tall relative to all the new stuff we're going to plant.
00:19:25Cause what do we got? We got this, this,
00:19:30this and this, right?
00:19:33So it's going to look like some tiny stuff. And then this monster rosemary,
00:19:37that's maybe a little bit oversized.
00:19:39And so rosemary is interesting because when you do something like basil,
00:19:43you want to prune right above a growth node.
00:19:45So like right above where these two little leaves are coming out and then it'll
00:19:48start to branch out, right? Rosemary has way more of those nodes.
00:19:53Every single one is basically a node.
00:19:54So it gives you the freedom to kind of cut wherever you want.
00:19:56Exactly. You can cut it anywhere you want. So if I was really getting particular,
00:20:00I could cut right here and you see these two little offshoots that are
00:20:05going to the left and the right. So you think about it, the lower you cut,
00:20:10the lower the branching happens.
00:20:12And so if you wanted to create a bushier structure,
00:20:14you'd cut low and allow it to bush out, right?
00:20:17Or you could do something like, here, let me switch you. There's a,
00:20:20see this one right here? It's kind of coming off in a weird angle.
00:20:23So I might say, I don't like that at all. I'm just going to take that off there.
00:20:27Cause it's just, otherwise it's just going to keep going over.
00:20:29It's just going to do this and it's going to look weird, right?
00:20:31And it's a little bit, it's got some weird.
00:20:33It's drier. It's drier. It's not looking as healthy, right? So to me,
00:20:37this is kind of like a semi-diseased stem. I'd take this off.
00:20:41And then the rest,
00:20:41it's looking for bringing the shape back and cutting it down to size.
00:20:45So you could probably bring the height down to about here.
00:20:48So why don't you take these. Across the board. Yeah.
00:20:50Give me a couple of cuts that you think makes sense.
00:20:53I'm thinking like here. Yeah, that makes sense to me.
00:20:57I guess a lot of the same area, right? Cut it all the same.
00:21:01You can do that. And then other things you can do is you notice,
00:21:04take this main stem right here.
00:21:06See how it has this like big sort of big stem and then these woodier
00:21:11offshoots. The older the rosemary gets, the more it's going to get woody.
00:21:14So if you really want it to get crazy,
00:21:15you could actually cut to like there,
00:21:17remove the entire thing and it'll start branching all the way from down here.
00:21:21Instead of just snipping at the very, very top. It's up to you though.
00:21:24It's totally your choice. But in my case, like in this one,
00:21:28I'm seeing a ton of bushing coming out here and I'm seeing a couple of stems
00:21:31coming out right here, right? So I might just decide to go like that.
00:21:36And actually I don't like the shape of that. So I might take that down.
00:21:38And that's going to just bush it out here. It's going to come out here now,
00:21:41right? Got it. So then you can even create more of like a globed style.
00:21:45If you want to. So let's do a little pruning.
00:21:52I noticed we have trailing rosemary and then this rosemary.
00:21:54Is it like a thing that like spiders live in the bottom of rosemary? Yeah. Okay.
00:21:58Yeah. Because it's a very safe place for them to live, right?
00:22:00They can get in the middle. There's tons of little nooks and crannies.
00:22:03They can build their web on a million different leaves. I don't know why,
00:22:06but they just happen to. Like every single one we have has got spider webs.
00:22:09There's some web. Is this normal? Like what's going on here?
00:22:11It's how it always works. It's like all those little spiders. Okay.
00:22:13So let's get these herbs in the ground.
00:22:14We don't have to go, unless you've got questions, we know how to do this,
00:22:17don't we? Yeah. So basil. I guess my only question is like something like this.
00:22:20So how many cilantro is this? Well, let's take a look. What do you think?
00:22:24Like at least four? Yeah. Yeah. It's about four.
00:22:27But the thing with cilantro is it doesn't grow like a rosemary or a basil.
00:22:31It's not as, it's way more of a, sort of a soft green that grows quickly.
00:22:36Whereas basil could grow into like a huge bush, as you know.
00:22:38You did it like 10 years ago, right? So this is fine to plant in a bunch.
00:22:41It's like a bunching green kind of thing.
00:22:43Clip it at the base as you need it. And then you can just replant.
00:22:46So cilantro is one you could plant in a clump like that.
00:22:48So I don't have to split this apart so I don't run into the same basil issue.
00:22:51I wouldn't split it, but I would with the basil.
00:22:57For the next beds, let's hit the brassica crops.
00:23:00We've got the broccoli and the Brussels.
00:23:02Do you have a preference on which you want to plant? I mean,
00:23:03preferably eating wise, Olive likes broccoli for sure.
00:23:06So I think that would be cooler to get produced. Okay.
00:23:09So this is how you plan this out. Take a look at the back, read that off to me.
00:23:14All right. Days to maturity, 83 to 88. Okay.
00:23:18So what's today? It's like middle of Feb. Yeah. Right.
00:23:21So that means three months from now.
00:23:24So it's going to be late April, early May. Okay.
00:23:27You're going to have nice broccoli, maybe a little faster.
00:23:30So that's your timing. Okay. And then what does it say as far as spacing goes?
00:23:33Spacing on this is 18 to 24. Okay.
00:23:38So that means that we may want to do like a little bit of a mix and match bed
00:23:41here. Okay. It looks like they're both identical in terms of maturity days.
00:23:45You know why? Because they're the same crop. Exactly. So let's take a look.
00:23:51Good roots on these. They're not like swirling around like crazy.
00:23:54So here's all our broccoli. Let's take out our Brussels now.
00:24:00And they need pretty much the same spacing too.
00:24:03So what we could do is we can do like, Hey,
00:24:05this is a whole broccoli bed and this is the Brussels bed.
00:24:07Or we can mix and match them. It's really,
00:24:09this is like the part of the fun of gardening.
00:24:10It's like it's up to you how you want to do that.
00:24:11I guess watering is probably similar because they're the same. It's the same.
00:24:14So yeah, I think mix and match would make it a little more interesting.
00:24:17It'll look cooler. Yeah, it'll look cooler. So here's our six broccoli.
00:24:20Here's our six Brussels. So let's just do three and three. Three and three,
00:24:24right. Cause it's going to be about six in each based on the spacing.
00:24:26Let's take three over here. Take those three.
00:24:29That guy.
00:24:32And then I just lay them out before I plant just to make sure I like it.
00:24:35So I go broccoli. I go, here, you take those.
00:24:39Okay. Go broccoli, Brussels and then broccoli. Give me a broccoli over here.
00:24:45Did you lose it already? I think it's that one. We'll see. I mean,
00:24:48you'll find out soon enough. That's the exciting part. Exactly. Random plant.
00:24:51Figure out what you did. There you go. So this is how I do it.
00:24:54I'd keep it very simple. Okay. Um, so I,
00:24:56and I try to put it next to an emitter. Okay.
00:24:59Cause then you get perfect watering.
00:25:01Rip the roots out to get that growth going or no? If you,
00:25:04so if they were crazy wrapped around, I'd say yes. In this case,
00:25:08I'm going to do a light little tussle.
00:25:10It's loose enough that you don't have to... Cause they're not,
00:25:13they're not impeded right now. They're not like circling around, you know?
00:25:16If they were circling around, I'd say yes.
00:25:18The most I would do here is maybe a little bit of this.
00:25:19I always thought the default was just start shredding it up.
00:25:21So I like laying out my vegetables in a bed and then I come in with some of the
00:25:25flowers to add an accent.
00:25:27So that my question there is if you're mixing and matching like vegetable and
00:25:32flower. Yeah. Does that complicate the water, the watering situation?
00:25:36Cause I would imagine the watering needs are drastically different for a
00:25:39Brussels sprout versus like a ranunculus. I would say that, yeah, I mean,
00:25:43in that particular case, they might, they might be a little bit,
00:25:45most of the time I'm optimizing the garden for the vegetables.
00:25:49The flowers are coming along for the ride. So in this case,
00:25:52that's what I'd be doing. I mean, we're not talking plants that,
00:25:54we're not talking a big tomato or a watermelon here, you know?
00:25:57So what I'd do is I come in now and I might say,
00:26:02take this alyssum that we got. How many is that? I guess I'm assuming.
00:26:06This is actually not that many. If you look in, it's actually about two.
00:26:10It just grows weird like that. This is more of a ground cover, right?
00:26:12It likes to mat and bush, which means that where am I going to plant it? Yeah.
00:26:16Right? Not right in the middle here. Probably right here.
00:26:19Get a nice little color pop. Is it, it grows out? Yeah, kind of. See how,
00:26:23look at the side of it. See how it's coming from like two little stems.
00:26:26It's coming out like that. Oh, I see. Right?
00:26:28So all these plants have like a different kind of reason they've been bred or
00:26:31they exist. And this is,
00:26:32this role is to provide like a lot of beautiful color, but not go super tall.
00:26:37Got it. So look, I'm in already. Cool. And if we want to,
00:26:41we can grab some of these violas,
00:26:46pop some of those out. You could go like, like there, there,
00:26:51there, there, maybe. So this is a, this is a rip it up.
00:26:54That's maybe rip it up a little bit. That one's looking a little wild.
00:26:59Even that though, it's not like, see the bottom's not crazy.
00:27:02And these are thinner roots than some plants. So I wouldn't go.
00:27:05Don't go too crazy. Don't go too wild on it.
00:27:07One way I can do this too, is you come in, you can come in with these.
00:27:11Just do a little choppy chop? I just do like a drag like that.
00:27:15Just kind of do that a little bit.
00:27:16Cause that just promotes them to kind of grow back a little. Yeah. Yeah. I don't,
00:27:20I don't like completely shred it,
00:27:21but I loosen it like that a little bit and see how it's,
00:27:24it's broken up this bottom. Cause really that's the concern is the bottom.
00:27:27If they keep circling around, it's just not, not a great outcome.
00:27:35So we're in over here. So for this would be generally,
00:27:38there's not enough room this way really to plant one here, one here.
00:27:41I'd be going to need two up here. So just straight down the line.
00:27:43So the other way you could try this,
00:27:45see over there how we did them right across from one another. Yeah.
00:27:47You could do what's called the diamond style spacing or triangle style spacing
00:27:51where you could go one, two, three, four, five, six.
00:27:56So is the spacing from here to here, that's not a big deal?
00:27:59Cause these are going to come up and out. Now,
00:28:01if you were growing like maybe a cabbage that might be a little close,
00:28:05but these plants have a stem.
00:28:06They're going to come up and then they're going to spread out and grow.
00:28:09And russet spouts in particular just go straight up, right? So this,
00:28:12see how this allows you to overlap a little tighter.
00:28:16If I was to go here, now these leaves are hitting each other really quickly.
00:28:20If I go here, I've spaced it out a little.
00:28:22So to me it makes sense to do the triangle style. Okay.
00:28:25So when it comes to spacing,
00:28:26like the edge of your bed is not as important as as close you are to another
00:28:30plant.
00:28:31Sometimes it might be, but most of the time you can get away with it.
00:28:34Like if I was going to plant a carrot, maybe,
00:28:36I probably wouldn't want to be kitty corner right here.
00:28:39Then there's also the sun hitting the side, right?
00:28:43You get some of that going on. But in this case, they'll be totally fine.
00:28:47So now you have your spring crops in.
00:28:55You have some spring crops in. You have your brassicas,
00:28:57so you have your brussels and your broccoli.
00:29:00And then you have a couple of flowers and you've reset your herb bed for the
00:29:03season.
00:29:04But there's a ton of plants that we didn't buy and we'd prefer to start because
00:29:08not only is it less expensive,
00:29:10but you get to time it exactly to when your season starts.
00:29:13So now we finally get to go into the seed starting portion of the video.
00:29:17We are here with the epic seed line, Brian Kim,
00:29:21that Kim so nicely laid out.
00:29:23But we first have to address what we see in front of us here, which it's,
00:29:28you know, Hey, look, we all, we all were here at one point.
00:29:31The thing I'm noticing is that the seeds,
00:29:35the seed packs are in the tray and we've germinated all the packets.
00:29:40So can you talk to me about this?
00:29:41That's what we call a hack in the industry.
00:29:45It's new to me, but I'm always interested in learning.
00:29:48So how did this process go for you guys?
00:29:50So I think what's confusing for us is just reading the back.
00:29:53There's a lot of information.
00:29:54And so it's hard to know exactly what you should really stick by the book on
00:29:58based on what you're reading versus like where do you have the flexibility in
00:30:01terms of how much you're putting in or how many seeds you're putting in and
00:30:05when you're putting it in.
00:30:06Okay, cool.
00:30:07And we do have a absolutely wild dog next door.
00:30:13It's the only shot we have of doing this.
00:30:15So please forgive us for this crazy dog. Okay.
00:30:18So what I'm seeing here is actually,
00:30:20I don't see seedlings that are that unhealthy. They're young,
00:30:23but we want to start a new batch for spring,
00:30:26just straight from scratch with you guys to talk through every single thing that
00:30:31you might not know when it comes to starting seeds.
00:30:34So let's get this one out of the way.
00:30:35If we were to plant these seedlings,
00:30:37is there anything that like you see obviously wrong with them and how they grew?
00:30:40Yeah, I would say there's nothing wrong.
00:30:43I would say they're just very young right now. So you can notice some of these,
00:30:47see how this is stretching a bit?
00:30:49And you see how there's only one set of leaves on all these?
00:30:51And they're also a little bit light.
00:30:53What you'd want to do when you're transplanting is normally you'd wait till
00:30:55what's called, this is the seed leaves or copolydons.
00:30:58You'd normally wait till you get two or three more sets of leaves that are
00:31:01called the true leaves. Then it's bigger, it's healthier,
00:31:03it can actually be transplanted.
00:31:04Think about the ones we just put in. Those are bigger than you'd need,
00:31:07but these are definitely too small.
00:31:10So it's just a matter of if we like waited a little bit, they could be,
00:31:12they could be plantable.
00:31:13They could be plantable.
00:31:14But then I also am curious like what kind of mix you guys used.
00:31:17Cause this looks a little bit kind of chunky here.
00:31:19And why don't we just start by resetting. So we'll, you can still grow these,
00:31:24nothing wrong with this. But what we'll do is we'll swap this out.
00:31:27We're going to bring in our tray with 12 of our Epic six cell trays,
00:31:32which you were having in those. Actually you had our four cells.
00:31:35And then the biggest thing when you're starting seeds is getting some kind of
00:31:39mix. I'm going to put that right in the middle of you, Bri.
00:31:42So what we're going to do here, take a look at this. What do you notice?
00:31:46It's less chunky.
00:31:47Way less chunky, way finer. Give it like a little feel.
00:31:53It stays together, but it disintegrates relatively fast.
00:31:56So what we want to do is fill this entire tray up and you don't just, you know,
00:32:01if you're filling one of these cells,
00:32:02you don't just do that and then do that and you're done.
00:32:03Cause look at how, what happens if I tap. See how much farther it goes down?
00:32:09So what we want to do is fill this whole tray up. We'll tap it a couple of times.
00:32:12We'll fill it again.
00:32:14And then we know that it's full cause what you want is you want each of these
00:32:16cells to be full of soil. And if I was to, this one here, there's,
00:32:21it's just very loose. It's not like compact.
00:32:23The roots can't sort of adhere all that soil together.
00:32:26So let's scoop a bunch on top and fill these up.
00:32:30Actually,
00:32:37it could be an interesting way to do it for the tutorial here, Bri,
00:32:39is you come in, put a little bit of pressure down.
00:32:42Now you've put a depression in and when we plant the seeds,
00:32:44we can then cover it again.
00:32:48Okay.
00:32:49So now we need to figure out what do you guys want to grow and what questions
00:32:52you have about how to know what to plant, when to plant it.
00:32:55I mean, I feel like the most,
00:32:57like just getting an understanding of the things to pay attention to when it
00:33:00comes to the back of the seed package.
00:33:02Okay. And then what about what you actually want to grow out of this?
00:33:06Well, what we want to grow, I guess, yeah,
00:33:08it's a matter of like if what we want to grow aligns with like getting seeds
00:33:11started now. Cause tomatoes,
00:33:12I think we'll want to get some more back in the garden cause those did so well.
00:33:15And we used them a lot. So it like worked out, it was like perfect.
00:33:17For sure. Yeah. So, so one way to do it is,
00:33:20there's a lot of ways you could do this. You could say,
00:33:22here's everything I want to grow. How do I know when to grow it?
00:33:25You could say, what time is it and what can I grow right now?
00:33:28So there's a lot of different ways to start, you know,
00:33:30but if there's crops that you're like, I'm not gardening if I can't get tomatoes,
00:33:35then that's a good place to start. Right? Or if you say, you know,
00:33:39I for sure want to try some of these snap peas, right? So then you go,
00:33:43okay, well, what do we see on the back? Days to emerge, five to 10 days.
00:33:48So that just means how long does it take for the pea to actually sprout out of
00:33:51one of these cells? Okay. Seed depth, one inch,
00:33:54that's just telling you how deep to plant it on average.
00:33:57And you can fudge that a little bit,
00:33:58but you kind of want to get somewhat close to it.
00:34:01Like you wouldn't plant this right at the surface if it says an inch, right?
00:34:04Botanical name, you don't have to worry about that too much. Seed spacing,
00:34:07you don't have to worry about that now because we're starting the seeds in trays.
00:34:12When you plant them out, like you read on the back of that broccoli,
00:34:14that's when you pay attention to seed spacing. Okay. And in this case,
00:34:18then you read these instructions. And so I'm just going to read this one out.
00:34:21Cause I agree, the first time you see a seed pack, you're like,
00:34:24what's all this stuff on the back? Like, what is this supposed to mean?
00:34:26So sow outside. That means starting the seeds outside.
00:34:31It's what it recommends, but you totally could start peas inside.
00:34:34So I'm going to switch to one that definitely recommends starting indoors,
00:34:37which would be something like a tomato, right? So,
00:34:39and you notice on this one it says sow outside for mild climates only,
00:34:43one to two weeks after your average last frost date and when soil temperature is
00:34:47at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:34:48So that probably doesn't make a ton of sense to you guys.
00:34:50Yeah. Especially cause the whole frost thing is a bit confusing here,
00:34:53since we don't have a true frost.
00:34:54I'm never sure like what am I supposed to base that off of?
00:34:56So in a climate like ours here in Southern California,
00:35:00it's weirdly easier and more complicated.
00:35:02It's easier because you don't even have a frost to worry about.
00:35:05It's more complicated cause you could start anything at any time.
00:35:08And so you start to get confused cause there's no bookend, right?
00:35:11Whereas if you were in Minnesota, let's say, well,
00:35:13you know you can't start this until probably late April, early May.
00:35:17Cause the ground's frozen, right? So for this tomato,
00:35:20it says start inside and it recommends you start inside.
00:35:23So when packets say start inside, that means start it in trays, under lights,
00:35:27like the one that we just took off the table,
00:35:30four to six weeks before you transplant.
00:35:32So here's the best way to think about it.
00:35:35If a plant is going to harvest in let's say 70 days,
00:35:40cause that's what it says right there, right? This is 70 days to harvest.
00:35:43So from the time you transplant it in the ground, 70 days is ticking, right?
00:35:48So four to six weeks before you transplant, you have to add those days to it.
00:35:52So that's another 30 to 45 days, right?
00:35:55So if you want to start getting tomatoes, let's say in mid June, June 15th,
00:36:00right? You want to take 70 plus, call it 30,
00:36:04let's just call it that. So you want to take a hundred days off of that date.
00:36:08Does that make sense? Backwards in time is how you have to plan in the garden.
00:36:10So if I want my tomatoes in the summer, which is when I want them, June 15th,
00:36:14roughly a little bit before the start of summer, maybe July, you have to say,
00:36:18okay, well I need to start these then a hundred to 120 days before that.
00:36:23Right? So that's pretty much now. Does that make sense?
00:36:27I guess, how do I know to want tomatoes in June?
00:36:32Or is that just I want to eat them in June?
00:36:33Well, so that gets into an interesting question. It's when does,
00:36:37what conditions does the plant actually like?
00:36:39So you could grow tomatoes theoretically if you engineered the perfect condition
00:36:43like in a growing tent or something, you could grow them at any time of year.
00:36:47But outdoors, you got to work with mother nature.
00:36:50This is a plant that wants a good amount of heat. It wants a lot of light.
00:36:53It needs more light because it's producing a ton of vegetation.
00:36:56It's producing all the tomato fruits, right?
00:36:58So it needs a lot of light and nutrition.
00:37:00When do you get the most light in the season? Summer, right?
00:37:03Then there's plants like, take a look at this lettuce, this prize head,
00:37:07which is a good variety. But what are you eating on the lettuce?
00:37:11Leaves.
00:37:11Right. And are they very rigid or are they delicate?
00:37:16Delicate.
00:37:16Right. And what are they mostly made out of?
00:37:19Water.
00:37:19So when would they struggle in a typical climate?
00:37:23In the heat.
00:37:24In the heat, right? And so you kind of want to think about it that way.
00:37:26You think about what the plant can tolerate as far as its conditions.
00:37:30So when you look, you kind of get a sense.
00:37:32Also like think about how you grow up and the things that you eat and the time
00:37:35you eat them. Like, okay,
00:37:36well I'm probably not going to be growing a squash in winter,
00:37:39but I could probably grow arugula in winter, right? So any of the greens, you go,
00:37:43well, it's spring. I could probably get those in the ground.
00:37:46So why don't we pick out a few things that you guys are excited to grow and we
00:37:49can then troubleshoot, like when, when would you actually plant these?
00:37:53I guess which tomato is the question too, because there's a few varieties here.
00:37:56Yeah. I guess let's start off with tomato. I feel like, I mean,
00:37:59we most commonly use them in pasta.
00:38:01So you'd want a smaller one?
00:38:04Yeah.
00:38:05I'd like to do something a little interesting too.
00:38:07So if you want an interesting one, you can go with a carbon.
00:38:09That's a beefsteak tomato. It's a bigger tomato, nice slicer.
00:38:13If you want a nice pasta yellow, that's a cherry tomato. So that one's really nice.
00:38:17And then we have one other over there. That's the brandywine pink,
00:38:19which is a heirloom style tomato.
00:38:21And we've got plenty of space to plant whatever you guys want.
00:38:24So just grab out whatever.
00:38:26Summer squash.
00:38:27We'll do some squash. Okay.
00:38:29And then spinach, I guess based on this,
00:38:31it looks like it's 55 days to harvest plus you're staying the four to six weeks.
00:38:36Yeah. So.
00:38:37So you can pull that off, no problem.
00:38:39Yeah. Carrot.
00:38:40I think the jalapenos work out. Yeah. That's solid. Yeah. That's,
00:38:44you can't go wrong. Cabbage could be cool. I just like,
00:38:47I just like the look of a grown cabbage.
00:38:49It's fine to grow something just cause you like how it looks.
00:38:51Just cause it's that big old thing to grow cabbage.
00:38:54Try a cucumber.
00:38:55We're going with double yield. This is a nice one.
00:38:57I think the chives would be interesting.
00:38:59Cool. Let's grab those. Yeah, we'll grab those. Marigolds are nice.
00:39:03And they're also great with a couple of the plants that you already selected.
00:39:06I think for me, squash, yeah.
00:39:08Okay. So this is a good way to do it. Hey,
00:39:10like what do I want to grow in the year,
00:39:13no matter what time I have to plant it. Just what are you excited to grow?
00:39:17So now let's sort this out. So if we start with lettuce,
00:39:22this is a crop that you're going to want to plant in cool seasons.
00:39:26So springs and falls in almost all climates, they're going to do really well.
00:39:30And you can tell cause it says full sun to part shade, cool season,
00:39:3545 to 55 days. So to me I go,
00:39:38it grows quick and it's spring right now. It's early February.
00:39:42I can pull lettuce off right now. You see how that makes sense?
00:39:45So this to me, let's put this in our right now pile.
00:39:48Like we can start these right now. Okay.
00:39:50So this is kind of giving it away with the name, but full sun, warm season,
00:39:5555 day harvest, summer squash.
00:39:58And then you also want to look at the back and say days to emerge,
00:40:01five to 10 days. And it takes 55 days to grow.
00:40:04When is that going to come harvest if we plant it right now?
00:40:08It's going to be, what is that, April?
00:40:10So that's probably a little too soon, right?
00:40:12So I'm going to say I might want to start this in two months,
00:40:15two and a half months. So we'll put this in the later pile. French marigold,
00:40:19full sun, pollinator friendly, six to 10 inches tall.
00:40:22You'll notice on the flowers there's no cool, warm season.
00:40:25Although it does apply, it's a little bit more forgiving.
00:40:29So I would say you could start some marigolds now or you could wait a little
00:40:32bit. So we'll put this over here for now. Common chives,
00:40:36full sun to part shade, warm season,
00:40:40takes 10 to 15 days to emerge. And you can kind of plant these as a bunch.
00:40:44And then if you look here, you can grow them pretty much anytime,
00:40:49is what I would say. The thing about some stuff like chives, yeah,
00:40:52maybe it likes a warm season a little more than a cold.
00:40:55It's still going to grow though.
00:40:56And it'll grow a little slower and you can just harvest it.
00:40:58So I would say you could start some chives now. Now you do this one, Bri.
00:41:03All right. Full sun, part shade, warm season, 52 day harvest.
00:41:07Day to emerge, five to 15 days. Start inside two to four weeks.
00:41:12So that seems like a good one to start now.
00:41:16I would, I would not. I think it's a little too, little too soon.
00:41:19Cause think about early February at 52 days, you're two and a half months out.
00:41:23That's mid April. And it's only going to take about five, 10 days to harvest.
00:41:26So you're going to get that before your warm season truly starts.
00:41:29Does that make sense? Oh, that's true.
00:41:30You're going to harvest it before the summer's even here.
00:41:32So you're going to want to put this off. Cabbage though, cool season.
00:41:36So here in San Diego, at least in SoCal, anything that says cool season,
00:41:41just think about it, spring and fall, spring and fall.
00:41:43You can do it spring and fall. You can't do it in the summer.
00:41:46This will never, never grow in the summer here.
00:41:48Now in other climates that might be the case.
00:41:49So I'm just going to help sort these out real quick. So peppers,
00:41:52that's going to be a summer crop. Carrots. Now this is an interesting one.
00:41:56What do you think about carrots? I would think it would be a cooler crop.
00:42:00But it does say 85 days to harvest and it's a cool season.
00:42:03But where do carrots grow? Oh, that's true. Underground.
00:42:08So if you take a look at the packet, we're saying, hey, don't grow this indoors.
00:42:14Because you're literally eating what's called the taproot.
00:42:17It's the one main root that is produced by a carrot.
00:42:19So if you were to start it here and move it, it's possible.
00:42:22But it's a lot easier to open this packet,
00:42:24sprinkle it in a line down in the garden and then just harvest it.
00:42:28You're moving the vegetable at that point. You're moving the vegetable, yeah.
00:42:30So you don't want to do that with this. So two to four weeks,
00:42:33you draw a little trench out. So you could actually plant these now,
00:42:37but I would do it directly in the beds we just improved.
00:42:39So you might even put this in a different category, right?
00:42:43Peas are a great one to plant now. They're very quick to harvest, 40 days.
00:42:47So you could have these before the end of next month, cool season,
00:42:51and they sprout in five to 10 days. So to me, this is a fantastic one. Now,
00:42:55I know we say it's recommended to sow them outside and you totally can.
00:42:58We don't have a problem sowing them in the trays though.
00:43:01You just got to be a little more delicate when you transplant. So we can do that.
00:43:04Now just give me a hot take. Spinach, what do you think?
00:43:07I would think cooler. You're right. Based on the history we had with it.
00:43:10Yeah. Any leafy green, you're fine. Any summer squash, it's right in the name.
00:43:15Now here's the thing I want to give you as a little bit of a curve ball.
00:43:21So these two crops, super popular.
00:43:24Obviously they're warm season crops.
00:43:26And if you look at the days to harvest, 80 and 90 days, it's not too far away.
00:43:30But also these are crops where it's not one and done.
00:43:33It's not like you pull the carrot out of the ground and it's done, right?
00:43:36It's clip, clip, clip, as you know, with the jalapenos.
00:43:39And what you see here is it says four to six weeks before transplanting is when
00:43:44you want to start it. So if it's Feb 1 right now, and I'm going to do six weeks,
00:43:47I'm already at March 15th, right? Add 90 days to that, that's June 15th.
00:43:52What does that mean? Even though it's a summer crop,
00:43:54because they take a while to get started and they take a while to grow,
00:44:00like to develop, you actually might want to start these now.
00:44:02Does that make sense?
00:44:03So there's some stuff you might start in these trays for the actual spring
00:44:07season.
00:44:08And there's some stuff that you need to start and sort of mature in the trays
00:44:11and wait and plant a little bit later.
00:44:13Because you want them to be fruiting throughout the summer season.
00:44:16You want them to be growing throughout the summer season. And frankly,
00:44:18spinach just grows faster than a tomato or a pepper. These,
00:44:22a lot of people in cold climates will sit two months in their greenhouse or in
00:44:27their indoor setup, nursing them. They'll take them out,
00:44:29they'll transplant them to a bigger pot.
00:44:31Then they'll move them out into the garden.
00:44:32If you're in a really cold climate, think about it,
00:44:34you might only have three, four months to grow, right? We have more than that.
00:44:37So you've got to get prepped.
00:44:39So when the season's ready, you don't want to just plant the seed.
00:44:42You want to plant a two month old baby pepper so that it starts to produce.
00:44:46Does that make sense?
00:44:46Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.
00:44:48Okay. So why don't we get into the actual planting process here.
00:44:51So we'll put all our summer ones over here. We're not going to do those.
00:44:54This is in bed.
00:44:55That's going to do in bed.
00:44:57And then if there's anything else that's exciting to you guys,
00:44:59let's grab that out.
00:45:00So now what we have here is we have six cells.
00:45:05These are our six cell trays, right? And we have 12 of them.
00:45:07So we have 72 planting sites. Does that make sense?
00:45:11So now you have to wonder, okay, well, how,
00:45:13how do I know how much I'm supposed to plant? So where do you guys begin there?
00:45:17I mean, typically we just read the back of the packet, right?
00:45:20Cause sometimes it says a group of three seeds every 24 inches.
00:45:23Also, like to me when I read that, I'm like, okay,
00:45:25is it specifically three seeds or can I...
00:45:28Can you do more?
00:45:29Or does that apply to like these trays versus sowing in the bed? Is that three,
00:45:33you know?
00:45:33Okay. So there's a couple ways that you want to think about this.
00:45:36Number one is literally how much spinach do you want to eat, right?
00:45:40Cause when you plant the seed, you've now started the clock.
00:45:43So if you were to plant 12 spinach,
00:45:46do you really want to eat 12 heads of spinach in 55 days? Probably not,
00:45:51right? This is where you start to think, you know,
00:45:53if I plant this container choice tomato or where are the tomatoes we wanted to
00:45:56plant? They're right here. The brandywine pink tomato.
00:46:00One of these plants is hopefully going to produce a dozen,
00:46:04maybe 20 if you really grow that tomato well. Whereas one seed of carrot's going
00:46:08to plant one carrot. One seed for spinach is going to plant one head of spinach
00:46:12or one bunch of spinach, right? And so then you have to get into like, well,
00:46:15how much do I really need to eat? Do I really want to grow to eat?
00:46:19If you were to start six different cells of these tomatoes.
00:46:23We definitely don't want that many.
00:46:24Cause then what happens? You have to plant six of those tomatoes out.
00:46:27And that's all going to produce, what, a dozen, two dozen tomatoes.
00:46:29We wouldn't have room to plant a lot of stuff. We'd have no space.
00:46:33And so this is where you get into the garden planning.
00:46:35And you can do this like on a pen and paper and say,
00:46:38how much do I really want? Or you can kind of do it on the fly and sit here.
00:46:40This is why a lot of gardeners, when you're in this mode, you're cozied up.
00:46:44You know, you're taking the weekend and you're like, cool,
00:46:46I'm just going to plant it. Cause once you do it, your year's done.
00:46:49If you do it right. Okay. So let's start with something simple, like spinach.
00:46:54What's nice about spinach is one seed equals one bunch.
00:46:58So you don't have to really think too much. So why don't you start here, Bri.
00:47:02And what does the back of the packet say as far as how to plant three seeds every
00:47:06six inches? So how does that apply to a seed tray application, I guess?
00:47:10Okay. So what you'll want to do is throw three seeds in each cell.
00:47:14And then when you transplant it in,
00:47:16you're going to take the bunch of three seeds and space them six inches apart.
00:47:19Does that make sense? Just like we were doing with the cilantro.
00:47:22So you remember how that was planted in a bunch? Something like a spinach,
00:47:26you can plant a couple of seeds in the same hole and it's fine. Right?
00:47:29Whereas other plants that would be competing, like the basil we talked about.
00:47:32So just drop three seeds in, half inch down.
00:47:35Yeah. You don't even have to, cause remember we compressed this already.
00:47:37Oh, I forgot we're going to top off.
00:47:38We can top it off.
00:47:39So you'll put three seeds in and every clump of these, every cell you plant,
00:47:44just think of it as one bunch. It's one bunch of spinach I'm going to harvest.
00:47:47Right? So then determine how many you want to plant by that. You know, Hey,
00:47:52in a couple of months I'm going to have four bunches if I plant four cells.
00:47:56Does that make sense?
00:47:57Probably a few three bunches.
00:47:58I mean, I eat spinach, a lot of spinach.
00:48:01Yeah. And what's nice about this too is you could harvest the spinach over time.
00:48:06You could just take the biggest leaves and you could keep it going longer.
00:48:08So you don't have to harvest it all at once if you don't want to.
00:48:11And then how much in planting do you have to factor in like, um,
00:48:15like error for margin or anything like that?
00:48:17So I usually would plant, I would usually over plant slightly. Like let's say,
00:48:22I don't know, a bug comes by and eats one. I always over plant.
00:48:25So if I want to plant, if I wanted three bunches,
00:48:28I would probably double it just in case. Cause you never know.
00:48:31All right. So definitely do, if we want more than three bunches, go more than.
00:48:34Yeah. So you have, you have six.
00:48:36Yeah.
00:48:36So now what I do is I label everything.
00:48:39So what I'll do is I take the name of the actual plant. So just spinach.
00:48:45And then I put the variety below it. And then I put today's date. So two, seven.
00:48:51So does that make sense? I write it like that.
00:48:54So I go crop name, variety name, and then date.
00:48:59And then what's nice, Bri, is if you're doing it in a six cell,
00:49:03like if you planted a crop per six cell,
00:49:06it's really nice cause you just only have to put this tag in one of them.
00:49:08And you know this whole thing.
00:49:10What I'll do in your guy's case where you've gone over more than one tray is I
00:49:15do the same thing. So I go spinach,
00:49:19America, two, seven. And then I'll plant like this.
00:49:23Everything in that row.
00:49:24Everything in that row. So I'd make sure that I plant three here,
00:49:27so that I don't lose track. You know what I mean?
00:49:30So now spinach is done and I'll put that over here.
00:49:33We're not going to put it in.
00:49:34No, not this time. Not this time. We already got enough to germinate.
00:49:38So let's move on. Let's, let's talk about something like lettuce.
00:49:43Well, no, let's do something like a cabbage. How many cabbage do you guys want?
00:49:46Cause cabbage, remember, it's going to be head, a head of cabbage.
00:49:50Three max? Three, yeah.
00:49:52Three maxes. I wouldn't go more than three. Cause you only have four beds.
00:49:55I think, I think enough to like get at least one cabbage.
00:49:59So with margin for error, probably, I would think. Cause one cabbage is so much.
00:50:04Yeah. One cabbage is, you'll be happy if you get one. What's the variety name?
00:50:08That is Cabbage Green Express.
00:50:12Right in that Green Express.
00:50:13So in this case, normally they'd say plant one per hole, right?
00:50:17It says group, this one says group of three seeds every 18 to 24.
00:50:21Okay, good. So what we'll do with this is the same thing.
00:50:24But when the cabbage comes up, you will want to thin that down to one seed.
00:50:28Because yeah, otherwise you can't grow more than one cabbage, right?
00:50:30You can't have more heads in one place, right?
00:50:33But the reason some people will say,
00:50:34and we'll say on the back of that packet, plant three seeds.
00:50:37Why would you imagine that would be?
00:50:38Just because you want to make sure something germinates.
00:50:40You want something to germinate, right? So if the germination rate is 95%,
00:50:44that means one in 20 is not going to sprout.
00:50:47So if you put two or three in, it's almost a guarantee something sprouts.
00:50:49It makes sense?
00:50:51So now let's talk about something like chives,
00:50:54which of course these could be sown directly in. You could just,
00:50:57you could honestly take this packet and sprinkle it if you wanted to.
00:51:01But for me, chives, you cut them and they keep growing.
00:51:04You cut them and they keep growing. You cut them and they keep growing.
00:51:07So I think about them planting as bunches.
00:51:09So this one says a group of 10 seeds every eight inches.
00:51:12So what I would do is I would come in like this, dump a bunch out.
00:51:16Those are interesting looking seeds.
00:51:17Yeah, they're very small, aren't they?
00:51:18They look like little pumpernickels or something like that.
00:51:22So here we have, I would do for your garden,
00:51:26I'd do something like six cells and you just dump a little
00:51:30clump of seeds in there. Cause chives, if you were to only plant one,
00:51:35it would literally be one stalk. And so you don't,
00:51:38you don't want that in this case, right?
00:51:39And I think this is where people get confused about starting seeds is it's
00:51:43almost like every seed has a different role.
00:51:45You kind of have to know how it grows to figure out how to plant.
00:51:48That's it. Yeah. And so when someone plants that basil that you had,
00:51:52it's totally understandable. Cause they're like,
00:51:54well I don't think about how many seeds. You would never think about that.
00:51:57Well, especially when it's at like, when it's in a starter,
00:51:59it's so much smaller and more delicate. You're just like, oh,
00:52:02it's kind of bunching. And then it grows bigger.
00:52:04And you're like, oh, this isn't supposed to be like that.
00:52:05Exactly. Or when you see the cabbage,
00:52:07like the cabbage and the spinach have the same planting rules.
00:52:10One of them you would thin out and one of them you wouldn't.
00:52:12So it starts to get a little confusing.
00:52:14And you do have to think about how does this plant actually grow, right? Okay.
00:52:18So we have some chives in, but what about...
00:52:21I guess a question regarding somewhat related to seeds,
00:52:24but like when you're harvesting, like some of these say like harvest and whatever,
00:52:29how do you know when like you're done harvesting or it's going to,
00:52:32like the tomatoes, for example. I think they were like Roma tomato style.
00:52:36I think we had like two, do we have two, two of them basically we planted,
00:52:39I think? And they kind of grew together into this amalgamation of
00:52:44tomatoes, just pumping tomatoes out. But like I, it kept going.
00:52:48It's like, when is it done? When is it not? When should we reset?
00:52:53And that one's a little bit more, like carrots, obviously carrot to carrot.
00:52:56This tomato, like it seemed to never end. I mean,
00:52:58we're pulling it until like September.
00:53:01So tomatoes will die. There's two main types of tomatoes.
00:53:05There's a determinate style, which means the height is determined.
00:53:08It will stop at a certain point in time. Then there's indeterminate,
00:53:11which means it'll keep growing until the environment kills it. Right.
00:53:14And so in our climate, of course, the environment usually won't kill it.
00:53:17Like Jacques on our team,
00:53:18he'll grow his tomatoes throughout the season over our winter,
00:53:21which I don't recommend, but he just likes to do that that way.
00:53:24So two things with your tomatoes last year,
00:53:26you probably didn't prune and support them super well.
00:53:29Not at all. They overtook. Yeah, they got very confusing.
00:53:32So then you get overwhelmed and you're like,
00:53:33I can't even tell what's going on in here. And then two,
00:53:36if you've started them at the right time, like right about now,
00:53:40a little bit later than now for our climate here,
00:53:42you know that by the time September comes around,
00:53:46when you started harvesting them, it was late June. Yeah.
00:53:48So you've been harvesting for a month and a half already.
00:53:50You know that plant's on its way out and you'll notice because you'll start to
00:53:53see the leaves die off at the bottom. Maybe some disease will happen.
00:53:57Maybe there won't be as many new tomatoes forming.
00:54:00It doesn't mean you can't get more. It just means it's not in peak anymore.
00:54:03And so you could cut it down and get rid of it if you want to.
00:54:06It's kind of like dealer's choice. It's like, okay,
00:54:08I'm not getting enough out of this.
00:54:09And it's like I want to put something else here and then rip it.
00:54:11Totally. And that's the thing is like when you,
00:54:13when you get to September with your tomatoes,
00:54:16now you have the fall season to think about. So if you said, Hey, you know,
00:54:19I don't, I only have four beds behind me. I had my tomatoes fill.
00:54:23Maybe I'm even getting a little sick of them, right? Okay.
00:54:26But I haven't even messed around with kale this year.
00:54:28I don't have anywhere else to put it. So now you'd say, you'd notice, Hey,
00:54:32my tomatoes, it's, it's mid-August. My tomatoes are looking a little bad.
00:54:35I'm going to start my kale now so that in a couple of weeks when those tomatoes
00:54:39are really done, I can plant my kale out of the tray. You see what I'm saying?
00:54:43So you start overlapping things a little bit.
00:54:46But if you start like with a really broad vision, you get too confused and you
00:54:50stop. So if you have four beds, it's really easy to think about.
00:54:53Cause it's just way less intimidating. So let's get some tomatoes in.
00:54:57So why don't you pop this one open? And what I always recommend,
00:55:00even though you may not want to try all the tomatoes,
00:55:03it's good to have them just in case. So I might plant all three of these.
00:55:07Or maybe like a cherry tomato. Let's get a cherry tomato going. Yeah.
00:55:11So this is the Chadwick cherry. Pack it here. Yeah.
00:55:14Some of them are pretty fancy seeds, so you got to put them in a separate packet.
00:55:17So be careful with these seeds cause there's not too many, right? Oh yeah.
00:55:21If I was you, I might do a little bit less than that. I might do two per hole.
00:55:25And I'd only plant maybe two, two cells. So I'd put four seeds in,
00:55:29if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:30And that's the thing is like if you don't have space in your beds and you do
00:55:34want to try that one out,
00:55:35you could just buy a little container and put those ones in that and just put it
00:55:38on the ground somewhere. And how do you recommend storing,
00:55:41like once you've opened these seed packets, is there like a preferred method,
00:55:44leave them in here, put them in a Ziploc?
00:55:46I would leave them in here and there's a lot of ways you can store them.
00:55:50If you start collecting a lot of seed packs,
00:55:52you may want to get what's called a photo organizer box. It's like a five,
00:55:54it holds a bunch of five by seven little pouches and you can put like all your
00:55:58tomatoes in one pouch, all your this in one pouch, you know.
00:56:01Or you just put these in like a little drawer somewhere. Cool, dry, dark.
00:56:06Those are the three things you have to remember. Cool, dry, dark.
00:56:08Not in light, not warm, not wet. That's it.
00:56:13Exactly everything you did wrong. Exactly. So Brandy went pink,
00:56:16so why don't you plant the Chadwick cherries right there? And then Kim,
00:56:20which one are you got going? I've got the carbone. I personally, if I'm you,
00:56:23I'm not just gambling on one pepper.
00:56:25I'm just going to plant them all and see which ones I like. You know?
00:56:28So I'd grab the other peppers that are out there.
00:56:31Probably that sweet one up there. What's nice is that's like a nice little
00:56:35stuffing pepper. Oh, yeah.
00:56:38So you got your jalapenos for like cooking and sauces and then you can do the
00:56:41mini bells for... We have the avocado trees, so the jalapenos are nice too.
00:56:45Yep. For a little guac. So I might do three and three here, Bry.
00:56:51Does that make sense? Yeah.
00:56:52Sometimes I like to base it to what makes it easy to label in the trays. Yeah.
00:56:56And if I don't use it, it's, it's okay. So this one says seed spacing,
00:56:59just start indoor sows. So is that one seed per then? I would do two. Two.
00:57:04Because remember, again, with germination, if it's 93% germ,
00:57:08you just want to guarantee you get one.
00:57:09Now you could do one cause the germination rate's really good.
00:57:11And if you don't have a lot of seeds, then just do one. But it's really up to you.
00:57:15How feasible is it if, say we grow these bad boys, open a pepper up,
00:57:20eat it, have some few seeds left over, throw them into a, is that...
00:57:25So what would happen there is if it's a hybrid seed,
00:57:29meaning if the seed has been crossed from two parent lines of seed,
00:57:32which some of these are and some of these aren't.
00:57:34Some of these are heirloom.
00:57:35If it was an heirloom seed and it wasn't cross-pollinated while it was actually
00:57:38in the garden by like bees or something,
00:57:40you would most likely get pretty much the same thing.
00:57:43So if it was like a Cherokee purple tomato, which is an heirloom tomato,
00:57:48and you save the seeds and no one, you know,
00:57:50no bee like took pollen from one different tomato variety over,
00:57:53you'd get the same thing. If it's a, what's called an F1 hybrid,
00:57:57which means it's the first generation of a hybrid plant,
00:58:00the genetics of the seed that it would produce aren't stable.
00:58:03So what you'd get is you would get maybe the same thing.
00:58:06Maybe it'd revert to looking like more of one of its parents.
00:58:09Maybe something a little different altogether.
00:58:11But you don't have to like do anything special necessarily.
00:58:13If I was to like have a couple of seeds, I'd be like,
00:58:15I'll throw them in my seed tray.
00:58:16You could. So what you would do is you would let the pepper dry.
00:58:20Or you would cut it open, scrape all the seeds out, let those seeds dry.
00:58:24Okay. And then you'd plant that out.
00:58:26You don't want to plant them wet still after?
00:58:28You could, but it probably wouldn't be the season to do that.
00:58:30Oh, that's true. Timing-wise it wouldn't make sense.
00:58:32Timing-wise it wouldn't make a lot of sense.
00:58:34But what I've done before is I've thrown a whole tomato in the ground.
00:58:36It eventually disintegrates.
00:58:38It gets acidic because there's like a sort of like a mucus coating on tomato
00:58:42seeds, you know, when you eat them? Yeah. That'll,
00:58:43that'll disintegrate and then the seed sprouts and you can have like dozens
00:58:47coming out of the ground if you just throw a tomato in the ground,
00:58:49which is not recommended, but you could do it.
00:58:52So did you get these all done here, Kim?
00:58:54And then you said this snap peas here are okay in the seed cell?
00:58:57You can do them in the seed cell, but if we want to do carrots out here,
00:59:00we could also just do the peas out here.
00:59:03That's just a straight up pea, right? Yeah. Cause think about it.
00:59:06Some of the plants that we eat in the garden, it's just the seed,
00:59:09like corn, it's just the seed, right? Peas, it's just the seed. Beans,
00:59:12just the seed. I think that's enough anyway for the amount of beds we have.
00:59:18Okay, right. Since they're all going to be planted like ish,
00:59:21similar time minus tomatoes.
00:59:22You have a lot of stuff here for four beds,
00:59:24especially given that two of them are already kind of going.
00:59:27But you see why we bought some stuff to start now?
00:59:29Cause if we waited for all this, it'd be another month. Yeah.
00:59:32It'd be wasted. So what you're going to do is just put a tiny bit right over the
00:59:36top. Okay. And don't disturb if you can.
00:59:40Try not to disturb. So there's a lot of ways to do this.
00:59:42You could poke holes and then cover the holes.
00:59:45You could do it this way where you depress the actual soil itself.
00:59:48I do whatever big brother tells me. You know? So now what you do,
00:59:50Brian is just tap it down.
00:59:54And we'll go and water this in and we'll set it up in the garage with some
00:59:59lights and we'll talk lighting.
01:00:01Okay. Before we get into the lighting setup though, Brian,
01:00:03we did forget to plant our peas and our carrots. So why don't you take the peas,
01:00:10Kim? I'll take the carrots. I don't want to trust this guy with anything.
01:00:14And what we'll do is I'll show you the tip that I like on carrots.
01:00:18Remember we want to direct sow our carrots cause they're root crops growing in
01:00:21the soil.
01:00:21So what I do is why don't you drag a line, Brian,
01:00:26with your hand straight down this irrigation line here.
01:00:30Just about there. Yep. How deep are we talking? A little. Yeah, that's fine.
01:00:34That's fine.
01:00:35And then what I do is I take the packet here and I just crease it right there.
01:00:42And I call this the Jacques tickle because this is what Jacques likes to do and
01:00:45he taught me it. So what you do is you just do this
01:00:51and then you'll start to get the,
01:00:52see how the seeds come out and you want to just give it that little
01:00:57tickle and kind of come down the line. A little tickle.
01:01:00See how you're sort of spacing them out? It's not perfect,
01:01:03but you're kind of getting a nice little spacing here.
01:01:05So it's called like pulling a furrow out and then all you do to cover the
01:01:09carrots up is just do that.
01:01:12Cause the carrots don't need to be covered all that much and they're very
01:01:15sensitive plants.
01:01:17Like when they sprout and they take a little bit of time to sprout,
01:01:19they really need to stay nice and moist,
01:01:21which is why we put them right on this irrigation line. Got it. Okay.
01:01:24So you could do this for as many carrots as you really want.
01:01:27You'll probably end up what's called thinning out.
01:01:29Maybe like two sprout right next to each other. Not good for a root crop, right?
01:01:32So if you think about it,
01:01:32let's say this is two feet worth of a row and you're going to thin them to every
01:01:36two inches, you'd probably get about 12 carrots out of that. Right?
01:01:39So that's how you kind of plan that out. Got it. With peas though, Kim,
01:01:42it's a lot easier. So what kind of peas do we have here?
01:01:46Patio Pride. Patio Pride, snap pea, quick growing,
01:01:50container gardens. Okay, cool.
01:01:54So the way to think about peas is I probably wouldn't plant them on this side of
01:01:58the garden. Right? Does that make sense? Yeah.
01:02:01Because you're going to be coming in this way, light, all that.
01:02:04Probably plant them on this side. And so you're going to plant them an inch deep.
01:02:10The way I do this is really simple. I just come right next to a,
01:02:13if you have irrigation, if you don't, it's fine.
01:02:15I just go straight down with the finger. Drop one or two.
01:02:20You can drop two just to be safe. And then I will space it out kind of like that.
01:02:25And what you can do is you eventually put some sort of trellis here.
01:02:28Cause peas have tendrils that like to climb.
01:02:30And that's why you plant it kind of like almost this passion fruit behind you.
01:02:33You know, you just use it maybe a little bit more tight of a grid.
01:02:38They'll come right up and then you can come through. Oh, pick, pick, pick,
01:02:41pick, pick, you know. And so it depends on how many you want.
01:02:44Peas is kind of like, as you pick, they keep producing.
01:02:48So if you want to have like a wall of them,
01:02:49like let's go grab this trellis over here, just as an example.
01:02:55Oh, I can't because the passion fruit's all over it. It's everywhere.
01:02:59But that's, that's how you might support it.
01:03:01You might put a trellis coming up just like this and it'll climb up.
01:03:04It'll basically be a square of peas.
01:03:06So you could have one vine in theory, like kind of just traversing.
01:03:09But if you want it more faster, you would just plant multiple and have them.
01:03:12Almost everyone's going to be planting kind of like a row of peas and supporting
01:03:15with some kind of trellis to come up. Just a little bit easier that way.
01:03:18So we'll water that in with a hose sometime, maybe tonight.
01:03:22And you'll do the same thing actually with the seeds,
01:03:26but we need to talk now about lighting.
01:03:28We are here in the garage, Brian Kim, where most people start their seeds.
01:03:31The garage or inside their house. We have our lighting set up,
01:03:35which you guys have used before,
01:03:37but you've had mixed success with your seedlings.
01:03:40So what questions do you have at this point? We've watered them in,
01:03:43we've started them. They're all at the right time to be planting out right now.
01:03:46Where are you getting confused now?
01:03:48I guess light.
01:03:49So I think last time you might've mentioned that there was too much light or
01:03:53maybe it was like too close to the seed itself. I guess like,
01:03:55how do you factor all of that in?
01:03:58Okay. So a lot of lights don't have the ability to kind of do this,
01:04:02right? So the thing about plants is that they don't have eyes.
01:04:06Like the way that they use the light is very different than we do, right?
01:04:09And so what looks like enough light,
01:04:11like let's just pull this all the way to the top. So this is at its max height.
01:04:15It kind of looks like the same amount of light is hitting the surface here,
01:04:18but to a plant that's not really true. So when you're starting seeds,
01:04:21the number one problem that everyone runs into is they don't have their lights
01:04:25close enough to the surface.
01:04:27So something like this or maybe even a little bit closer at the start,
01:04:31as long as you don't see, when the seedlings pop up at least,
01:04:35any sort of browning or burning or yellowing, that means you're close enough.
01:04:39As the seedlings start to grow, you can bring it up.
01:04:41But the number one problem is people do not give their seedlings enough light.
01:04:45And they also don't run the lights for long enough. So some people will say,
01:04:50okay, well sun up to sun down, right? Cause that's how the sun works.
01:04:53But plants can get away with a little bit more than that.
01:04:56So on the edge here, you'll notice it's 16. That means it's 16 on, eight off,
01:05:01which is way longer than the actual sun, right?
01:05:04And so you can run 16 hours on,
01:05:05eight hours off when you're starting seeds, even a little bit more if you want.
01:05:09You could just never turn the light off for almost all season. It'd be fine.
01:05:12But 16 hours on, eight is off is fine.
01:05:14Like dimension returns at a certain point.
01:05:15At some point, yeah. And then what you'll want to do is keep it well watered.
01:05:19So when they start to sprout,
01:05:21the reason why we like these trays is because there's those bottom holes.
01:05:24So the roots will start to kind of peek out.
01:05:26So all you have to do is take like a little watering can and just maybe lift one
01:05:31up, fill this tray up, and it'll suck the water right up from the bottom.
01:05:35You know? But before they've sprouted,
01:05:37you actually have to water the top because the seeds need to stay wet.
01:05:40Does that make sense?
01:05:42So when you're, before you've sprouted,
01:05:45they just need to be moist enough that the seed can actually start the process
01:05:48of germinating.
01:05:49Could you even use like a spray bottle at that point? That's not enough.
01:05:51No, you could use a spray bottle,
01:05:52but you'd have to give it like a healthy amount of sprays.
01:05:55Or you could use the mist setting on a hose and just come through and like take
01:05:58this out of the backyard, give it a quick mist and then bring it back in.
01:06:02When they start to sprout though, I would say,
01:06:04when these get dry to about half, give it a nice water.
01:06:08So, and that might be in a garage, that might be every other day,
01:06:12every three days. But as the plant grows, it'll be more often, right?
01:06:16Cause the plant's going to be using a lot more, it's a bigger plant.
01:06:19And then when you see the plants a lot bigger than this,
01:06:22so they're going to want to be probably triple the size of something like this
01:06:25or something like these broccoli right here.
01:06:28Then you'd pop them out and transplant them just like we did with the stuff that
01:06:32we bought from the nursery.
01:06:33And you're kind of basing that off time to transplant based on the packs,
01:06:37right, generally?
01:06:37Yeah. So like with the tomatoes it says four to six weeks, right?
01:06:40So you know if it's two weeks and they're just sprouted, it's not ready yet.
01:06:44But if it was a pea that said one to two weeks, well then sure,
01:06:47you would probably do it in a couple of weeks and you'd be able to put it out.
01:06:49Cause some plants just grow faster than others.
01:06:51And then some, if it's like, you know,
01:06:53visually if it looks like it's been four weeks, we're like, eh,
01:06:56it's not as maybe as good as it's growth.
01:06:58That's how you build a gardener's eye, you know? So if you're looking, you go,
01:07:01okay, it's been four weeks, but maybe I forgot to water a little bit or this or that.
01:07:04It's not really where it's supposed to be at.
01:07:06Then you would give it a little more time.
01:07:07And the other thing I'd say is as these plants start to sprout,
01:07:10you can start maybe two, three weeks in,
01:07:12you can mix in a little liquid fertilizer in your can.
01:07:16Put that in and give them some water.
01:07:18Because about a couple of weeks in,
01:07:20they're going to start wanting some nutrients and there's not a whole lot in the
01:07:23seed starting mix. The seed starting mix is good cause it's fine.
01:07:26It's not good cause it's like super rich in organic matter that the plants would
01:07:29need. But they're not in here long enough where it's not important.
01:07:32So sometimes there's that period after about two weeks or so where they are in
01:07:36here long enough that they need fertilizer. So you have to add a little bit.
01:07:39And that's why when you go to the nursery and you see those really nice
01:07:41seedlings, they're all fertilized. That's why they look that good, you know?
01:07:46So that's all you really need to know.
01:07:47The only other thing is when they do start to sprout,
01:07:50something you can do to help, it's not mandatory,
01:07:52but it can help is if you get like a little oscillating fan and it blows some
01:07:56air over the surface here,
01:07:57that'll help thicken up the stalks and give them a little more resilience.
01:08:00Cause normally they'd be sprouting outdoors in the normal environment.
01:08:03So they'd have a little more variance in like the wind and the temperature and
01:08:06stuff. They'd be a little more hardy. So you can throw some wind on them.
01:08:10It'll help.
01:08:10I guess our garage gets pretty cold at night.
01:08:12Is that something we have to factor in? Do we have to bring this inside at all?
01:08:16Yeah. So seeds will germinate based mostly on the temperature of the soil.
01:08:21So if you're getting to like 40 degrees in here,
01:08:25then you need to supplement with some sort of heat mat,
01:08:27which you could put underneath this.
01:08:29Or because this isn't too messy or anything,
01:08:31you could just bring this inside because you've got a built-in light, right?
01:08:34So it doesn't have to be in the garage. You could put it on like, I don't know,
01:08:37a kitchen table or something like that and let it sprout indoors.
01:08:40You want the temp to be above about 55 Fahrenheit or so.
01:08:43And one final thing is you actually don't even need this light on until you
01:08:46start seeing them sprout.
01:08:47So you can save a little bit of energy up until the point that they sprout.
01:08:50Cause what are they going to do with the light? They're not even sprouted yet.
01:08:54So that is your seed starting setup.
01:08:55All right. So there we have it, my friends,
01:08:57my brother who I'm making awkwardly hug me like this.
01:09:00We've taken you through, Bri, troubleshooting your garden for the season,
01:09:04grabbing some new stuff, amending the beds,
01:09:06planting out some stuff, a little bit of pruning,
01:09:08and then also exactly how you might set a garden up seeds-wise for the new
01:09:13season. So we might have to make this an annual tradition.
01:09:16I'm curious to see how this garden looks next year.
01:09:19This is year two of the Epic Brothers Garden.
01:09:22We hope you enjoyed the video. Long play for education.
01:09:25All the seeds you saw are part of our Epic Seed line.
01:09:2840 new varieties that aren't related to our other sister company,
01:09:32Botanical Interests, with 700 varieties designed for beginners.
01:09:38Don't have to think too much.
01:09:39You can just get stuff in the ground so you can check those out on our shop.
01:09:42And until next time guys, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.