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00:00When you're starting seeds, does seed starting mix matter or can you just make your own mix?
00:04And if it turns out that seed starting mix does matter, does how pricey it is make a difference?
00:09So here's what we did. We ran around the city finding as many seed starting mixes as we could
00:14and we picked up five of them, but we're testing eight different mixes because we've got, yeah,
00:21I know, it's a little bit unusual. We have these Jiffy Pete pellets.
00:24This brings me back to my roots. First thing I ever tried.
00:26First thing I ever tried.
00:27And first thing I gave up.
00:28First thing I tried and first thing I tossed because it didn't work.
00:31But hey, we're going to give it its fair shot.
00:33We also took a standard potting mix, Happy Frog from Fox Farm,
00:37and sifted it to create a seed starting mix.
00:39And then we also created our own custom mix and put it into the blend.
00:43So we have a total of eight different seed starting mixes here.
00:47And in those, we've planted three different types of seed.
00:51Peas, lettuce, and...
00:55Radish.
00:56All of them have roughly the same days of maturity,
00:59so they should all come up at the same time and give us an idea of which one does best.
01:03I'm going to rank the mixes in a few different ways.
01:05The first, of course, is going to be cost.
01:06Because what good is getting crazy good seedlings if it costs you an arm and a leg?
01:10And then as these sprout,
01:11we're going to look at the overall health of the growth above the soil.
01:15So just the plant itself.
01:16And then also the root structure.
01:18We'll pop it out Jacques and we'll look at how healthy each of these roots look.
01:22But the first thing we need to do is tell you what's actually in the mixes we bought.
01:26First up, we have the Jiffy Seed Starting Mix.
01:28It has three ingredients.
01:29Peat moss, coconut coir, and vermiculite for drainage.
01:32No added fertility.
01:33Next one up is the Back to the Roots Organic Seed Starting Mix.
01:36Now what's interesting about this one, Jacques, is there is no peat whatsoever.
01:39They used all coconut husks or coconut coir, perlite,
01:43plant food, so there is some fertility in here, as well as gypsum.
01:46Then we have Miracle-Gro's Seed Starting Mix, which is a simple one.
01:50It's just peat, perlite, a little bit of fertilizer,
01:52and a wetting agent to stop it from going dry.
01:54Next up, we have the EB Stone Seed Starter Mix.
01:58And this one has Canadian sphagnum peat moss, which is pretty standard,
02:02perlite, dolomite lime, and gypsum.
02:05Looks like no fertilizer.
02:07A new one to me, Black and Gold Organic and Natural Seedling Mix.
02:10This one is 70 to 80% sphagnum peat moss, perlite, calcium silicate,
02:15don't know what that does, and wetting agent.
02:17Looks pretty good.
02:18Our next one is our Sifted Potting Soil.
02:20So in this one, it's the Fox Farm Happy Frog.
02:23I'll read what the ingredients are and I'll say what probably isn't in it anymore.
02:26So first off, you've got 50 to 60% aged forest products,
02:30then peat moss, perlite, and fertilizer.
02:32And that fertilizer also includes some mycorrhizal inoculants.
02:36Now, what I'll say though, Jacques,
02:38is the forest products and the larger particles of perlite
02:41very well might not be in the mix anymore because we've sifted them out.
02:43Definitely the most straightforward.
02:45We have the Jiffy peat pellets.
02:47This is 100% straight peat.
02:49And the final one in our competition is actually our own custom mix that we made.
02:54It's this one right here.
02:55It's got some perlite in there, but I won't reveal the rest of the ingredients.
02:58We'll see if we win by the end.
03:00I'll definitely be telling you about it.
03:01Jacques, what do you think of the mixes?
03:02I'm going to go with tried and true, my classic, the Sifted Happy Frog.
03:05I've been using it for years now.
03:06Always had good results.
03:07I haven't tested the others, so I don't know, but I'm willing to be surprised.
03:11Yeah, I think the Happy Frog is up there for me.
03:14For some reason, the black and gold is also calling to me.
03:17It's right there.
03:18It looks very satisfying.
03:19Something about the fineness of it.
03:20Yeah, I love the texture.
03:21I think worst is probably any that has no fertility whatsoever.
03:25And worst, in my opinion, I'm going to call the Jiffy peat pellets out.
03:28Let us know down in the comments what you think is going to be the worst.
03:31And we will see you in a couple of weeks once our peas,
03:34radish and lettuce have sprouted.
03:35My friends, we are back.
03:36And Jacques, I can see a few differences in these.
03:38We're at the point where it's time to analyze.
03:41Yeah, let's check it out.
03:42Here are all the plants.
03:43And what we're going to do now is look at a few factors.
03:46The color of the leaves themselves, root figure,
03:49and maybe anything else we come up with along the way.
03:51Yeah, let's do it.
03:52So there's too many things on this right now.
03:54So let's go one by one.
03:56We'll start with maybe our sifted.
03:59Okay.
03:59What are you looking at right there on the radish?
04:01So what I'm seeing is a lot of nice white roots,
04:04which means that it didn't drown.
04:05It wasn't too wet.
04:06The tray, since we're using the Sixcell,
04:08you could see all the roots are directed here at the edge.
04:10So they're not swirling.
04:12They have reached the bottom.
04:14There's a little bit of roots there.
04:15The soil is holding together nicely,
04:16which is a good thing to see.
04:17So I'm pretty happy with the roots.
04:18I'm happy with the roots on the radish.
04:20Remember, of course, radish is a taproot style plant.
04:22So the root is going to swell and you're going to see these feeder roots
04:25kind of producing the radish.
04:26Up top, Jacques, I'm seeing a pretty healthy foliage.
04:30Yeah, it looks actually quite dark green,
04:32especially on the true leaves themselves.
04:34That's the radish.
04:35On the lettuce, looks like germination was good.
04:38It's a bit light, but that could be variety dependent.
04:40I'm seeing okay root development here.
04:43And I'm also seeing only about one set of true leaves
04:47on these at this point in time.
04:49So remember, every time a seed germinates,
04:51you're going to get what are called the seed leaves.
04:53Those don't look like the normal amount of leaves,
04:55cause they're sort of already present in the seed.
04:57Then you're going to see what are called the true leaves.
04:59And so I'm seeing on this,
05:01maybe the third set or the third true leaf is forming on these,
05:04but we only have two max.
05:05So that's something to think about as far as the vigor,
05:08but we won't know if that makes a difference
05:09or not until we compare it to the rest.
05:11And one thing is that we're not going to really use
05:13germination rate as an example,
05:14because that could be seed dependent.
05:16Right.
05:16We'll talk about it, but it's not like the main criteria.
05:18And look at what happened here.
05:20So we have one of the two peas germinated.
05:22We can't hold that against the sifted mix.
05:25If I was to look, Jacques, I would say,
05:27what exactly went on here?
05:28It's like one of them rotted, perhaps.
05:30It seems like we got a rot issue.
05:32Yeah, I see a little mold there.
05:33So that's just a seed by seed basis.
05:35But from what we can compare, pretty good health on the pea.
05:39The pea obviously a lot more vigorous.
05:42I'm not seeing a ton of height here,
05:44but I am seeing one, two, three, four,
05:46five-ish sets of true leaf.
05:48That'll actually be interesting.
05:49What if this has the same amount of leaf sets
05:52as the ones that are taller?
05:53That's going to be interesting.
05:54This one has more fertility in it,
05:56since it's a potting mix and not a seed start.
05:57That is very interesting.
05:58So what I'll do is I'm going to replace these down here.
06:01Jacques, next up we have Back to the Roots,
06:03which is a brand you can find,
06:05I think, at most big box stores these days.
06:07I got to say, I'm not super impressed right now.
06:10We do have a similar germ problem on the peas.
06:12That might just be our own fault.
06:14Yeah.
06:14Just may have not soaked them well enough.
06:16We do have double germ, of course, on this pea right here.
06:19It does look like the roots on this pea,
06:21if I can get it out, which is kind of my point,
06:24are a little bit more vigorous at the bottom.
06:25That is interesting, actually.
06:27They're spilling out of the six cells.
06:28And we've got one, two, three, four, five, six.
06:32So I think you're right.
06:33Now let me pull up the...
06:34I don't know how I feel about that.
06:35Yeah, well, let me pull this up.
06:36This is really interesting.
06:37So there's something in plant growth called internodal distance.
06:41And so if you notice, the internodal distance,
06:43or the distance between leaf nodes here,
06:46is almost double, maybe triple with this Back to the Roots,
06:50which to me, this could be actually the genetic optimum for peas.
06:53This could be perhaps too tight.
06:55It depends on how the pea's supposed to express.
06:58But like, let's say I was growing this pea in the garden,
07:01I would personally, I'd be okay with this one,
07:03because this is getting closer to wherever my trellising situation is.
07:06That's fair.
07:06And I'd be okay with that.
07:08But I'm very unimpressed with the rest of it.
07:10Why don't we take a look here?
07:11Yeah, let's take a look at the roots.
07:12That's what I'm very interested, if there are any.
07:14So we've got the lettuce.
07:15Okay.
07:15So there are roots, but they're quite spindly.
07:18They do look like they're still white.
07:19So they are healthy, they're not drowned.
07:21So that's a good sign.
07:22For whatever reason, they just did not grow as vigorously.
07:24Yeah, I mean, it's really not vigorous.
07:25The radish was also quite poor from a root and a top's perspective.
07:30These are very, very small compared to even just a sifted potting mix,
07:34which would be cheaper to buy than a dedicated seed starting mix.
07:38So let's put this back.
07:39So pretty interesting so far.
07:40All right, next up Jacques is EB Stone.
07:42I'm seeing a little, what I would call more of the same here.
07:44Yeah.
07:44Looks somewhat similar to back to the roots.
07:46Looks like it's maybe in between the sifted and the back and the roots at this point.
07:49So far, but I did notice as I was pulling the 6L out,
07:54the roots seem a little more vigorous here.
07:55I don't know if you agree with me on that,
07:58but they do seem slightly more vigorous.
08:00They look nice.
08:00A little more help down at the bottom, a little more spread here.
08:03Yeah.
08:03But what I'm noticing on the lettuce is basically more of the same.
08:08Same sort of structure.
08:09Can you flip it around?
08:10Yeah.
08:10Let's see.
08:11What do you see here?
08:12I was wondering if it looked like it was a little brown on the roots.
08:14Like maybe it was a little, no, I think that's just honestly the soil.
08:17Just the soil.
08:18Yeah.
08:18So lettuce is basically the same as our prior pick back to the roots.
08:23Radish, again, more of the same.
08:24Very underwhelming growth on this one.
08:26And remember we did not fertilize, right?
08:28So whatever was or wasn't present in these mixes,
08:30that is what these plants received.
08:33Now we have the jiffy soil mix,
08:35not the jiffy pods, which we're going to pull out in a second.
08:39Right off the bat, I'm noticing a few differences, Jacques.
08:41So I'm seeing less tall, less height on our peas.
08:45But what are the roots like?
08:46Why don't you give us the analysis there?
08:47It's like a lot less roots than what we've seen on anything else.
08:50A lot less roots.
08:51Like way less bunchy.
08:53That one's a bit closer,
08:54but I'm still counting maybe one, two, three, four leaf sets.
08:59I wouldn't say I'm impressed with the peas.
09:00Yeah.
09:01I will say that the lettuce...
09:03Mine, I guess.
09:04The lettuce is even more sparse on a roots perspective.
09:06Yeah.
09:07They're very...
09:08I'm not that healthy considering how big the plants are.
09:10They're very thin and feel the mixture.
09:11It's, it's very fine.
09:13And I think it could be that maybe there's less oxygen
09:16able to penetrate into the root zone, especially if you water a lot.
09:18And they seem like the plants are floppier.
09:20These are all next to each other.
09:21They all got the same amount of wind, the same amount of sun.
09:25But these look floppy.
09:26But here's the key, the same amount of water, which in this case, feel these.
09:29These feel like they're much more soggy.
09:32They're much more soggy.
09:33Kind of like a sponge.
09:34Almost like a sponge.
09:35Yeah.
09:35And look, what you see in that is that the increased water retention
09:39basically hampers the ability of the roots to develop.
09:41Yeah. I'd say that there's, the root is a very slight tinge of brown maybe.
09:45So in my particular case, I would be putting these at second to the worst right now.
09:51Yeah.
09:51The jiffy mix that is the soil mix, not the pods.
09:55So here we have the pods, Jacques.
09:58Okay.
10:00I don't know.
10:01I'm not super impressed.
10:02P's here, P for pathetic.
10:04They're not looking very good.
10:05They're not looking very good.
10:06I mean, we have one, two, three, four, technically there's four nodes here,
10:11but the internodal distance is very unfavorable.
10:15Yeah.
10:15This is, this is suboptimal by a large degree.
10:17Now you are seeing the roots start to peek out.
10:19I know.
10:20It's very interesting to see how the roots like hit this fabric mesh thing,
10:23whatever that's made out of.
10:24Yeah.
10:24And then they just shoot straight down.
10:26But look at this.
10:26They're not coming out of the bottom.
10:28Yeah.
10:28And I'm surprised that they're not pruning.
10:30Like they're exposed to the air here, but I guess they're in a wet medium.
10:33Well, if we look really close.
10:35Yeah.
10:35I mean, they're, they're browning at the tips there,
10:37which to me means they are slightly pruning.
10:39But, but to your point, they're not dead at the tips.
10:41Yeah.
10:41And then this is more soil than our slick soil.
10:43I'd say maybe like 50% more.
10:45Probably 50% more.
10:46And these, this again, the jiffy mixes.
10:49This is very...
10:50Oh, you're squeezing water out.
10:51Yeah. I mean, look.
10:52Oh wow. Okay.
10:53Yeah. They're holding onto a lot of moisture.
10:55So you would, you would have to water this less, I think.
10:57And perhaps again, not to say this is all the mix's fault,
11:01because this could be the fact that this mix in general needs to be watered less
11:04than other mixes, but we did treat them all the same.
11:08Right there, I see something.
11:10Okay.
11:10See the very tip of this leaf, how it's turning purple?
11:13Yeah.
11:13That is usually a nutrient stress.
11:15Yeah.
11:15And that's like, usually I think phosphorus.
11:17Yeah, right there.
11:17And this is straight peat, I think.
11:19Nothing but peat.
11:20Yeah.
11:20So it makes sense that it wouldn't actually have any other major nutrients.
11:24Wow. Yeah.
11:24I have to say, if I was going to grow in these and I would never,
11:28but if I was going to, I would dial my watering way back
11:31and I'd probably have to start fertilizing earlier.
11:33I'm not impressed.
11:34And I also think these are annoying to plant out and somewhat, you know, wasteful.
11:39This is like the second thing I ever tried at the very beginning.
11:42And I still find the little plastic, I don't know if they changed it,
11:45but I still find plastic net solutions.
11:47The little net. Yeah, exactly.
11:48I don't appreciate that. I'll say that much.
11:50Next up Jacques, we have a blend that has won a lot of our soil tests,
11:54much to our chagrin, which would be the Miracle-Gro seed starting mix.
12:00What are your first takes?
12:01My first takes is that everything looks tall,
12:03but it's not floppy like that other one.
12:04It's not floppy.
12:05It's also a pretty nice dark green color overall.
12:08So they look pretty dang good.
12:10They look okay. Here's what I'm noticing.
12:12And I don't know if you pick up on this, let me know what you think.
12:15Yeah.
12:15The pea is not looking as vigorous to me because look at the density
12:21and the thickness of the stem.
12:22Let's go look at our sifted mix here and pull this out.
12:25Look at the difference in the stem thickness.
12:27Wow.
12:28That's pretty significant.
12:29And the height is somewhat similar, I would say.
12:32It's a little bit shorter on the sifted.
12:34You know what my guess is?
12:35Yeah.
12:35Is that the Miracle-Gro one has more nitrogen.
12:39Yeah.
12:39But the other one, since it's a potting mix, has more everything.
12:42Has more of a fully blended NPK ratio.
12:44I think that could be the case here.
12:45So that's probably the difference there.
12:46So we're seeing a more spindly growth, which means, you know, nitrogen ripping.
12:50Yeah.
12:51So the vegetation's going crazy.
12:52We'll take a look at our lettuce here.
12:53Might as well take a look at the roots.
12:54Yep.
12:55Lettuce.
12:56And then the radish.
12:57Now this, this could kind of go against your theory here, Jacques,
13:00is I am seeing a little bit on the radish.
13:03First of all, nice green radish up top, a couple of leaf nodes.
13:06But I'm noticing also that we're starting to see the radish swell out,
13:10which to me means the radish is starting to want to form as a true radish.
13:13Yeah.
13:14And I'm not noticing that over here, but there's also two that have germinated here.
13:17Right.
13:17So I'm starting to say maybe,
13:20maybe there's just a lot of nutrition in this mix in general.
13:23I don't know.
13:24It does look very green.
13:25So even these leaves here, they look pretty dark green.
13:27Yeah, they look pretty dark green.
13:28There's definitely something in there.
13:30I would say I'd be, I'd be pretty happy with this mix.
13:33And I probably would have thinned this lettuce out.
13:34I'm not super pleased with the way this lettuce looks compared to other ones.
13:37They're, the leaves are too stretched and they're not as, they're not as upright.
13:41And I'm not seeing as much structure.
13:43So I'd be worried to transplant this.
13:45I think that this right now might be in the lead.
13:48It's close.
13:49So this one is one of our DIY mixes that are in the Epic Research Labs.
13:52We're trying to figure out, can we make a great seed starting mix for you guys?
13:56And I would say at first blush, I'm not sure we're there yet.
14:00Yeah.
14:01I don't think we're there quite yet, but I am going to pop this out and take a look.
14:04So let's analyze these roots here.
14:06We didn't get germ on the second pea, so we have one pea to work with.
14:08So that's pretty good.
14:10That's pretty good.
14:10Maybe a little bit more dark than some of the other roots.
14:12It's good structure.
14:13Yeah, they are branching too at the bottom here.
14:16I'd like to see more height out of these peas compared to the other ones,
14:19but the pea itself looks healthy.
14:22Looks like we got about five nodes.
14:23It's nice and dark green.
14:24You're seeing the tendrils form.
14:26I wouldn't be displeased with this, but I would like to see a little more height.
14:28Yeah.
14:29Let's pull out the lettuce.
14:30So this one, to me, the roots look really nice and crisp white.
14:34So that's good to see.
14:35There is definitely some good drainage there.
14:37It might just be that the lettuce we're growing is a little bit floppy.
14:40Could be a little floppy.
14:40So I'd say the lettuce, this is on par with the Miracle-Gro mix.
14:44But it looks fine, like it looks nice and green.
14:46Remember some of the other mixes we tried where you could almost not see the roots at all?
14:48Yeah.
14:49You're seeing good root structure in these.
14:50Although I would like to see our mix put a little more height and a little more vigor up top.
14:56So we might have to go back to the research labs and test a new formulation there.
14:59It's really not a bad showing, I have to say.
15:01It's not too bad, but we very well might have the best one of the mix coming up.
15:06Yeah.
15:06And here we have what I'm just going to call, just at looks, the winner.
15:11This would be the black and gold.
15:13So I'm going to try to get this out.
15:14There's a lot of root mass in there.
15:16Yeah, there's a ton of root mass.
15:17Wow.
15:18Yeah, I can almost not get it out.
15:19Sometimes the Epic 6 cells are too powerful.
15:22So take a look at that job.
15:23Yeah.
15:24So look at all those roots.
15:25Like this thing is absolutely face covered in roots on every single one of these walls.
15:30Give it a note.
15:30Crazy vigorous.
15:31Get the note count.
15:32We got, if we count the bottom one, one, two, three, four, five?
15:36Is that six?
15:37Six right there, right?
15:38So six.
15:39They're actually all roughly five to six, which is interesting.
15:41Yeah.
15:42Which that's of course...
15:42This one's thicker though, for sure, than the Miracle-Gro one.
15:44So look at that.
15:45You've got height and thickness on this and the same amount of nodes.
15:48Got some girth.
15:49You've got some good color on that.
15:50And then let's take a look at the lettuce.
15:53Lettuce, I think this could be variety again, but it's a little bit darker.
15:57It's a little bit darker than some of the other ones.
16:00The radish to me looks really healthy.
16:01I feel like this one, one thing I just noticed is this one might have more algae on the surface.
16:06Yeah.
16:06Which means there's more nutrients in it.
16:09So perhaps this one will be a little bit trickier to manage indoors if you're not running fans.
16:14I'm, I'm actually, I'm actually pretty pleased with the radish.
16:16I think it looks good.
16:17It's nice and upright.
16:18It's very vigorous.
16:19It's got nice root structure on it.
16:20The peas were solid.
16:22This is a lot more informative than I thought it would be.
16:24Yeah.
16:24What are your takeaways?
16:26My honest takeaway here is that they are all fairly close.
16:30I'd be okay with just about any one except for Back to the Roots.
16:34That one I would actually be a little bit upset about.
16:36Yes.
16:36But the rest of these, like they're all going to get you within maybe three days of each other,
16:41like in growth difference.
16:42Yeah.
16:42And that's really not that big of a deal to worry about.
16:44Here's what I'm interested in.
16:46So you've got the black and gold and that was a big bag.
16:48So I would say cost per use is probably pretty favorable.
16:51Yeah.
16:51But then I'm going to pull up our sifted mix here.
16:54So take a look at the difference.
16:56You are losing quite a bit of height here, right, with the sifted potting.
17:00You're losing some vigor and size on most of these plants,
17:03but you didn't have to buy anything, right?
17:06You could use your standard potting mix.
17:07You might even be able to use an old container mix or something like that.
17:10And the only caveat I'll say is this was coming fresh out of a bag,
17:13so it wasn't used already.
17:15But I would say if you were to sift some potting soil,
17:17throw some worm castings in, you could mimic some of the better ones on the market.
17:21I think it seems clear from this experiment that this one has outperformed most.
17:26But like you said, it's not by much.
17:28I mean, let's go best worst.
17:31So this was our pick for worst.
17:33And that is a stark difference.
17:34That's a pretty big difference on radish and lettuce.
17:37And on peas, I would say it's definitely different,
17:40not by a crazy amount.
17:41This is much thinner though.
17:42Much thinner, much less vigorous.
17:44So I'm curious what you guys use for your seed starting mix.
17:46Do you buy?
17:47Do you make?
17:48And what do you think of our experiment?
17:49And if you're curious, our other garden experiments,
17:51we're always putting common wisdom to the test.
17:54You can check our playlist out right here,
17:56Shop Botanical or Epic Seeds at shop.epicgardening.com.
17:59And until next time guys, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.