Seeds not germinating? It could be a case of it’s not them, it’s you.
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00:00Hello, today I'm just going to take you through seed starting on doors, and there's obviously
00:19seeds that you can even start out in the ground, out in trays, even outside, very cold tolerant
00:25plants, there's a lot you can do, or you can, but you may have no success with them.
00:33The best way to start most seeds is to do it in a controlled environment, and seed trays,
00:39and I'll show you a few in a moment, like the different types of seed trays that I use,
00:45are a great way with some multi-purpose compost, I never use seed starting compost because
00:51it has no nutrients, so although it's fine and it's good for the seeds to get a root started,
00:58there's nothing then for it to actually help it develop, so multi-purpose works fine if you use
01:05the right multi-purpose compost, and not the big lumpy stuff, and then what we'll do is today I'm
01:13going to be sowing sweet pea, but first you have to do something with sweet pea seeds,
01:18and then we're also sowing some alyssum, these tiny tiny seeds, and I've got some
01:29baby's breath, I've got red baby's breath, which I've never seen before, and white,
01:33normal white one, and also some phlox, now phlox are, these are an annual, you get them
01:40perennial ones too, but they need darkness to germinate, and in front of me here, first of
01:47them are popping up, there's about 50 delphinium seeds in this one, and they need darkness as well,
01:53most seeds need light to germinate, some need darkness, and some are not that fast, so we'll
02:00go through a few different ones here, and just before I do, I'll just show you what I've got here
02:06beside me, these are dahlias that I've been growing from seed, and they've come on really well,
02:12a lot of people don't know you can grow dahlias from seed, but you can, and they're quite easy
02:17to grow, they will form tubers in the ground, and they'll come back every year, as long as you
02:21protect the tubers, you can put them in pots or in the ground, and try and protect them from slugs,
02:27because they're a magnet for slugs and greenfly, so it's still too cold to put these out,
02:34the frost would kill them, so they're now a few weeks before they're fully ready to go outside,
02:41and beside that we have some snapdragons, and some straw flowers back here,
02:47and then at the back there, I've just sown some petunia seeds, and here I have a few echinacea,
02:56which are also a perennial, they'll come back year on year, that's just some of the seeds that
03:00I've started indoors, there's masses of them, but I am going to have a greenhouse in the next few
03:06weeks, set up a temporary, a plastic greenhouse, so that'll help that, this is one of the things
03:14which I would advise you to avoid, is that these are poppies, and there's probably a few hundred
03:22in here, but poppy seeds are so small, I over sowed them, so now there's like this massive
03:28clump of seeds, so just a wee tip, don't over sow as well, but I'll take you through, I'll clear
03:35this now, and then take you through the sowing of these seeds, we'll just take you around here,
03:45and show you the different module trays, seed trays that I'm using, these are all very inexpensive,
03:55you can reuse them, these, nearly all of these were bought last year, so I'm going to say it as
04:00well, this is a 27 cell seed tray, good for starting smaller seeds, don't use as much compost,
04:10maybe two inches in depth or so, doesn't say on the packet there, and then these are for bigger
04:19seeds, I grew cosmos on these last year, and they were ideal for it, just for anything with a long
04:28root or a stem to get them started, these two are great, although they're much more flimsy,
04:34but they work just fine, and you can see the little drainage hole there, it's
04:38quite a good drainage hole at the bottom, these were just plastic trays, like a multi-set, and
04:47there was no holes on them, so I just put holes on them, I obviously have a lot of containers
04:53in that that I use to just reuse from food containers and things like that, this is an
04:59actual seed tray, so good and deep as well, so if you can get some deep ones, that's great,
05:07and I have a bag here that I keep balls of containers in, that I can reuse for seed starting,
05:14this had some grapes in it, so really good and deep, that's good for things like sweet pea,
05:21because they have a really long root that develops quite fast, and then you can have more
05:26shallow ones, this is parsnips on it I think, or something, and you just put holes in them,
05:33and that's good to go as well for smaller seeds, so
05:42don't need to break the bag for that, the only things, the more expensive things I bought this
05:47year, was this here for potting up, for sowing seeds, which means you put your compost in,
05:55you can wet it, everything, and it doesn't spoil everywhere, and the other thing which,
05:59if you are sowing seeds, I'd advise you get ready, is just a tray, now you could use it,
06:03last year I used a big baking tray, just to have that ready, because as I'll show you,
06:09you're better off pre-soaking your compost from below, you pull a reaction in, it pulls up the
06:16water, and that way you don't displace the seeds, so right, so we'll get started now on sowing.
06:35So if I just bring you down here now, I'll just show you the type of compost
06:38that's really good for seeds starting, right, you can see there, it's very dark,
06:43it's fine enough where the seed can take a hold and get a root in through it,
06:48there will be some big clumps through it, but I'll just put them to the side and add them to the garden,
06:53or in the pot, or outside, but that's what you're looking for, they're dark, crumbly, and not big,
07:01full of, like you get stuff in some places that are just full of big lumps of wood, and
07:08there really isn't anything for the seed to grasp while it's growing. So I'm going to show you first
07:17something here with sweet pea, right, I have grown sweet pea myself last year, and I kept the seeds
07:29from it, so these are my own seeds, and I had good, well, relatively good germination from them,
07:37right, sweet pea seeds are really big, as you can see there, you can see that they're like
07:47little balls, and what you need to do with them, well, you can plant them straight on the
07:54compost and cover them over, but it's a good idea to soak them first, so I just put them
08:01in here, and I'm going to just use up a lot of them, because I found the germination rate with sweet pea is not great,
08:13like the seeds I bought this year in packets were not good, so just get a little thing of water,
08:20I'm going to leave them for about 24 hours before I actually plant them into a pot, and I was going
08:26to use some deeper pots, put one or two into them, because when sweet pea start, they shoot up, and
08:35then once they do appear, keep them somewhere cooler, they don't like being too hot, and if
08:43you keep them somewhere too hot, they will shoot up and become very leggy very quick, although you
08:49can plant them down a good bit, and they will recover, but they're quite hardy, and they can
08:54survive frost as well, even young ones, so now we're going to sow some into this 27 seed
09:06module tray, and one other thing I should have mentioned is labeling, just because it's so easy
09:15to forget what you have planted, even when they come up, a lot of seeds look the same, so have
09:21the labels handy, make your own, just as long as they're waterproof, and then all I'm doing here is
09:28just adding them, remove any big lumps, any bits of twig or anything in it,
09:41just press them down as you go,
09:43I hope the camera's picking that up, I'm trying to do it at an angle here,
09:53I'll maybe bring you down,
09:54and so just pressing down each
10:12of the modules, just to make sure there's not too many air pockets, you don't want it to be
10:18too firm, but you don't you certainly don't want the whole pile of air in there,
10:24and it's all for the roots, they grow onto,
10:34that's that,
10:38very simple, doesn't use a lot of compost, because these are quite small
10:42cells, and a lot of seeds will grow far better if you give them too much room,
10:49they can actually just develop root, and use all their energy doing that, without actually
10:57putting much
11:01growth or many leaves out on the plant, and that doesn't help the plant, because it actually needs
11:08the leaves to create the food, so now I'm going to go for the first
11:20one, maybe go with, this is sweet aleutianum, I'll go with these
11:30baby's breath, these are gypsophila, these are quite big for baby's breath seeds, these white ones,
11:39but with smaller seeds, the baby's breath can be covered over, but not too deep,
11:45and just pop them down like that, so that's basically it, what I'm going to do is just
11:54wrinkle over,
11:59and I'll just pop these in,
12:05there's probably four or five going to be each of these,
12:08baby's breath is a great one for, if you're into cut flowers, but also for pots and for the garden,
12:17they have quite a long root as well, so, but they will just add a kind of airy quality,
12:23and they'll move with the wind, so it's really nice in the garden,
12:27they just look so well with bigger flowers,
12:38now these should germinate fine, I found these very very quick,
12:42I kept some of my own last year, and they were germinating within a day,
12:49unfortunately there wasn't enough light for them, so they got very leggy, but I did save about 12
12:54of them, they're out in the greenhouse there, so don't have to cover them too much, and
13:02they will do fine, they're quite a no fuss plant, they don't like being too wet, but apart from that
13:08they're quite easy to grow, it's not something you hear many people growing,
13:14everybody would know them from okay sapphires, so there you go, that's that done, and all I'm
13:22going to do with this now is pop it into the water tray,
13:31there, and let that soak up the water, and settle in most of the seeds,
13:36and hopefully get the process started, I have a relatively clean tray here,
13:46and this one is going to have phlox on it, now phlox are one of the
13:52ones as I explained earlier, that they dark the germinate, so you can plant these a good
13:58bit down in the soil, and I think these take a long time to germinate too,
14:05so just have to keep an eye on them, make sure they don't dry out, I'm just going to spread these over,
14:22so
14:30hopefully we'll get good germination on these,
14:35so what I'm going to do with them is just cover them over,
14:38dark's not a factor, just removing any big lumps of wood,
14:59then these will go somewhere dark now, I think they look quite like heat
15:03for the germination process too, so I'll probably put them in the air uncovered,
15:07with a hot press, and leave them on there, and check them every few days for
15:14moisture, make sure that they haven't dried out completely,
15:19and what you can do then with that, is just place a lid over the top of it,
15:25just to seal out any light, to help them germinate,
15:30you can also, last year I put everything inside, you know the reusable plastic bags,
15:35just to keep moisture in, which works fine as well, so let's see them done.