Episode 85: Skill Development - Learning To Start Garden Plants Inside

spk_0:   0:01
Hello, everybody.

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Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Whatever time of day it is. Welcome to the show. The big show. The largest was important podcast that is recorded in our car today. As we're traveling, we're traveling through North Missouri at the moment. Welcome. And we'd like Thio. We're gonna do a kind of a short podcast here, and we hope you enjoy it because we're gonna be talking about something that's Ah, it's a little bitty, tiny, ongoing projects that I have going on right now. And I am learning how to plant plans who

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had to grow plants from seeds.

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This is just something I've never done before. And she's done something before in the past, but I've never done it before. And I wanted to do this as a skill development thing. And, well, let's talk about the skill development thing to start with. You don't need to write notes for this. We've already got the story written. She's getting out or nothing to write notes to. We could do the accompanying story like way got this. This is actually it's publishing here in just a bit. So anyway, um, skilled about let's talk about it

spk_0:   1:13
If you don't know how to do stuff, you're not propped, no matter how much stuff you've got in your basement. Because, yeah, if, for example, you have this box of seeds, you can buy garden in a box, and we actually have one of these garden in the box products.

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Yes, to get

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in your free sitting in our freezer for a number of years. Now the deep freeze, the one that never defrost. So it's liable to still be good. And it's got a variety of different garden plants in there, including tomatoes and peppers and peas and onions and yada yada. Lots of

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all of them are heirloom. Seeds will go through heirloom seeds here just a bit, but all of them are heirloom seeds so that they're worth storing. As a prep thistle seed box is absolutely designed as a prep. That's the whole idea. Yeah, so in

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case of emergency, you're supposed to pull it out of the freezer. And if it's the appropriate time of year, stick the seeds in the ground and out comes a bounty of food, right? Um uh, you know,

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that's not really how it

spk_0:   2:26
works. You're liable to get your peas. They're easy. Yeah, you know, probably get a few onions.

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Onions are either,

spk_0:   2:34
huh? Some of those go. Yeah, Corn. Um, maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe depending on when you put it in, if you put it in when the ground's too cold. Gordon like that. Yeah. Um,

spk_1:   2:46
So what we What are you saying? That you kind of actually need to know what what you're doing.

spk_0:   2:50
Yeah. Oh, things like tomatoes and peppers. Just stick in the seeds in the ground in most of the U. S. And hoping for the best. If you stick enough seeds in the ground, Yeah, you'll get a few plants, but it's a low success rate doing it that way. And you've got a garden in a box and you're thinking about trying to feed your family out of that garden in a box as well. A safe seat for the next year. You don't want to have a low success rate. You want to have a high success rate.

spk_1:   3:19
So what do you need to d'oh? You need to have ah place already set up so that it has proper soil for guarding. You need to have a place set up so that it has. It's just ready to go

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some tools, although that's not most Don't need a bunch

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of fools. But what you also need to know is how to do it and what to do and when to do it. And we're not to do it

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and the skills of the most important part of the process.

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Right? And you also need to have supplies that you learn that you need, that you didn't know you need like bunny fencing. Yeah, she's laughing, but it is really funny to put it all this work and come out and find out that somebody has come along and sheared off all of your carefully prepared garden, and then you have to start over, which is annoying if times are good. But that bunny could have just killed your family. Yeah, this. Listen, if you're depending on this, that bunny could have just killed your family. If you think about that, that should be enough to realize that Hey, maybe along with my little seed packets, I better get some bunny fencing. Because what are you gonna do? Sit there all night long? Every night out there guarding your plants? Maybe you are. I don't know, but that doesn't meet. Sorry. If there's no light out there, that doesn't mean Bunny still not going to get him. Even though you're sitting out there and yeah, you could you could shoot buddy. You could eat money, but they make Maur bunnies

spk_0:   4:56
and you can't shoot models and caterpillars shoot squash bugs

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over. You can. Really you could really record caterpillars way we're out of the place and we'd just put changed. You just put in some trees that previously it was even that year and she found the world's biggest, most disgusting caterpillar eating up one of her trees.

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That sucker was

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I mean, it was six

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inches long

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and she said they who and I'm like, Well, squish it. She's like, Yeah, switch it. It'll get even with it. How's that? Put on your glove? Grab that thing. Take it down to the pond and feed it to your fish. So that's what she did. She she grabbed this monster of all caterpillars.

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It was a lunar moth caterpillar actor.

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They're huge, and normally we wouldn't mind. But she's eating. It is eating up our nut tree. So Caterpillar got tossed into the pond, and one of our bass had, well, several of our bath had a nice meal over it. I mean, when it would plunk, I was. I was up the hill. I was probably 75 yards away, and I heard the plunk. That's how big of a caterpillar it waas. So things you gotta know things. You got to realize things that you just can't wing when there's no room for error, no margin for error at all. So all of this is skill development, figuring out what you need to make this work. And some of these skills are really, really, really critical. Because if you sooner or later, even if you have a year's worth of food, it's only a year. Okay, in your storage food in no way is is good as fresh vegetables. It just isn't

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also the vegetable content of most of the stored food is pitiful, and the nutrient content is not its highest rushed off.

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So bottom line gardening If you're planning on bugging in, if you're planning on getting yourself through hard times, even if it's let's say it's not a tea at walkie, but it's hard times, it's something like

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low on cash. And you just would like to eat something besides around the noodles over now and then

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you like the Great Depression, for example, that was a perfect time way. You need to have these huge gardens to feed your family because you can afford the food that you can grow. Okay, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about something Where or for example, you are in a situation where you don't want to go to the store for whatever reason, Where you going your own. And so all of this is is critically important. So what I'm was decided to do is this is a skill I don't have. This is one of the skills I decide to pick up. Let's go ahead and grow some plants that I chose to do it the easy, easy, easy, easy way Because I'm just trying to develop skeletons, trying to see what works and what doesn't. I can take everything I learned from the easy, easy, easy way and translate that into the do it yourself way. And right now, time is not something I have a lot off. I have ah, exceedingly demanding job at the moment. And I have several ongoing projects at the moment, including three

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d Y.

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Three b. Y is just one of them. You know, I'm also a major blogger for a another website. That takes up a couple hours a day of my time. And did you seahorse? We see donkey?

spk_0:   8:43
Somebody see something? You're attempting to make mules.

spk_1:   8:45
We saw somebody trying to make a mule. Okay,

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if you're not sure how you make mules, Doctor, go. That one guy.

spk_1:   8:57
Uh, well, okay, we have a rather pornographic moment in our podcast, pressing right along now

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we've already P has already learned one significant important bit of information from this year's experiment.

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Let me explain what I did. I went out to a big box store and I looked at the various different ways of doing ze starting. I decided on the easy way, which is probably the most expensive way because you pay for the convenience. I bought a couple of packages of the Jiffy 16 16 space starter kit. So they've got these little package these little pallets of soil that are compressed, dried and compressed. And the idea behind the starter pack is you buy the package you buy are you put water in the package and it puffs up thes, um, soils to their full height. They're just little soldiers of soil. You plant your seeds in there, you cover them up with the included plastic greenhouse. You said it in a window and indirect light and you just let it grow.

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Keep it moist,

spk_1:   10:19
keep it moist. Well, if you keep the cover on, it's gonna be moist. Causes a lot of moisture. In the process of of expanding the packages, I make it sound harder than it is. It's not hard, nothing hard to this. And then after the seedlings come up, you remove. Basically, you remove the greenhouse tops and keep the moisten as they start to grow. You start hardening them up by like, Well, our first step was putting him in a room with the ceiling fan. So they're blowing around, which makes their stems.

spk_0:   10:52
The first step was to turn him every

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couple days. Yeah, turning over a couple of

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doing that

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Thio sort of the delight makes them strong.

spk_0:   11:02
Yeah, you leave in setting one way. They all lean toward the light because they know where the light is they'll lean toward the light and you get plans. They're all been happy days.

spk_1:   11:13
Sorry. That was She was a little talking when I had to click the microphone off for for a reason. And then she was in the middle of singing something when I clicked it back. So that was kind of a mass. Sorry about that.

spk_0:   11:25
I totally would not have done that to you.

spk_1:   11:27
Yeah, What is she has this thing about spring peepers, frogs? We were driving through an area I knew was going to have frogs, and she just wouldn't catch my Okay, Stop now, hand signal.

spk_0:   11:41
That was busy looking for the ducks on the

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so anyway, so we had a kind of a rough transition. There will come right back to her point, Just a sec. But we, uh I pulled out the windows and of course, the spring peepers were going nuts and we saw a turtle. So these are big signs of spring. And after this horribly long winter, as they all are, we just very much like it makes our hearts happy to have spring here.

spk_0:   12:08
Makes my heart glad.

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So anyway, back to your point. Teaching voice.

spk_0:   12:15
Yeah, because if you leave the plants all pointed in the same direction, they know where the light is That grow toward the light and they will end up permanently bent if you don't change the direction of the light. Relatives of the plants every couple of days

spk_1:   12:31
I've been changed them every day. And they they will have changed direction by night. Don't change their bent all the way over the other way by night. So what else they were? Well, I planted too. Rows of eight of different types of tomatoes. Cherry and Roma and I planted two rows of different types of pepper. One hot peppers on Norman. Which ones they were, and the other were green peppers of some variety. And the tomatoes all came up and the green peppers did not northern. None of the peppers came up. Absolutely. Nothing came up in those two. Why? Well, I have them placed on the top of one of our water barrels. We give these 55 count water barrels. You know, the blue ones that you keep. We have several of those full in our house that we keep as our water. But we haven't spaced around the house to keep the weight off that people forget about how much this stuff weighs. So we have water barrels here, there, and then we cover them up. And since this was like in the back room, it's just covered by a big black plastic to keep the light off of it. Not only is it harder on the barrels, the plastic to have light on it, of course, the more light transmission mitts through, the more chance stuff grows in the water, which we don't want. So we have plastic covering, and so it's sitting on the barrel right next to a window. If this is, we do zone heating in our house, which means that our house is not constant temperature throughout the house. And since this room is basically it's our laundry room, it has a window in it. He knows where the washing machine sits, and we've also got some other storage stuff in there. We have somewhere, perhaps tucked away in there, so it's climate controlled toe a point. It doesn't ever get really cold, but it gets into the fifties when it's winter, and we're doing this. When it was, we started this when it was snow on the ground type winter, and it was just to hold four. The peppers, these peppers and tomatoes are tropical plants. They're not designed for cold, which is why you have to start them indoors in Missouri. And so we did. Now they do make heating paths, electric heating pants that are designed to help people in our situation grow much faster plants. And I did not invest in one this year because when I didn't know it was going to be a problem. And too once, once I did well, you know, that ship has already sailed. I wanted to go ahead and play it on out,

spk_0:   15:21
but if you were doing it for a prep, you would probably. Instead of an electric heating pad, you would have some of those hot, cold gel packs on hand so you could leave one sitting in hot water for a couple of hours in the evening and then slip it underneath the plants at night to keep them from getting cold. When it's gonna be cold this tonight,

spk_1:   15:43
right? Cause I don't like preps that depend on electricity. Now, if I'm going to do this again next year, and I probably well, at least in a different and I'll probably not do the same exact thing. I am going to get any electric heating pad because they're not expensive and it's a handy thing to have it. I don't want to lose my plants again. I want you get the plants going. You have to go ahead and pinch the ones that aren't just good. That's hard. It's hard to kill perfectly good plans, but you have to do it. And so I I we did my. Now I've got a weed. I would had replanted the peppers and they're coming up now. At least some of them are. So I'm gonna have to do the pinching pretty soon on them because that you can't have three tomato plants competing against each other in a small amount of soil.

spk_0:   16:36
The competition will weaken everybody,

spk_1:   16:39
so when things get a little warmer outside is still not very, very conducive. I mean, we're talking about maybe even snow again tomorrow, so I can't do anything much outside. But when it comes time to move outside, hardened them further. We're gonna move them out onto the back porch we have a screened in back porch and let them get blown around a little bit more. It has a little more like to it, and then we'll actually move them out to the back steps, which will give them some light for full sunlight for part of the day. And then they'll be ready to go into the ground. And you just take the little pot of dirt that you got, which is about the size of its what, a couple inches across two and 1/2 maybe three glass shot class. Yeah. No bigger than a shot glass. Well, let's find out. Spear glasses.

spk_0:   17:29
Yeah. There. Yeah. Um,

spk_1:   17:32
Chuck Lester. Pretty small. Some of

spk_0:   17:35
seed pods or shot glass eyes. These were bigger.

spk_1:   17:37
Yeah, these are These are the big girls. And so you just take that transplant that directly into the soil, and it's ready to go on the plants already rooted, it'll go through the sides of the of

spk_0:   17:48
the, uh, seed pod

spk_1:   17:52
teapot, and you're good to go. That's how you start him now. A couple of things with an expensive way of doing this because those things cost me. I don't remember exactly what it was 67 bucks per package, and they got a 16 6 bucks for a pot of 16. So I had 12 bucks in that for 32 plants. And that's more expensive than then. You know, I like we have a very, very, very good greenhouse, and they're very inexpensive. It would actually be cheaper for us to go to the greenhouse and by the plants ready to go that it would be to do it this way. Course. Now, remember, I paid full price. I went in in the spring, which is not the time to be buying us, though. I paid full price

spk_0:   18:40
about some of these in the past for $2 at the end of the season. The same product or a dollar 50 or something like that.

spk_1:   18:46
Yeah, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at the big box store after they have refills, refills that you can get. We're going to go in and we're gonna try and wait till planting season's over here in a couple of months, and we're gonna go in and get a whole bunch of them. And those are gonna go in our Perhaps we're not gonna use those we're gonna keep those is perhaps because we're gonna have something on hand that we could just started is long as you keep them dry, they should be fine.

spk_0:   19:11
Here's the thing, though. If you don't want to take the time and trouble, you got your garden in a box. You don't think you want to spend the time and effort right now to learn how to actually grow the plants. Nevertheless, you seriously should consider picking up some of those seat buds, some of the pods for the seeds and having those to go along with the frozen seeds because you don't need to freeze the starter pods. But you will want them because you will not want to take your one little packet of all the tomato plants you have to keep your garden going for however long the drama might last. You don't want to put all those in the cold, bad ground of a place that's never been worked for a garden and you not knowing what you're doing and expect him to come up. You want to give yourself the best chance of success, and those starter pods give you the best chance of success.

spk_1:   20:08
Yeah, I highly highly recommend. I can't recommend it enough doing the starter pause as a prep because they come dehydrated and as long as you keep them dry and I recommend buying a whole bunch of the things. The plastic parts are no big deal, but the little pods thanks. So the dirt pods themselves, that's what you have to keep dry. Just seal him up in a five gallon bucket. Bye sizes that'll fit in a five gallon bucket. Seal him up in a five gallon bucket. Just make yourself, ah, five gallon bucket garden prep. Get everything that you're going to need to go, not chemicals, because while chemicals don't last all that long, But all this stuff that you're going to need fertilizer

spk_0:   20:58
would last, by the way. So if you want to put some concentrated fertiliser in there, it might be worth doing, depending on how your soil is

spk_1:   21:05
concentrated. Bagged for live, not yeah, but liquid, not liquid bag fertilizer or even some a pack or two of the starting soil is not starting. Makes you a bag or two of that inside your five gallon bucket. You see all this stuff up, put a good lid on it and mark it and just put it in. The basement

spk_0:   21:29
doesn't even need to be temperature controlled.

spk_1:   21:32
Just put in the basement, put it wherever you want and you're good to go.

spk_0:   21:35
If you want to go cheaper, you don't want to buy the seed pods. Ah, a little bag of the starter mix goes a very long way by your next batches of eggs in the cardboard cartons instead of the plastic cartons. And you can fill each one of those little egg cups with starter mix and plant in there right again after water more often because they don't hold water as well as the starter pods. And you have to put a water impermeable tray underneath him because the water soaks through the bottom

spk_1:   22:08
and also bought these on the egg cartons so they'll go right into the red in your five gallon bucket. You don't need the top parts. You could just cut the top, cut him in half and used the top part for something else to throw it away or recycle it or whatever you want to do with it. The top parts do have other uses, though, so you might want to keep him. But if you need room in your bucket, just cut the top parts off and save the bottom part.

spk_0:   22:34
Soak those tops in hot wax and put him in a plastic bag there. Very nice fire Start AIDS.

spk_1:   22:40
Yeah, we've actually got a We've actually got a a fire starter article on three b y using these egg cartons things. So that's another use for them now. We're huge believers. First of all, we're huge believers in Oh, sorry. I just saw some ducks starting to nest out there in a field. Bad choice. Feel that's going to be planted. Um, that's what we're driving. We see this stuff, but those egg cartons could be used for last and lots of things. And frankly, those egg cartons tend to come with eggs that are produced in a better way than just the commercial eggs. I'm not gonna go off on on my big Hey, Buy organic gauge cage free eggs because one they're better for you. And two, they taste a lot better. I'm not gonna go off on that tangent here, but if you do in

spk_0:   23:38
the grocery, aren't that big a deal.

spk_1:   23:39
But if you do, those egg cartons are much better. So I think that about covers what I wanted to say.

spk_0:   23:51
All right. Happy growing.