 Hi there, welcome to the channel. So in this video today, I'm going to be showing you my favorite method for starting tomatoes from seed indoors This has no potting up involved. We are using some solo cups But not the double solo cup method This method will give you strong healthy tomatoes that will flourish once you plant them outside in your garden So I'm going to go through the steps on how I have had success in getting strong Healthy tomato plants ready for the garden. So let's get started So as you can see here, we got the solo cups You see lots of videos and people having great success using just a plain old solo cup And I'm going to be using these right from the get-go. We're going to be starting the seeds in these cups I've gone through them and drilled holes in the bottom because you always want to have that good drainage You have any nursery pots that are like that four inch size the larger size that you want to use those will work good as well So you've seen a lot of videos the double cup method which I have tried in the past and I understand You know how it is kind of neat how you can just water in the bottom put your cup in here I've done it But I find that once you get a whole tray of these set up in that double cup method You got them, you know under the lights and when it comes time to watering it becomes very finicky in my opinion Where you've got to pull each one out lift water You have to you know, make sure you don't overwater it and drown your plants with too much water Sometimes people put small stones in there and stuff to try to avoid that again to me. That's Little finicky. So what I've been doing that works great is I just use the the bottom watering method Make sure you have a tray like this that's got, you know, about a two or three inch Rim around it so it contains your cups, you know, keeps them from falling off So as you can see here, you can get a lot of these solo cups into one of these trays I'll leave a link to them down below as to where you can find them on amazon Something like this that you can just get from the dollar store one of these turkey Roasters disposable these work really great for holding a whole bunch of plants. It's got the nice, you know Three or four inch edges that'll hold them in place. Okay. So one of these will work good as well So the first part of my method is how you fill up the cup here and what we're going to do is just fill it up halfway starting off with some seed starting mix You want to make sure you're moistened ahead of time so that when you put it in here You've got moist soil because when it comes time to bottom water It'll wick up better if that soil is moist I've done it with dry soil and then try to moisten it by dumping water into the tray and it it doesn't work very well because sometimes the The seed starting mix is very dry and anaerobic and it just doesn't absorb water So make sure you got some moistened seed starting mix. So this is not potting soil. This is seed starting mix And I'm just going to show you How I'm setting up one of these It's actually a little bit early here for me in zone three Saskatchewan to get my tomatoes going So for most of us that are in the cool growing zones like zone five and down Our last frost date will be early may to mid may Here in zone three, I like to hold off till the end of may before I put my tomatoes outside just to Avoid those late spring frosts that we seem to get a lot of So about six to eight weeks before your last frost date is when you want to get your tomatoes going So there's no benefit in starting them early You just end up having to look after them indoors and they can become overgrown And these cups become too small for them So it's best to keep it at six to eight weeks before your last frost date So I am just filling up the cup as I said halfway With this moistened seed starting mix Make sure you pack it down pretty good so that it There's no air pockets in there So the reason we're only packing it halfway is we are going to Plant our seeds here put them under the grow lights Let them start uh sprouting I usually put in two to three seeds so that we have You know a good chance of germination and then having to Fin them out to to one plant will become necessary once they get past that two leaf stage And then you just let them grow in this cup And as you will see that I'm going to show you here that you just let them grow until they start to get above the rim of the cup So I'm going to show you here That I'm just going to be putting in two or three of these seeds on the surface of this soil here And once I get them in place I'll cover them up with a little more of the seed starting mix And that's all we're going to do for now So I put about a quarter inch of soil on top of those tomato seeds and then added a light layer of vermiculite That just helps kind of retain the moisture and help prevent damping off Which is that green mold and stuff that you sometimes see on your soil that can kill off your seedlings So instead of the two cup method where we're going to be watering each of these cups individually all the time I just water right into the tray here I add up two or three inches of water and it'll soak it up I find a little easier to control how much water your tomatoes are getting with this method of just pouring it into your tray directly I'll put you know a couple inches in there every day or two Whatever it doesn't soak up in an hour. So I'll pour off just so that I'm not over watering them You can also just spritzing from the top just to keep the top moist But I try to avoid that until the tomatoes start sprouting because I don't want those seeds to become displaced when I'm spritzing them But you can use this as well So I just find over time over that six week period that you're going to have these tomatoes In your house and you have to look after them I just find the watering directly into the tray is a lot easier You have this underneath the lights. It's easy to pull out add a little bit of water push them back in So this is recommended to have a grow light or something because these are going to be Down below the surface here. They're not going to get much sunlight if you have them in a window So I recommend, you know a grow light over top of them for that initial Time where they are sprouting So the potting up process is a lot simpler because you're only going to be just adding more soil to the cup So I just took this clip from last year so that I can show you what the potting up method looks like So this plant is about four weeks old and as you can see it has Grown up above the rim of the cup quite a bit now So what you want to do is just trim away any of those Tiny leaves that are below the rim of the cup and you will see that there's a lot of Tiny little hairs on the stem of your tomato And those once we cover them up with some soil will turn into roots So that will help give us a really strong root ball So once you've trimmed away any of those leaves that are below the rim of the cup We're going to fill it up now To pretty much the top of the cup with potting soil So we won't be using any Seed starting mix now we've switched to potting soil so that there's some Food in that soil and it will help feed that tomato plant So this is what it looks like now And it is ready to go back under the grow lights or by this point You might have some sunny windows that you can put your Plants into which is usually what I do move it out to the garage or out to your greenhouse And then here is what the plants look like at about that Four to six week stage. You can see I have some beautiful strong Healthy tomato plants here And usually in the next couple weeks, they will be ready to go outside and start hardening off I just want to show you another close-up here of what a good root system this cup has And I did trim a little bit more at the bottom just to get some more air in there So that those roots don't become root bound And that extra layer of soil now that we filled up the rest of the cup with Those will fill up with roots as well And this will be a beautiful strong plant ready to go out to the garden So that's kind of the the basics of this method that I find is a great way to be able to plant tomatoes In one container in one container only you still are technically potting them up And helping them grow I find the one cup method is a lot less work and a little faster If you've got a lot of plants you've got to water every day and check on I find just being able to water right into a large container like this is much easier and faster And a little easier to control So depending on where you live and when your last frost date is I hope that when it's time to start your tomatoes that you'll give this method a try I'm very confident you're going to end up with very strong healthy tomato plants That when you put them out in your garden is going to give you A bountiful amount of tomatoes during the summer season So please smash that like button leave me some comments on how you grow tomatoes I'm always open to new ideas and see what other people do and what is successful for you And if you haven't already done so, please hit the subscribe button And we will see you on the next video