 Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Kendra Sakamoto, and I'm one of the librarians here at West Vancouver Memorial Library. I know that we were all in different places this morning, but I would like to acknowledge that I am joining you today from the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish Nation, the Slewa Tooth Nation, and the Musqueam Nation. The Coast Salish peoples have been the careful caretakers of these lands and waters since time immemorial. I personally am extremely grateful to live and work and garden in this beautiful place, and I always strive to walk respectfully in the footsteps of all of those who have come before me. Today, I am delighted to welcome Jordan Mara, who will be talking about getting seeds started as this gardening season is finally approaching. Jordan launched Mind and Soil in 2020 with the mission of introducing one million individuals to mindful gardening to help connect individuals with gardening's mental health benefits. Mind and Soil offers a combination of online education and organic gardening products to help you have a thriving garden and to experience how peaceful, calming, and restorative gardening can be. Very happy to welcome Jordan Mara with us today. Thank you so much, Kendra. I great to be here and really looking forward to chatting with everyone today. I'm not sure if anybody is familiar with Mind and Soil, but my name is Jordan. I'm the founder here at Mind and Soil. I launched it in 2020 with the full hope and intention of introducing a million individuals to gardening's mental health benefits. So beyond just being as sustainable as possible or growing your own produce and vegetables and flowers, the thing that I'm hoping to accomplish even more than that is helping individuals connect with just how peaceful, calming, and restorative the garden is. And so with that being said, I would love to hear in the chat function from folks just what one word you would use to describe what gardening means to you. What's the word that describes the way that you feel when you're out there in the garden? Would love to hear on that front there. And then after this session, a huge part of, I guess you could say like my philosophy is that for somebody to feel how peaceful or calming restorative gardening is, they need to be supported and there needs to be education along the way. And that's why I love doing sessions like this where I can share all the knowledge that I've acquired over many years of experimenting and playing around in the garden. And I also put a ton and a ton of content out on our YouTube channel. There's over 200 videos there. And so if you're looking for more videos on how to go about starting seeds or how to go about hardening them off and transplanting them into the garden in a couple of weeks or months time to then how to be feeding them, how to be trellising them, so on and so forth. You can find videos of all of that type of stuff on my YouTube channel here. It's just youtube.com backslash, mind and soil. Alrighty. So Janet is saying, alive is the way that she feels in the garden. Love that. Deanne is saying joy, roof, enjoyment. Joshua leisurely, love that. Engrossed for market, natural and connection. Love all these words. And I think it's so cool, right? Because today we're of course gonna be focused on how to go about starting seeds, but really the garden, it ends up bringing us so, so, so, so much more than just the fruits and the flowers and the vegetables that we harvest out of it. So really hope that over the course of today's session and by the end of it, you leave with a couple new ideas, tips, techniques to be applying this coming season. And speaking of that, I've learned a lot over the last several years. So I wanna show you something here. And these are seeds that I started using the method, the materials that I use in my very first year of starting seeds indoors. And every year I start a set of seeds like this, just to kind of remember how far I have come because now at this point, these seeds on the right-hand side were started on the exact same day as those on the left-hand side, but they are growing way better. They are doing way, way, way better than those on the left-hand side. And that's the result of tons and tons of experimenting and playing around and figuring out really what do seeds need not only to germinate and begin growing, but to really be thriving before we move them into the outdoor garden. And so if any of you have started seeds before and you haven't been happy with your success or if this is your first year starting seeds, then really at the end of our session here, you're gonna have all the information, all the knowledge that you need to have seeds coming up like this and really thriving before we get them into the garden. And this is something that I've taught hundreds, probably thousands of people at this point on. And I just wanted to share this one quick quote from one of the individuals in our community, Brigida. What she shared is Jordan and his incredible company have developed the products that my new garden and plant babies adore, the seedling mix and worm castings. One of my best memories from 2021 was getting into gardening and incorporating Jordan's beautiful approach to health and mindfulness. And so let me know in the chat function, is this your first year of starting seeds? Is it your second year, your third year, your 30th year? How many years have folks been starting seeds for? Let me know in the chat function there. And for any of you that might be on the newer side to starting seeds, that was the same as Brigida here. This is her very first season of starting seeds and we can see all of them germinating, growing underneath the grow lights and then transplanted into her garden up the Indian arm there on the dock, overlooking the ocean. That's just the summertime dream there. And so again, if she can do it in her first year here, I know that each and every one of you can. Amazing. So third year, 22 plus, second for Alex, first for Joshua. So we've got a whole range of things. I'm gonna be really curious at the end to hear if everybody has picked up a new little tip or technique, even those of you that have been starting seeds for many years. So to begin diving into how do we go about starting seeds indoors, I really wanna break this down into two key areas. We're first gonna talk about the materials that I utilize for starting seeds that I kind of deem or view as my must haves. And then the second piece that we're gonna talk through is the method that I go about utilizing those materials in order to not only get them germinating but really thriving indoors here. So to get started with the first part there, that is all focused on materials. And the very first material that we need, I think this one should be fairly self-explanatory. And that one is of course seeds. So tons and tons of different options on the seeds front. I do a ton of work with West Coast Seeds. They've been really, really supportive of me and Mind & Soil since the moment that I launched the business. So everything that you see in the videos on my YouTube channel or in the presentation today, those are all ultimately coming from West Coast Seeds at the very beginning. That's where the original seeds came from. And probably the actually even bigger thing that I would communicate to everybody here is not even just like who you're getting your seeds from but making sure that you have new seeds that you're starting. So I did an experiment earlier this year where I took some old seed packs from 2016 and I tried to germinate those seeds and right beside it, I started a new set of seeds that were packed for 2022. So only one year old. And the seeds that were packed for 2016, again, about like six, seven years old, zero of them germinated. And that was for tomatoes, that was for broccoli. I wanna say that's for kale as well. But then for the seeds that were packed just for last year, I was getting like an 80 to 90% germination rate. So like eight out of the 10 seeds were germinating, nine out of the 10 seeds were germinating. And so it really went to show that if you just have old seeds, then you could be doing everything else perfectly right, but the seeds have just kind of expired and they're past their point of germinating. And then you're gonna be kind of feeling a little bit deflated because it's like, why are these seeds not germinating? So big encouragement that I have for each and every one of you would be to make sure that before you start your seeds, that all of your seed packs are kind of like at least three years old or less than that. And then if you have any that are slightly older than that, one thing that you can do is you can grab 10 of those older seeds, put them onto a wet paper towel, and then basically fold that paper towel over onto the seeds so that all 10 seeds are underneath the paper towel, and then put that into a Ziploc bag for about seven days. And then after seven days, open it up and see how many of them have germinated. That's going to show you what your germination rate would be with those older seeds. And if only one or two of them have germinated, then that's a great sign to get some new seeds for this upcoming season to give yourself the highest likelihood of them germinating. And if say eight or nine of them did germinate, then you know that those seeds are still good, you can utilize them this upcoming season. So that's the first part that we of course need to have for starting seeds is the seed itself. But what do we put the seed into? The second thing that we need to have on hand is seedling mix. And once again, there are tons of different options that are out there. And this is something that I have been experimenting with for probably three or four years. What's the best type of seedling mix for ultimately our seeds to be starting in? And so I now have my own kind of like warm casting seedling mix that a lot of people utilize that you can grab from West Coast seeds. And the big difference with it is that it has compost and it has warm castings in it. So from the moment that your seeds germinate, they're going to be completely surrounded with nutrients and microbial life. It's going to build up their strength, almost like their immunity system as a young plant. So they end up not only being really large seedlings, but also really green, really lush, really healthy seedlings. And so West Coast seed, they actually did a trial with our seedling mix and take a look at this. This was the seedling mix compared to just a sterile store-bought mix that you would generally see on the shelves. And so as we can see, there was lots of germination in that sterile mix, but the plants are way, way, way smaller than all of the Swiss chard over here and how much larger and more lush all of it's growing. And that is a hundred percent due to the fact that there are those warm castings and there is that compost in there. So the kind of important takeaway there is that if you want seeds to germinate, you absolutely can start them in a number of different mediums, but to have them really thriving from the beginning, you want to have some nutrient matter in there, some organic matter in the form of compost, as well as that microbial life that the warm castings are bringing to the picture there. So we now have our seeds and we've got our warm casting seedling mix or any other seedling mix out there. We need something to be putting them into. And so that's where we then need to have seed cells and trays. And one thing that you might notice here, and this is something that I do that is probably a little bit different to what a lot of folks do on the seed starting front, is that I start all of my seeds in three inch seed cells. So this is a much larger seed cell than the kind of like really small one inch by one inch plugs that you'll see sometimes. And the reason why I start them in these larger seed cells is really twofold. The first piece is that when we start them in those really small plugs, you know, within about 14 days, we need to move them into something of this size anyways. So it's just saving me that step of not having to go through that whole process of potting them up after only 14 to 21 days. Now the second piece is that for seeds to germinate, they need two things. They need moisture and they need warmth. And with these larger seed cells, what ends up happening is that they retain more moisture because there's less airflow going around it, right? If we were to think about this as an individual seed cell, if we then had four of those smaller one inch seed cells, there would be air flowing through all of those different angles between them. And that's going to ultimately dry up the seedling mix more quickly, which would mean that either less of them would germinate or you would need to be in there watering potentially every day just to ensure that the seedling mix doesn't dry up. So by just starting in three inch seed cells, I saved myself one round of potting up and I ended up actually kind of experiencing a higher germination rate because there's more moisture in that seedling mix for the seeds to begin germinating. So that's what I go with on the seed cell front, which again, is just a little bit different than what most folks may have seen or was generally shown in videos along the way. And I'm a big believer that like there isn't a right way to approach this and a wrong way to approach this, but rather just like different approaches and it's all about finding what ultimately works for you and brings you the most happiness and joy with your time in the garden. So we now have our seeds and we've got the seedling mix, we've got the seed cells. The fourth material here is the most important one from my perspective. If there's only one thing that you take away from this, it is to be utilizing a grow light when you're starting your seeds in doors here. Now, why is a grow light so important? Well, ultimately like we could be using a window sill, but in my experience, the vast majority of the time those are not providing enough light for our seeds to really be growing to their fullest potential. And so to help kind of like articulate this or to show this, I've got this app on my phone called Light Meter and you can put it up to like any light and it's gonna tell you how many lumens are coming off of that, how much light is essentially coming out of that source. And so when I go to my sunniest window sill in my house, the number of lumens that we have here, you can kind of see it on my cracked phone there, comes out to 4,041 lumens and that's while it's sunny. And one additional piece to keep in mind here is that when we are kind of starting seeds at this time in the year in March and in April, the days aren't super long yet either. So it isn't even a full 12 hours of sun. This is the maximum amount of sun that they're getting in that smaller window of direct sunlight that this window is getting. And as we can see in the background of this picture here, all of these seedlings, they're leaning towards the window sill there. And that is like a telltale sign that they are not getting enough light because they're reaching towards the light source to try and get even more light. So what happens when we then look underneath a grow light? Well, I bought the cheapest grow light off of Amazon and that number actually drops to 555. So not all grow lights are created equal. You could actually be in a worse position than a window sill with some of the grow lights. And so about two years ago, I bought six different grow lights to really start figuring out like, what are the best grow lights? I now use my favorite grow light for all of my seeds starting. And let's look at how many lumens are coming off of those ones. And it goes up to 36,920. So nine times more light than that window sill. And I have a timer that turns this light on at 730 in the morning and turns it off at 730 at night. So they are getting a full 12 hours of sunlight every single day from the point that I germinate them either in March or in April. And this, when we then compare it to like direct sun underneath the sun out in the garden in the middle of the summer, this number, it's gonna go up to around like 80,000 when the sun is at its fullest strength. So even this grow light kind of pales in comparison to being out in the garden exposed to the sun on a kind of no cloud, completely clear sunny day. So it is way more in the direction of what we want our plants to be getting. And as a result, they're going to grow way larger, way better from the point that they germinate and begin growing. We only have two more materials to cover off on. We're gonna go through those ones real quick. So if you do have any questions on the materials that I've covered off on so far, go ahead and fire those into the chat function because we're gonna pause for a moment or two before we go into the method for how to be utilizing these materials just to kind of answer any questions that you might have in regards to the materials here. So any questions that you have, begin firing those into the chat function in regards to the materials being utilized. Now the fifth material that we want to have on hand is actually a thermometer. So the temperature that the room is where our seeds are germinating ends up having a huge impact on whether or not our seeds will germinate. And again, I love to be doing experiments, playing around with different variables. And so a couple of years ago, I started the exact same set of seeds with every variable, the exact same except for temperature. So I started one set of seeds in a room that was about 10 Celsius, another set that was around 15 Celsius, and then in a third environment that was around 20 Celsius. Now take a look at how big of an impact this has. So in the room that was 10 Celsius or 50 Fahrenheit, we can see that pretty much nothing is germinating. And even those that have germinated, like they're barely even growing, they're really, really, really struggling. Now when we go up to 15 Celsius or 60 Fahrenheit, we're definitely getting more germination, but we're still not seeing too much growth. And then when we go up to 20 Celsius, 70 Fahrenheit, as we can see, we're in a whole different arena with how well these plants grow. So I always like to have the thermometer on hand so that I can just be kind of keeping an eye and making sure that the area is at least around 20, 21, 22 Celsius. When that is the case, germination goes way up and the plants, once they've germinated, they start to grow way better. Again, these are all the little variables that once we put them all together, results in our plants growing way better than in that first year that I started seeds where they germinated, but they just weren't growing all that much. Alrighty, and so our sixth and final material that we want to have on hand, I have a feeling that nobody will have seen this one or come across this one before, but we need something to be watering our ceilings with, right? Again, they need the warmth in order to germinate and they need moisture to germinate. So what's my favorite watering tool? Believe it or not, it is, oh, there we go, the turkey baster. So I have found that the turkey baster is just like the best tool for watering seedlings indoors because like one turkey base of water is perfect for one of those three inch seed cells as we go through the kind of like seed starting process, but then as our plants begin to grow as well, and as you can see with this kale plant here, you know, if I had another seed cell right behind it, it's a little bit challenging to get right down into the soil level there with our water. But with the turkey baster, since it has such a long neck on it, we can just kind of like dodge it into between a couple of leaves and get all that moisture right down to where the roots are. So I always have my turkey baster on hand in my seed starting station for all of my watering while I'm germinating and starting all of my seeds. So with that being said, I want to pause for a moment here, answer a couple of questions, and then we're going to dive into part two, which is the method. So I'm just going to scroll down in the chat function here and see if we've got any questions here. All right, Marni, I can see from a little bit earlier was mentioning having some challenges with the seed starting. Hopefully, Marni, there might be a couple of things that you've been able to pick up from the materials that I've gone through so far to, yeah, ultimately get those seeds growing a little better. I would imagine that the light would be a big part as well as the warmth. Because if yours were looking like the left-hand side of that picture, that means that they have germinated, but they haven't begun to grow really well. So ultimately getting more light in there, getting more warmth in there could end up really, really helping you out on that front. Okay, question from Alex here. Does cinnamon really help germination on old seeds? I don't know if it does. I haven't ran a specific experiment on this. Ultimately, when I'm trying to figure out if any of my older seeds can germinate, I'm doing that germination test of putting them in paper towel. But Alex, this is where like, I take a very, very experimental mindset to gardening. And part of the reason why I do that is because it removes all of the expectation of bounty harvest yield. And it puts all of our energy into the things that are within our control. And ultimately, that makes it a much more enjoyable process because at the end of any of those experiments, we come out with a learning and insight that we're able to apply to the next round of either that season or the following season. So, Alex, my encouragement to you on this front would be to take 10 seeds, put them into paper towel, see how many of them germinate, and then at the exact same time, run an experiment with cinnamon to see if that ultimately has a higher number of them germinating than in just the paper towel that would be kind of like your control in that experiment there. So that would be my thoughts on that one there. And then where to buy cost-effective trays and germination pots. Alex, I get all of my stuff from John's Plant Factory down in Vancouver there. They're a kind of like a hydroponics shop, but they are moving more and more into the gardening world and they've got really, really good trays and then also like seed cells, pots, et cetera. So you'll have plenty of success if you go there and finding what you're looking for there. What's the name of the Lumen's Light app? It's called Light Meter, L-I-G-H-T-M-E-T-E-R. So, and then next question from Alec here. Why not 24 hours of lighting? This was an experiment that I wanted to get to this year, but I just had too many other pieces going on so I didn't get to it. So I don't have like conclusive experiment results for what the difference would be between 24 hours and you know, 12 hours. My hunch or suspicion, right, is just that like the plants need a time to rest as well. And when you turn the grow lights off, you'll see like they actually do like sit down and their canopy goes down. And you can tell like they're very much going into a resting phase. And then the next day that canopy comes right back up for them to absorb as much of the light as possible. And I think that's a very natural process to be going through. And we think about, you know, like again, just like germination in nature, there's always going to be a daytime cycle and a nighttime cycle. So I think that you probably could stretch it to like 16 hours and you could probably get like a little bit more growth than what I see on my plants. But I think 24 hours, it just wouldn't present enough of a rest period for the plants. However, with that being said, it is something that's been like on my mind that I want to experiment around with. As you can tell probably by now I love running experiments and that's totally one that is on the docket for one of the upcoming seasons here. Alrighty. So for Kelly, can you share the brand of grow lights you found the best? What I'm going to do is I'm going to drop a quick link in the chat function here to the exact grow light because I do have it now on my website there. So you can grab those there. And one thing that you might see in this session here, but I actually rather than using four foot grow lights, I use two two foot grow lights. Now the reason why I use two two foot grow lights is because as our plants grow, I can keep one of those grow lights really low for the shorter plants such as say basil or oregano time. But then for some of our taller growing plants like peppers and tomatoes, I want a grow light that's higher up. And so by having two different grow lights that are both two feet, I still cover the full four foot length. But now I can have one lower down for my shorter seedlings and the other one higher up for my taller seedlings. And that's, yeah. So that's the grow light that I utilize and kind of like the setup that I run in terms of having two grow lights going there. And I'm just going to go ahead and type the name of the place that I get plots from. That's John's plant factory. Perfect, there you go, Alec. There we go, Kelly. Okay, super interesting from Judy here. I left lights on 24 seven and my seedlings are tall and straggly with only two leaves. So Judy, definitely go ahead and check with that light meter app how much light is coming off of those grow lights. And then definitely I would consider playing around with, okay, maybe I should try some, try switching this to 12 hours per day or 14 hours per day. And the kind of like really good news on this front, Judy, is that right now like it is still so early in the gardening season, excuse me. And like I only started my tomato seeds about two weeks ago and I haven't even started yet, like my cucumbers, my zucchinis, my sunflowers, my squashes, all that. I haven't even started yet because as soon as those babies start to grow, like they absolutely take off. And so what that means is that like if you're not happy with how any of your seedlings are doing, there is absolutely enough time in the season to start another round with any new learnings that you have from say this presentation as well as what your experience has already been so far. And so I'm a big believer that just kind of like the more rounds, the more cycles that we get, ultimately the better we're going to be at starting seeds and then growing things in our garden as well. So big encouragement there would also be like, don't be afraid to just start over, start from scratch. Because if they're not at the level that you are hoping or wanting for them to be, that can feel like a little bit of a defeat. But as long as you've got a learning, a takeaway from that, that you can apply into the next round, that's going to propel your gardening forward and ultimately probably bring you more joy and more enjoyment out of your time in the garden there. Alrighty. And then yeah, great last question from Fran here and then we'll dive into part two of our session. Fran was asking what distance should the light be from the plants? I like to keep, keep mine about six inches from lights. Part of what I really like about these grow lights that I utilize is that like, you can have them right on top of the plant and they're just not strong enough to burn those plants. So there's like really some nice room for error in there. And so as the kind of like rule of thumb, I try to aim for about six inches off of the top of the plant there. And as like an example here, I'm actually going to grab this pepper plant right here. This is the pepper plant that I overwintered from last year underneath those grow lights. So at the end of last season, I pulled it out of the garden. I pruned it literally all the way back to like this node right here. And all of this new growth has come onto the plant over the course of the winter because peppers are actually perennials in that they'll keep growing for multiple seasons if they have the right conditions. But what usually ends up happening in the fall is that it gets too cold, they die off and they aren't able to come back. But if you bring them inside, put them underneath the grow light, they'll continue growing. And these grow lights are strong enough that like I literally have peppers on this plant that are perfectly ready to be harvested and enjoyed at some point here. And then I'm going to put this baby right back out into the garden, probably May long weekend once it's warm enough there. So as I alluded to earlier grow lights, I'm a huge, huge, huge believer in just because I've seen firsthand how big of a difference they have on the plants. And that's where I like, I would really like, I would genuinely say if there's one thing that's gonna take your indoor seed starting to the next level above everything else, it's going to be having a good quality grow light. Alrighty, so if we are all set to begin diving into the method, seeing how we utilize these materials, then I want you to type into the chat function, let's grow, just to make sure I still got everybody with me here. And once I hear from a couple of folks, let's grow. I'm gonna start diving into the method about how we can start bringing this all to life to ultimately get our seeds germinating. All right, Alex saying let's grow, Josh let's grow, Marnie let's grow, Kelly let's grow, Ruth let's grow. Alrighty, let's get into it here folks. And at the beginning of the presentation, I share that this is the simplest method for starting seeds. So this next part, I think you might be blown away with like just how easy it is once you have the right materials on hand. So the very first thing that we need to do is that we need to fill those seed cells up to one centimeter from the top. So what I'm doing is I'm just grabbing my seedling mix and I'm filling up each of those seed cells til they're about one centimeter from the top. And then I like to give them a little shake just to make it nice and even, kind of consolidate the mix a little bit. And if that like generally that will like lower the soil level a little bit. So you could top it up with a little bit more until they're about one centimeter from the top. Should be looking, oops, sorry, there we go. Should be looking something like this. So we've got our seedling mix in our three inch seed cell. Now again, what do seeds need in order to germinate and begin growing? They need two things. They need moisture and they need warmth. So we're going to do our first round of watering here and all that we're going to do is we're going to grab a turkey based of water and we're going to pour that into the seed cell. So one turkey based of water per seed cell to begin moistening the seedling mix. So as you can see, I'm just going from one seed cell to the next refilling my turkey baster and then pouring all of it out into that seed cell. And this is the first of three waterings that we do when we're starting our seeds. And I like to do them in rounds because what ends up happening if we water too much, right? If I started dumping water in there, it actually starts to become like a little bit hydrophobic and that water runs off to the side rather than absorbing into the soil column. So as doing it in rounds is less that is ultimately going in there at once which allows for even more of it to be absorbed which then creates a moist seedling mix for our seeds to be germinating in. So we've done our first round of watering. The next thing that we need to do is put our seeds into the seed cell. So all that I do is I grab my seeds and I put five seeds into each seed cell. Now, why do I put five seeds into each seed cell? The reason why I do this is because if we put just one seed in there we could do everything perfectly but we're never gonna have like a hundred percent germination rate across the board for everything. So everything could be done perfectly well but just because we have only one seed in there it could just be a bad seed and it doesn't germinate. But if we have five seeds in there then we've got a way higher likelihood that at least one of those is going to germinate and begin growing. But if again, we're kind of following all the steps here we have it in a nice warm environment and we've got new fresh seeds. My guess is that you're probably gonna end up having three or four of those seeds germinating. And so over time you could reduce that maybe putting only three seeds into each of these seed cells but at the beginning we want seedlings we want plants to be growing and so it doesn't hurt to put a couple extra seeds in there to really ensure that we get some really great seedlings germinating and growing. And then if we do have any extras let's say that three or four of those five seeds end up germinating. Well, it allows us to do two things. One, you can now pick kind of like the best one of the litter. So you're picking the one that's growing the best that's doing the absolute best from the beginning. And then with any extra seedlings that you have that you don't have space for in your garden you can be giving those aways to friends to families to other individuals. I give tons of seedlings away to my neighbors here because I'm always running different little experiments playing around. And it just ends up being like a really fun way to kind of pass on that gift of gardening. So don't be afraid to start five seeds in each seed cell until you notice that you're getting like three or four or five of them germinating consistently. And then you can make that decision as to whether or not to decrease the number of seeds that you start in each seed cell or to continue at say five seeds per seed cell and just be giving away some of those extra ones that you will inevitably be having. But to get started, start with five seeds per seed cell. So we now have five seeds in each one of those seed cells we now do our second round of watering. So I grab a full turkey base of water and I'm putting that second round of water into each one of these seed cells. And this is now ensuring that the actual seeds themselves that they have moisture like right on top of them, we've made sure that there's been contact between that water and the seed there. So, and then all that water like it's just going down into that seedling mix below. And because we've taken a little bit of time between that first round, that first round has been fully absorbed in there. There's probably going to be very little it's even dripping out onto like the table or the tray beneath here just by doing it in this manner. So believe it or not, we're already almost all done with getting our seeds started here. The kind of last thing that we need to do is we just need to cover them with a little bit of seedling mix. So really just like a half centimeter to one centimeter of seedling mix, that's all that you need to be putting over top of them. So don't bury them too deeply just a little bit and really that top layer of seedling mix, it's just ensuring that there's moisture up above the seed as well. So as you can see, I'm just going from one to the next, putting again about a half centimeter to one centimeter of seedling mix on. And then I'm just kind of like gently shaking it a little bit so that it's nice and evenly spread across that seed cell there. And then once I've done that, I'm doing my third and final turkey base of water. So Alex question there, how long between the watering rounds when you start your seeds, when you're getting them started as we are in the video right here, this is where you'd want to do three rounds of watering throughout that process. And then I'm gonna talk about watering schedule over the course of like the coming 14, 21 days in just a moment here. Alrighty. And so now all I'm doing is I'm grabbing that third and final turkey base of water and I'm going ahead and just putting one full turkey base of water onto that top layer of seedling mix. So now we've got moisture in the seedling mix below the seeds. We put moisture right onto the seeds themselves. And now we've also put some moisture into that seedling mix up above the seeds. So really like a really, really good kind of like just cross-section of moisture throughout that soil column there. These babies have everything that they need to absolutely be thriving, to be germinating, all that good stuff. So where do we go from here? What do we do next? Well, all that we need to be doing is grabbing all of our seeds. And then we're just going to go ahead and, sorry, let me just move forward one there. And we're just gonna go ahead and put those into a warm room and under a grow light again for 12 hours per day. So as we can see here, I'm just double checking the temperature there. I'm making sure that it's at least 20, 21 Celsius. That's in a really good place there. And on this front, Margaret just asked a really good question. What about using a heating mat? And so this is where like first and foremost, like there is not a right and wrong way to approach gardening. So what I'll touch on is maybe just my, like my experience and my perspective on it. So heating mats, they are good from the perspective of kind of like adding acute heat or like heat in a very specific area and that area being the bottom of the seed cell. And ultimately that heats the seedling mix up and increases germination rate. So it does help from that perspective. The challenge with this is that it's actually usually a little bit too hot for the seeds. And so once they've germinated, you then need to take them off of that heating mat and place them in a different area where again, hopefully the room temperature is just around 20 Celsius or so. And so what ends up happening, right? Is that like, say your first seed germinates, well, if it's left on that heating mat for kind of too long, a couple more days, it starts getting a little bit stressed. But there's always gonna be one seed that germinates before the other one. So you kind of have to leave it on there until those other ones have germinated as well, which just makes it like a little bit tricky for ultimately not introducing stress to the ones that germinated first, but also leaving it on long enough for the other seeds to be germinating. So the most ideal scenario for me is to have an environment where the ambient temperature is about 20, 21, 22 Celsius. And for myself, like I start them down in my basement area and it's probably about like 16 Celsius, 17 Celsius down here. So not warm enough. And so what I do is I put a sheet over top of the kind of like corner where I'm starting my seeds and I put a little space heater in the bottom. And that space heater, it kicks on until that area that it is heating is at least 20, 21 Celsius. And as soon as it hits 21 Celsius, it shuts off. And then as soon as that temperature drops below 20 Celsius, it kicks back on, brings the temperature right back up to around 20, 21 Celsius. And so having that little space heater and using a sheet, it means that I can like only be heating that little area and I can be providing that ambient heat so that once that first seed germinates, I don't need to move it, those other seeds are gonna be able to germinate. They've got the perfect conditions as well. It just makes it a little bit more straightforward than having to dog a moving seedlings on and off of a heating mat as they begin to germinate there. So that's kind of like the pros and cons to a heating mat, Margaret. Alrighty, and quick question from Judy here. Are there some seeds that should be left exposed on the top? I think like the smaller, so like a rule of thumb that some folks use is bury the seed at double its diameter. So like if its diameter is a quarter centimeter, then you'd bury it a half centimeter deep. And obviously for some of those really teeny tiny ones, then you can have them like sitting right on the surface. I've germinated lots of really, really small seeds like basil and leaving like time by having them about a quarter centimeter deep. If you do put any of them right on the top layer there, just make sure that that top layer is staying really, really moist. So you probably need to be coming in with like a spray bottle once or twice per day to ensure that moisture is remaining in that area and that it's not drying up there. Alrighty, we're gonna go ahead and zip through the last parts here just so that we can get through things and then I'll open it up at the very end there for any additional questions. I know that there are a couple more in there. We'll get to those ones at the end here because we are nearly all done and dusted. And so we now have our seedlings or our seeds underneath the grow light in an environment that is nice and warm. And they've been set up perfectly, right? They've got seedling mixed, their new fresh seeds, there's been enough moisture in there, the room is warm enough, we're at the perfect starting point. But now we need them to germinate. And so one thing that I've actually put together that I can send through if you guys would like is that I've put together a little seed starting tracker. Sorry, the video keeps on going the wrong way there. And the seed starting tracker is really helpful for figuring out when to go about watering. And so what you can see here is that I've got two seedlings right beside one another. And on the left-hand side, that seedling mix, it's looking more like dark chocolate, right? It's kind of like a dark brown. And then the one on the right-hand side, it's looking much lighter, more like a milk chocolate. And so when you're looking at your seedling mix after a couple of days, if you're noticing that it's starting to look more like milk chocolate, that's a sign that it's time to give it its next round of watering. And you can also go in there with the back of your hand and just place the back of your hand on the top of the seedling mix. If you're still feeling moisture right there on the back of your hand, then they don't need their next round of watering. But if you don't feel any moisture, then that's a sign that it's time to give it its next round of watering. And so this is going to vary a little bit for each and every one of us, right? Because if you're using a sterile bot seedling mix, it's gonna dry up way faster than one that has worm castings and compost in it because worm castings and compost retain way more water than just like perlite and peat moss. If you're starting your seeds in a room that is 18 Celsius versus a room that's 21 Celsius, well, the room that's 21 Celsius is going to dry up more quickly. If you're maybe using a little fan to blow air through that area, then that's also going to dry them up more quickly. So this isn't like there's an exact day that everybody should be watering their seedlings on, but rather it's going to vary a little bit for each and every one of us. Now what I can tell you is that that's probably going to be every two to three days that you're going to be wanting to water your seedlings. And so what I've put together is this little seed starting tracker where you're going to be able to first make sure that you've got all the materials that you need in order to be starting seeds successfully, but then also kind of like keeping on top of the method and the way that you're going about starting your seeds. And so over here, we've got the vegetable that we can list that we just started, the start date that we like actually started those seeds on. And then I always like to do a little double check on the temperature just to make sure like, yep, the temperature in this area is right around 20 Celsius. So they've got everything that they need to be germinating. And so we were to take the seeds that I just started in those videos that was tomato, kale, basil, zucchinis and cucumbers. And on day zero, I gave them all the watering that they needed. Again, those rounds of three watering. And so what I want to do next now is I want to fast forward to day three. And this is again, going to be kind of in and around when you're going to do your next round of watering. And as you can see, it says just one turkey base. So on day three, again, for some people might be day two, for other people might be day four, use day three as a rule of thumb, but if a seedling mix is starting to look like milk chocolate, that's your sign that it's time to do your next watering. And on day three, that's where you go ahead and do it. So let's fast forward now to day three and let's take a look at how our seedlings are doing. So as we can see, no germination, no germination, no germination, but we do have a few of the kale babies that have already germinated. So all that I'm going to do here is I'm going to grab my turkey base of water. And on day three here, I'm putting in one turkey base of water into each one of the seed cells. So I'd go through each one of those seed cells and just be putting in one turkey base of water. I go back to my seed starting tracker and I'm then putting a little check mark into day three that I did my one turkey base of water. Let me know in the chat function, if this would be something that you guys would like for me to send over, so that you guys can be using this as you start your seeds this season here. And in the meantime, what I'm going to do is I'm going to fast forward to day six. So let's now go from day three up to day six and let's see if any of our seedlings have germinated. Well, look at that. We've got basil that's coming through. Zucchini has come through there. All five tomatoes came through. The cucumbers, three of them are up. And then over here with the kale, they're coming up as well there. And so it's day six, I'm doing my next round of watering, one turkey base going into each one of these seed cells. And that's all that I need to do on day six. And we've seen really good germination. So we're off to the races. I go back to my seed starting tracker. It looks like some folks are saying, yes, they like that. So we'll make sure to flip that over afterwards. And I'm not only putting in a little check mark for each of the seeds that I watered on that day, but I'm now starting to count up how many have germinated. It's got to keep track of like, okay, is this working for me? Am I getting the germination rate that I'm hoping to be seeing? What could I be doing a little bit differently here to ultimately be constantly improving and increasing my germination rates? So let's now fast forward all the way to day 25, literally just doing the things that I've shown you over the course of this past hour. And this is how the plant babies are looking. Zucchinis thriving, the basil and the tomatoes, they're both huge, super green and lush. And then the cucumber and kale are also really, really thriving. And so folks, I know that this is going to happen for each and every one of you because there's like hundreds of individuals, again, probably thousands of folks in the mind and soul community that are following these steps for their seed starting every year and getting absolutely amazing plant babies growing and then transplanting them into their gardens once it gets a little bit warmer. So I know that this method and these materials are going to work super, super well for each and every one of you. And my hope is that all the kind of experimenting and trialing that I've done over the last three or four years has hopefully taught each and every one of you something new or you've got something new to take away. And so with that being said, that's everything that I want to cover off on for today. I'd love to hear the chat function, how this has been. And specifically, if there's something new that you learned that you're excited to try out for this coming season, let me know on that in the chat function. And then after that, feel free to start firing in any questions that you may have, more than happy to answer any questions that you have. Alrighty, Judy, thank you so much. My pleasure, Fran, amazing question there. So question from Fran here. I get nervous about having five seeds in each seed cell because I'm afraid of destroying the roots when I transplant, how do you protect the roots? So I quite literally will like just rip the clump right in half. These babies are super resilient. They'll go through like a little bit of transplant shock, but then they'll bounce back super well. As long as they've got like their kind of like main root system attached, you're going to be all good on that front there. Yeah, I'd really like encourage you to try it out. I don't think I've ever lost a seedling when I've done that method of like, if I have say four seedlings, then just like basically ripping those into four clumps and then planting those four individually there. So yeah, definitely recommend giving that a whirl there. Alrighty, question from Meng there. Where do you get your seedling soil? So yeah, it has been like selling out really, really fast. The place to buy it is through West Coast Seeds. You can either buy it online or you can buy it at their storefront in Delta. Delta is going to be your best bet for getting it. They are sold out on their website right now, but I've got an additional like 250 bags that are being picked up to go to their warehouse today. So they're going to have more in stock, you know, kind of buy this coming weekend here. Alec thrilled to hear that you enjoyed it. Love it. Linda, thank you so much. Love the turkey baster. All right. Yes, Janet, more heat, more light. Absolutely. I think those will definitely help you out. Thank you, Deanne. Okay, great question from Alec here. What are your thoughts about wicking water from the bottom to the top soil in the tray? I am a huge fan of bottom watering, which is what Alec is describing, once I get to around like day 20. So I don't do any bottom watering at the very beginning because I want to make sure that where that seed is, where it's going to be germinating and where its initial roots are, that moisture is right in that area. But once we get to around day 20 and that root system has established, at that point I really like to water from the bottom because it really like allows a lot of moisture to get into the seed cells and that I only have to do it like once every six or seven days. So yeah, I'm a big fan of bottom watering. It's also like a very like time efficient way to go about it, especially for like myself where I'm starting, you know, like a couple hundred seedlings every single year. I've got about like six, 10 by 20 trays full of seedlings that I need to be watering and doing it, you know, by the bottom watering approach works super well. If anybody is wondering what bottom watering is, you could just go to YouTube and search Mind and Soil Bottom Watering. Put a video out on this just a couple of weeks ago and how the water essentially wicks from the bottom up through the seedling mix. Okay, question from Kitty here. Any advantage in starting sunflower seeds inside rather than direct seeding outside? Yeah, so I 100% start my sunflower seeds inside. I worked on a flower farm last year as well and they start all their sunflower seeds inside. I said there's two big reasons why I like to do this. Again, when we think about like the most optimal growing environment for our seedlings, it's kind of like in that range of about 20 Celsius or warmer and with really good light. And here in like the Pacific Northwest, you know, we're not getting days that are fully 20 Celsius until like some point in mid-May. You know, we'll have like the occasional one or two that get up that high, but a lot of the days are gonna be like in the teens as the highest temperature. And so by starting them indoors, you're essentially just granting those seeds a greater number of good conditioned days, right? Rather than like the first 30 days being with a high of 16 and a low of like seven Celsius, those first 30 days, they're having a high of 21 Celsius and a low of 21 Celsius. So they're gonna grow really well and they're gonna get a head start on if they were started direct zone in the garden. Now the second piece is that when you direct so in the garden, those plants in those first 14 days can be really, really susceptible to birds, to slugs, et cetera. And so I generally end up starting all of my seeds in seed cells in a more controlled environment. And then I transplant them in after like 14 days for some of your faster growing seeds, such as peas, so much longer than that for tomatoes, peppers, et cetera. Once the plants are really established and once the plants are really established, there's something about it where like they just aren't as appealing to birds or any of the other kind of like critters throughout the garden. And so I end up not really losing any of them to pests or anything along those lines. So that would be the two reasons for why I would start sunflower seeds indoors, just again, better growing conditions and less pressure from kind of like pest threat, et cetera. A question from JL here, any concerns on water treated versus non-treated? It's not something that I have any concern on from my end there. The water that I use for my seedlings is just the tap water that I get from my sink just around the corner there. So I'm all good on that front. Thanks, Marni. Thanks, Margaret. Thanks, Sharon. Appreciate it. Thanks, Meng. Love it. Alec, any tips on wildflower seeds? I haven't done tons with wildflower seeds. Like if I was going to the way that I would approach it is I'd probably actually take like a 10 by 20 tray and I'd just fill that full tray with seedling mix and then I'd sprinkle all across that tray. So rather than doing them in individual seed cells, I would just fill a full tray and then I'd sprinkle a pack of seeds on there, allow them to germinate and establish and then I would transplant them into a specific area in my garden. Alternatively, if you have an area that you know is not going to be overridden with weeds, then you could just sprinkle the wildflower seeds directly into that area and effectively be direct sewing those into your garden space. Again, it's really important that you make sure that they're staying moist through that germination period. I think wildflower seeds, they generally have a slightly longer germination like 14 to 21 days. So just keep that in mind that like if you're going to be direct sewing them, you're going to want to make sure that they have enough moisture through that full germination process. Alrighty, Kendra is saying one or two more questions folks. So if there's one or two last questions, go ahead and fire them in and we'll wrap up after that. From Meng, I use water from washing rice. Good idea. Question mark. I don't know, but I'm really curious about that. So Meng, my encouragement to you would be start a set of seeds using just regular water and then start the exact same seeds in the exact same seedling, makes exact same size of seed cell under the exact same lights, everything the exact same, but water those ones with that rice water that you have and keep an eye on whether or not they grow better or worse than the other ones. I'd be really curious to kind of, yeah, just see and hear what happens on that front. Yeah. Oh, super good question. Angela, should I start growing peas from soaking in water or directly growing them in soil? Angela, I want you to look up on YouTube mind and soil soaking seeds. And you can also look this up on Instagram, just instagram.com backslash mind and soil and same thing on TikTok. I literally did an experiment exactly on this where I soaked a set of seeds for 24 hours and then planted them. And then with the other set I just took them directly out of the pack and started them that way. I'm not gonna share what the results are right now, but check out the video and you'll see what the results were. I was pretty surprised by it. Alrighty. Kendra, I'll go ahead and pass it over to you there. All right, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much, Jordan, for joining us today. I learned a lot and I'm sure everyone else did too. We are recording this session, so I will send the recording out to everyone here so you can gather up all that information. And once Jordan sends me his magical sheet for tracking seed starting, I will also send that off to everyone. Again, thank you so much. We have one more garden talk next month, so be sure to check out our website for that. Also, the library garden, Sweatway Tameiwok is really starting to bloom, so I encourage everyone to stop by the library and come take a look at our garden. Again, Jordan, thank you so much and I hope everyone has a beautiful day.