 All right, well that brings us to an introduction for Randy and I I'll have him give you any additional information. He wants to share But Randy is an extension educator in Clay County right across the river from me in Moorhead And he has served there since 2007 His primary job responsibilities are education and outreach in the areas of home horticulture and agriculture Agriculture production systems. I'm very pleased that we have Randy talking with us today because I know he's truly an expert in his field So welcome Randy. Thank you, Dr. Gardner Robinson for that very kind of introduction And again, I'm very happy that you invited me to be here this year And we'll be talking a little bit about seed starting at home And kind of the overview for this particular presentation Is going to be as follows. We'll talk a little bit about starting seeds at home Some of the reasons to do that and we'll move into container selection potting soil light watering and fertilizing and then finally we'll wrap everything up with seed starting dates And when you think about starting seeds at home Some of the things that jump into my mind are there's generally more selection And what I mean by that is that if you're starting seeds at home and that means you have to buy them somewhere and typically nurseries and that could be meal order nurseries or nurseries that are local to you They generally have more selection of seeds than they do actual Because with transplants some varieties sell better than others and they have a little more limited selection But again with seeds they tend to have more selection Sometimes you'll hear about cost savings and you might be able to save some money But keep in mind that when you start seeds, it's not only the cost of the seeds But you also have the containers you have potting soil And then you're likely going to be providing some supplemental lighting as well And that's going to cost money too in the end, you know, there might be some Savings, but there might not be a whole lot. So just keep that in mind When you hear cost savings Another thing is that some of our plants need more time to mature and if you think about some of the most common transplants you're probably thinking about tomatoes and Peppers they generally for vegetables for flowers to be geraniums, petunias may need more time to grow and therefore We're not able to direct seed those out into the garden I think above all at least in my opinion the most important reason to start seeds at home is that it's fun And it's fun for the whole family. Those of you that have children or grandchildren It's a great opportunity to instill in the next generation the joy to grow plants and whether that's vegetables or flowers or both With that we're going to jump right into containers And quite honestly when you think about containers for seed starting You have limitless possibilities. The only thing that's going to limit your selection is one's imagination Two things to keep in mind when you are thinking about using or thinking about a container to use Is that they need drainage and The container that you select and I'll show you some examples It may not have drainage to start with but you can always add that Basically, you want water to drain out and then have the ability to get rid of that excess water So it's not always contained in that container The other thing you want to keep in mind Is that you want it to be large enough to support whatever planted is that you're going to grow And that's going to be a large enough room for that root system to grow So it doesn't get root bound right away and also to provide enough support for the plant to keep it upright in the container And we'll start out with what I like to call repurposed containers And the photo on the left you're looking at two one gallon milk jugs and They're actually growing onions. I grew these at home a few years ago And I cut the milk jugs if you measured from the bottom about four inches in height And you might be seeing a little bit of difference in terms of the number of plants coming up And it's actually two different varieties of onions One of them had poor germination compared to the other one if you look at the photo on the right That's just a close-up of this container here that I have my cursor on And it's wanted to highlight the aluminum foil that is underneath here. Obviously the milk jugs Didn't have any drainage. I just used a knife poke holes in the bottom And that way I could bring the containers over to the sink I could water and let the excess water drain out and then I always put something underneath just in just in case they happen to Drip some more water. That way it's not going onto the floor and again milk jugs work just fine for containers Another one is Egg cartons and this particular one right here Happens to be a kind of a the cardboard or paper mache type egg carton that a person is using they're growing tomatoes In this one. This can also work Since they are growing tomatoes and this is a rather small container What they're doing is they're going to grow them in here for a while Then they're going to transplant to a larger container Another option for egg cartons would be to use a styrofoam one Since this is cardboard or a paper product I should say when it gets wet they do have a tendency to fall apart Yeah, therefore using a styrofoam one, you'd probably have a little better longevity Of that container. It's going to hold its shape a lot better easier to move around A few more options over on the left We actually have somebody that just put together paper pots. They just took newspaper. These happen to be folded up And they made their planting containers. I do know there are devices you can buy That you can use newspaper. You get a little bit wet. You can form it around the device and then press it and you can make your own basically disposable or or decomposable containers And then on the right, we just have a standard styrofoam cup These make excellent containers are relatively Inexpensive plus you get a pretty decent soil volume You can grow rather you can grow a plant for quite some time in these and I would just recommend With the styrofoam cups just to poke a hole in the bottom just to make sure that you have adequate drainage Moving on to what I consider more of the standard pots We're looking at a compressed peat basically made out of peat moss that's been compressed together commonly known as peat pots and We use we've been using these for a number of years at at home And these happen to be some of our geraniums that we grew a few years ago in in peat containers And the photo on the right just gives a better example of the variety of peat pots that are on the market You can get strips Right here, or you can get some smaller square containers larger square containers You can get round containers too if you would prefer The the key point to make about these pots is that They are decomposable, but What you'll typically find Is that they don't break down within one year Usually if you plant them out in the garden or you if you have flowers You're putting them into a container outside at the end of the season when you pull them out You're still pulling out part of that container The habit that I get it have gotten into the past few years Is that I'll actually remove most if not all of that peat container They typically peel off quite well and usually I don't have a lot of roots growing Into the outside of the the containers on here. So they come off quite readily At a bare minimum what you want to do is at least take the top portion of the container off to make sure that it is not exposed With these particular containers If the peat is exposed to the the surface It's actually going to wick water out of the soil and then the plant's going to dry out Maybe even resulting in death if you're not providing enough water So just make sure that the peat container is either mostly taken off or you have a completely covered with soil another option for Containers would be coconut koi, which is what we have right here very similar to the compressed peat containers These work quite well and I've used them in the past and I've done the same thing. I typically take them off Or peel them off prior to planting outside Just to make sure that the roots can get out just fine And again for the same reason of not wanting to wick out water from the soil into the atmosphere Another option that a person can use Are these containers over here and one of the brands would be a jiffy container or a jiffy pot And basically what you have is compressed peat and these come in a pellet And then you put that pellet into warm water and they'll expand and that's what you're seeing right here is the expanded Jiffy pellet and it's nice because it already has a hole in it All you have to do is put your seed in there Cover it and these usually the roots will grow right up the side of the There's like a bag that is around here. Now, that's quite Has really small pores, but the roots tend to grow right through it And you can just plant them right in the garden or the container These two work quite well What's real common and if you buy a say a whole package in the store where you have the the flat with an insert This is typically what you're gonna what you're gonna be getting Um, we actually have a standard greenhouse tray and if you follow my cursor here Our standard greenhouse tray is right here. I have a better photo of that coming up Inside this greenhouse tray. We actually have a an insert a plastic insert Which is what we're looking at right here right here and the same over here And the plastic inserts you have a different you can get different cell sizes for example the one right here I believe there are about 128 planting cells in this standard greenhouse flat And then right next to it we have 72 cells and then the one over here We have there are 48 cells. So obviously the more cells you have the smaller The the cell space what I've been using over the past few years for most of my transplants and for vegetables And flowers be uh using for marigolds and then for vegetables I've used these for peppers tomatoes Uh kohlrabi brussel sprouts broccoli The uh the 48 Count trays tend to work quite well. There's enough rooting volume in in my opinion. So to me these are are great to use Another option would be just individual Plastic pots Which is what's being shown right over here and usually with the with individual pots whether they be plastic peat Coconut koi or the the inserts that I showed you in the previous slide Like I said, we're all putting those in the to a greenhouse flat And that's what's pictured right here only this greenhouse flat is has been filled with uh the uh peat containers Um, but this greenhouse flat it measures two feet in length and then it's one foot wide and the plastic inserts They fit right inside of here Um, the one nice thing about these greenhouse flats is that you can purchase these with no holes on the bottom Which work wonderful because you can water your plants Uh in here let everything soak through and then you can just hold you can just pick this up and just dump the water out One of the corners and you don't have to worry about it making a mess Uh at all on the floor The one thing I will caution about with plastic containers is that Usually you can reuse them for more than one season But you want to make sure that you're going to somehow sanitize those containers from year to year A few years back. I ended up getting a uh a root rot disease Growing some drainiums because I didn't do a good enough job cleaning out my plastic containers What I would recommend and what's usually recommended in most extension publications Is to use a 10 bleach solution, which would be one part bleach to nine parts water And you want to make sure that you get all the soil All the potting soil washed out beforehand and then soak them in that solution for at least a half hour and then Take them out and that should be good enough and you can use whatever sanitizer You want but um bleach tends to do a pretty good job The other option is you can just use brand new containers Every year and that way you don't even have to worry about carrying over disease All right, moving into potting soil The the function of our potting soil is Basically has four parts to it number one It's going to be a reservoir for plant nutrients essentially all the nutrients that a plant is taking up Is coming from the root system for the most part The potting soil is also going to hold water for the plants to take in The potting soil also needs to provide good gas exchange meaning that we need to have enough oxygen that is in the soil in order to Have respiration occur which the roots do need to respire in order to be Healthy and the potting soil is also providing anchorage for the plant In some cases if if you're in an area where you have a nice loam soil You could go out and make your own and the general recipe for that would be two parts of loam soil One part sand and a rather coarse sand would be ideal And then one part organic matter, you know, whether that'd be compost or maybe some sphagnum moss Something along those lines Bear in mind though that if you do that if you happen to have any disease organisms in the field soil or your loam You would be carrying Inside and that could potentially be getting Onto your plants one way to get around that is that you could take your loam soil and put it into an oven and you know you could essentially cook it for a while to Basically try to kill some of those disease causing organisms What I find the easiest is to avoid field soil All together and go with something that's called a soilless mix And usually you'll see it sold as a potting soil Or even a seed starting mix what the soilless mix means is that there is no Basically no soil components to it. So we don't have any sand, silt or clay in in that particular soil usually they're going to contain Pete moss usually it's going to be sphagnum peat and the interesting thing with peat is that it holds a lot of water And it's a it can hold up to about 60 percent of its volume In water it's relatively slow to decompose and it's acidic in nature the pH is around three or four And neutral would be seven. So again, it is a very acidic another component to most of the soilless mixes Is vermiculite and vermiculite is going to have really good water holding capacity and it also helps with aeration And another component that you'll usually find Is perlite and perlite is just there for Aeration and in the next slide i'll show you some photos of of each of those on the top left We have some sphagnum peat. This has been ground up and most of your seed starting mixes It will be ground up and the reason for that is that you want to find mix for seed starting and that way you can maximize the seed to potting soil Connectivity basically you want to have good seed to soil contact to help with Germination moving over to the photo on the right Right here are my cursors at that brownish material that is vermiculite And just to the right of that the white material that is perlite And again, usually the biggest component or the the one that has the most volume in the mix is going to be Sphagnum peat moss or or just peat moss and then you'll have varying amounts of vermiculite and perlite another option if you don't want to use peat moss Is ground coconut koi and this has become popular over the past several years and essentially If you think about a coconut, you know that you're eating the coconut seed Well, basically from the shell Outward that is what is used for coconut koi and it's basically just ground up And that is what you're looking at right here. It has some pretty good properties for for seed starting to use in a seed starting mix as a general rule When you're using potting soil always fill your containers with the dry mix and the reason for doing that Is it's not going to compact on you You can put the the dry mix in and then you can fill it up all the way So level with the top and that's what these were to start with they were level with the top And then once that is done you can just take the container or in this case You could just take the tray and just hold it maybe an inch or two above a hard surface And just drop it and basically you just tap it and that'll help settle down the mixture And then if you need to you can add some more Once that is done go ahead and water the mix what you'll find If the mix is dried out and it has a lot of peat in it Sometimes it is very hard to to get that to rewet and it could take 20 minutes a half hour for water to actually be taken in or adsorbed by the The soil is mixture so you know once it's filled make sure you give it a really good soaking and that it's absorbing water And then once that is done then you can go ahead and and seed just make a small hole To the depth whatever depth it is that you need to see that Go ahead and cover it up and then I always water After I seed and the reason that you're doing that is that you can end up having An air pocket here or there during the seeding process Once you rewater after seeding Very carefully that is you should be able to get rid of those gaps And you're going to have really good seed to potting soil contact, which is what you want And then once that's done just go ahead and you can cover your container with Either like a saran wrap or some type of a cling wrap That's what I've been using or some of these Containers will actually come with a plastic dome that you can go ahead and put over the top And essentially what you're doing is trying to keep in the moisture And that way you're not going to have to water quite as often While these seeds are starting the germination process and once the Seeds germinate and they come into contact or just before they come into contact with that plastic cover Just go ahead and and take that off Now that we've talked about Our containers we've already talked about using potting soil At some point you're likely going to have if you're growing these indoors You're likely going to have to provide some supplemental light to the plants As you all know, you know plants essentially produce their own food and here's an equation for photosynthesis Very basic here Plants are used in carbon dioxide and water And then with the presence of light energy, they're able to make sugar and of course they're giving off oxygen and plants are going to use this sugar For respiration which essentially plants are using it for growth and maintenance But it's important that plants are going to have enough light to photosynthesize so they can actually grow And I want to show you this next figure And if you look at this orange line right here Um You can see that photosynthesites Which essentially would be your sugar And that's what the the plants are going to be using for growth. So that's what's being highlighted right here the The dash line that would be photosynthesites used in in respiration, which basically is just maintenance respiration So the plants are just maintaining themselves so they can Um stay alive And the green area that is right in here. That's the growth potential And when you look at the bottom down here, we just have temperature and all that is saying that as temperature increases To a certain point we're going to have an increase in the amount of photosynthesis hence the amount of photosynthate that is produced and also respiration is going to Increase but the key point here is our growth potential as long as we have more photosynthesites that are being produced Then what is needed for basic maintenance, which is right here? We're going to have plant growth And in most cases if you're growing plants indoors Um, you're going to have to provide them supplemental light Looking at this next slide Um, we're going to show right here is We're going to look at chlorophyll and essentially chlorophyll is what is intercepting light energy And if you look across the bottom On this one, we just have the wavelength of light. It's given in nanometers And I just want to highlight basically chlorophyll a and b there's many more other chlorophylls and also some other pigments that are going to be intercepting light, but I just want to highlight these two Right here. So we have a peak between 400 and 500 um in in terms of The chlorophyll being able to intercept that particular wavelength of light and then we also have another peak just passed about 650 to 700 and and again, this is where the the chlorophyll is intercepting light that's being used to Essentially produce sugar and if you look at the figure just underneath of that And I tried to match up the wavelength. It's not exact But it is uh close and what we're looking at is basically the amount of light from different sources and if you look at this line Right here the one that's given off quite a bit of light. We have full spectrum or or sunlight and ideally sunlight is Would be the best source of of light for plants bear in mind in a home setting We don't always have that option because we don't always have really good south facing windows And also in the winter, even if we do have good south facing windows Um, we may not be getting enough light And if you look at the cool white fluorescent line, which is what I want to draw your attention to right now Which is this line right here You can see it has a few peaks um In its wavelength and it kind of lines up with chlorophyll a and b it's it's not perfect But it is somewhat lining up over there and then we do have some Of the wavelength that that plants are going to use Around that 650 to 700 range in there The only point I want to illustrate with this is that you can grow plants using a standard cool white Fluorescent light and you shouldn't have an issue in in most cases. So you wouldn't have to go out and purchase What are known as like a plant light or a more Think sometimes you've been called a maybe a full spectrum light Usually they're going to be more expensive than a cool white fluorescent bulb And again, I've I've grown plants with cool white fluorescence for quite some time and and you can get by using just that Uh generally speaking In in terms of how long You need to have your lights on with fluorescent lights The recommendation is anywhere from 12 to 16 hours Per day and I would to have say really healthy transplants if you're growing maybe onions, geraniums, petunia um You know, maybe you're going to have broccoli chlorabi I would stick towards 16 hours of Of daylight 16 hours of light per day the easiest thing to do is just have your lights hooked into A system where you can have it hooked up to a timer and just set your timer for 16 hours on And then have it off for eight hours and as long as it's on a timer You don't have to worry about turning them on and off With fluorescent lights You want to keep them at the plants at least within four inches and I would say ideally two inches From the fluorescent light as that fluorescent light Increases in height from that plant canopy. You're just going to get far less light I will say That using an led Is definitely a viable option leds have come down in cost Quite significantly in the past few years And in fact, I have even seen some now where you can get them as a basically It's a four foot replacement bulb for a shop light and it has the prongs on the end So it'll fit into a say a standard shop light that was using a fluorescent in the past The one nice thing with leds Is that they use far less energy so you can cut your cost even more if you use And if you use an led plus they tend to be brighter Just meaning that you're getting more light And what I want to What I want to point out here is that if you use leds Bear in mind that the the four inches or less recommendation for an led May not be quite accurate. You may find that you have to increase the height a little bit From the from the height of the canopy with an led just because it could be a little bit Too bright usually what you'll find if you're getting too much light on plant leaves They tend to bleach and if that's the case all you have to do is Just raise the height Of the of the lights and you should be in good shape I want to show you some examples of some different Lighting systems to use Right here. You're looking at what was actually sold as a plant light stand and we have three levels or or Three shelves here one two and three and each shelf has just one fixture And it has two bulbs in it these happen to be t-fives That are fluorescent that the t-five fluorescent bulbs. So it's The bulb isn't as big as what you'd have in a t-12 but the t-fives are They use less energy a very good deal And then they also have a reflective shield that is on here So all the light is actually directed down and the plants on here grew just fine Another option this one would be probably a little more lower cost in the long run granted This person actually has a lot of a lot of plants excuse me being grown But their setup wasn't all that expensive. They just have palette racking As they're as they're shelving units on here and these are just four foot Lights and their lights are are larger than say the the standard shop light Instead of just holding two bulbs This is actually holding four But it would be essentially the same if you were to go out and buy two shop lights and each of those shop lights holds Two fluorescent light bulbs Two four-footers you would have the same thing. So basically you can think of two shop lights Per shelf and then you could grow your seedlings underneath that and they have their standard Um greenhouse flats here lined up and again the fluorescent lights are providing the In this particular case providing all the lights For their plants and here's another photo of some tomatoes And you can see how close they have the the The light fixture to the the plants there may be an inch or so and in fact with fluorescence Even if the foliage touches the bulb probably not going to be a big deal I wouldn't recommend having the plant foliage touch the bulb But it's usually not going to harm anything because they're not putting out that much heat But again, the key is to have your your lights close enough to the plants If they're not close enough what will end up happening Is that they they tend to get just kind of long and and stretched out with a very weak stem I've just spent a few minutes telling you how you'll likely have to have supplemental lighting to grow your seedlings and I would say in most cases That's what's going to be necessary. However I do want to tell you about a project that I worked on This has been a few years back. I was working with a seventh grade science teacher at horizon middle school in moorhead And one of the things that she had her students do was to grow a flowering plant from seed And this usually occurred from december and they ran the project into april and may And all the plants were started from seed and the seeds were growing under fluorescent lights, but once they were growing under fluorescent lights What they did they transplanted them and then put them out into their locker bay and I'll I'll show you that in just a minute here So here's that light stand that I showed you earlier And this is what the students use to start their plants and once they Got large enough and they transplanted them to a larger container They put them out into into their locker bay And here's a photo of the the locker bay And I just want to highlight the windows that are right here And those of you that aren't familiar with this particular school These windows that are right here face south and I suspect they're probably about maybe 8 9 10 feet tall something like that just a wonderful light source And here's a photo after the students were done Transplanting all of their all of their plants and bear in mind this photo was taken probably late december and this happened to be 2013 right here But again pretty low light levels in in minnesota at that time in our in our area And then with within two months This is what the students had for plants You can see some sunflowers towering over here and some zinnias And about a month and a half two months after this photo was taken in 2014 the instructor wanted to showcase the students plants that they that they grew and What I have That's what these photos are from And we got some tomatoes right here I just want to point out the the fruit that is formed on some of these and the students were actually picking fruit From their tomato plants and again bear in mind these were growing Basically with with natural light sitting on their Basically sitting on the the shelf by their By their lockers and it was up to the seventh grade students to water and fertilize their plants if they wanted to And just a few more plants showing some more tomatoes. They just they did absolutely amazing Here's some more fruit right here One young man wanted to grow sweet corn and you can see he actually has three ears of sweet corn right here and We had some that grew cucumbers. Just want to highlight this cucumber right here. And again, this has been growing indoors natural light I just want to highlight another one and I have my pen stuck by it. So probably about six seven inches Not bad for Plants being grown indoors with natural light And here are some sunflowers that that the students Also grew and some more zinnias right here And like I said in most cases, we're not going to have windows like they have at at a school that are letting in enough light So again in most cases, we're going to have to provide supplemental light But if a person's fortunate enough and you have windows that are giving you enough natural light You may not have to provide a supplemental light source after lighting Another thing you want to keep in mind is the amount of water As well as you know on a fertilizer that is being put down And generally speaking you're just wanting to keep the potting soil moist during the germination process and you don't want it You know soggy by any means but you don't want it to dry out either because those seeds as they're germinating Are in a very vulnerable state if they dry out It's very easy to kill them at that point And again, you may want to make sure that you have drainage of some sort in your container After you water let the water excess water drain out and then make sure that excess water is dumped out if you have your tray or your containers Setting inside of a larger tray That is waterproof and then as far as fertilizing goes It's not recommended to fertilize until we have true leaves And I want to point out a true leaf to you or tell you the difference between cotyledons and true leaves if you look at the Plants that are growing right here. I believe these are tomatoes if I'm not mistaken. We have Seed that just germinated. These are the cotyledons right here. And if you look at the one right next to it These are the cotyledons and right here. We have what are known as true leaves At this point it is safe to Fertilize these plants when it comes to fertilizer. We want to make sure that we're not going to overdo it It is far better to under fertilize than it is to over fertilize And as far as fertilizing Usually the common recommendation is every one to two weeks That will vary some depending on what crop you're growing. Some of the vegetables might need a bit more frequent fertilizer than what say some of the other vegetables or other flowers Might need and in general, I would recommend a water Soluble fertilizer basically, you know, maybe something like like miracle grow or something along those lines Where all you have to do is add it to water. It dissolves right away And then you can go ahead and and apply it usually a general purpose Water soluble fertilizer is recommended and that general purpose means The the three numbers that are on the fertilizer container which would represent nitrogen phosphorus and potassium They're going to be in equal amounts. So maybe it's going to say a 10 10 10 or a 20 20 20 something along those lines Would be just fine to use and just make sure that you're following label directions on there It might have a table on there that'll tell you how much to use for seedlings Or at the very least it should mention house plants or container plants And this go ahead and follow label directions and that way you're not going to over over fertilize And I want to talk a little bit about over fertilizing and this is something that that I did myself If you've been looking at this picture, you may be thinking that gosh these plants look kind of sickly where I have my cursory and and they are sickly looking because For a couple of weeks I was providing far too much fertilizer To these geraniums and what ended up happening is that they lost most of their leaves And I ended up killing actually a few of the geraniums in here a lot of them rebounded Geraniums are are pretty tough plants and and they came back after being outdoors Are actually after they were planted outside they rebounded in a in a matter of a few weeks But my point is it doesn't take long to Kill or greatly harm seedlings When you over fertilize just remember that it's always better to under fertilize versus over fertilizing The last thing I want to talk about here are the seed starting dates and it's important that you start the seeds early enough Because you want to make sure they have enough growth before you plant them outside at the same time you don't want to have Transplants that are extremely large Going outside because when they get too large in a container if they're root bound they tend not to transplant all that well And these are just some some general guidelines So we have the roughly the month when to start them The weeks of growth indoors that are typically needed before they're transplanted outside and again This is just a guideline and then I just have some examples of flowers here and and vegetables For example, if anybody is wanting to start seeds relatively soon Geranium wax begonia violas or pansies would be perfect to start right now And if anybody grows onions from seed now would be a great time to get those Seeded indoors and and you know now or within a few days you're going to want to get those going we start getting into The middle of march for example, some of the flowers that would typically be planted about that time would be cleome marigold, nicotiana sweetalyssum and the vegetables that we would typically be planting at that point would be Pepper and eggplant and then a couple weeks after that Early, maybe even to the middle of april. We're looking at calendula Salosha, excuse me portulaca And then for the vegetables we'd be looking at Tomato and tomato doesn't need as much time as what pepper and eggplant do and that's why tomatoes are started a little bit later in the season And then late april early may Not much for flowers indoors at this time But it would be a great time if you wanted to start your vine crops cucumber cantaloupe musk melon pumpkin winter squash Typically if you're going to start those Because you want transplant to go outdoors to get a jump start you want about a month Of growing time before you're putting them outdoors. You don't want them too large going outside But starting them indoors at least to get a little bit of a jump start on the season And finally with your With your seedlings before you actually plant these Outdoors whether it be in the garden or in a container you want to make sure that they are going to be hardened off And what that means is that you want them you want to acclimate them to the outdoor conditions And and roughly maybe two maybe even three weeks before you plan on Um planting them Start putting them outside And what I do I'll take them on a nice day put them out in the shade and where they're protected from the wind And leave them out for a few hours and then I always bring them in If not um if not after maybe three four hours for sure before nightfall bring them inside and then every day Start to leave them outside a little bit more or a little bit longer And then gradually starting to put them in more and more sunlight and that way by the time you actually transplant these outside They're going to be used to the the sun and and the environment. They're going to be used to having some wind on them and They will establish far better than just taking them from inside your house and then sticking them in a container or Right into the garden Again, it's important to make sure that they're they're hardened off properly before planting outdoors with that Um, that is the end of the presentation if we happen to have any questions. I'd love to take them at this time Does anyone have any questions you can type them in your chat box? Or at this point you can also Click on the unmute and you can ask him out loud if you'd like Oh, Tara is asking. I don't know if you can see these randy Um, was there a printout of slides for this? And the answer is we will be putting the pdf of these slides on our field to fork website. You can see that on the screen And I also will be Putting up a couple other pieces one is a link to the University of Minnesota extension pieces And also to a horticulture piece that was developed at NDSU. So yes, you will have lots of resources Um, Randy are you seeing these questions? Yes, now I am. I'm starting to see them. I see one here Let me see Where are we at? Oh the advantage of starting onion from seed versus buying sets um Probably not a not a whole lot of difference if you're buying onions as actual transplants There wouldn't be any difference then Say buying transplants versus starting seed on on your own If you're buying um the actual bulbs From the store generally speaking the the ones that you're starting from seed or the ones that you buy transplants of You get a larger bulb In the end at least that's what I've I have observed When I've when I've grown them Side by side before but again a lot of that's because of the variety Of of onion that you're getting because your variety is quite limited if you're buying in bulbs But if you're starting from seed, uh, you have a lot of options That are out there Let's see and I see another one that that asks if if anybody's used any led lights I have not used any led lights personally. I I do have a friend that Breeds roses and nine barks and he uses a mix of uh of fluorescent lights As well as led lights and he hasn't noticed a whole lot of difference In growth, but again the the leds you can save a significant amount of money because they're using far less energy with the leds versus the versus the fluorescent And then I see another one here. Do you find that you need to transplant your seedlings into bigger pots? And in in some cases Yes, but what this largely depends on Is the size of container that you? Start your seeds in I used to start them in smaller containers and then transplant to larger ones now I just start my seeds in larger containers and I don't even worry about transplanting and I I to me that It's easier because it's a little more time up front, but On the backside of it. I'm saving time because I don't have to transplant Uh quick question on replanting after no germination That was me All right, brie. I I would say go right ahead and and replant if you're using a soilless mix I wouldn't be concerned about having some sort of a disease in there that caused you know Caused you to have poor germination. It could just be the seed Sorry every two year old. Um, no, so last year I tried uh redoing my or I tried growing my plants indoors And some of them sprouted and some of them didn't so I didn't know if you could still reuse like you said, um If I could still reuse the soil and stuff from those that didn't germinate and just keep root planting If it if it's the the same season, I would go ahead So for example, if you're gonna start some seeds pretty soon Some don't come up go ahead and and uh try reseeding into those same containers Um, but I wouldn't keep your soil for more than a season If it's been used I would I would get rid of it But again, if you're pretty sure that you have clean containers to start with you have, you know, you have a soilless mix I don't think there's any harm and you know given it another goal because it could just be the seed that you're using sometimes Um You just end up with poor germination, you know, whether it's a seed or Could even be the environment, but I would go ahead and give it another shot Okay, and then I did have small little black bugs Last year, how do you get rid of like the little, you know insects or do you just not worry about them? It's a great question without knowing what kind of an insect you're dealing with. I have a hard time Uh offering any control advice one insect that I've noticed a lot of and I don't know if this is what you have What you were dealing with they're known as fungus gnats Fungus nat excuse me and it is like a little fly They're not a very aggressive flyer by any means but when they're disturbed, they'll they'll fly up And the fly itself doesn't cause any harm, but the larvae of the the fungus nat They can feed on or at least close to Developing roots and they can cause some damage and usually you're gonna have those if the soil has been overly Kept overly moist usually keeping it a little bit on the dry side will help Sometimes some of the potting mixes that a person gets, you know, you can have insects that come in With that so it just comes down to making sure that a person's purchasing a a reputable potting soil Thank you You're welcome. I see another one. Should you rinse the pot with clear water? after Having been treated with bleach water and you sure could in the past You know, we've always soaked them in bleach water and once they've dried We haven't worried about washing them with with clean water But if you wanted to give them a wash with clear water after they've been soaking, you know, for at least 30 minutes That would be fine too. I don't see any harm with that Another question, do you ever leave a fan blowing on your seedlings? Does this make the stem stronger? Great question and the answer is yes, I have in particular for tomato Tomato tend to grow quite fast Indoors and you end up having a very Long stem and actually you got a couple of options one You could leave a fan blowing and it wouldn't have to have wouldn't have to be 24 hours a day You know, leave it on for a few hours because that motion going back and forth on that stem It's going to strengthen it, you know, maybe even increase a little bit of the the width or the girth of the Of the stem the other option is every day Just take your Seedlings just take your hand and just rub it right over the canopy and just do it a few times So basically, you know, you're not going to back and forth which is given the same stimulation that a fan would You're doing it just a couple of times or maybe three or four times with your hand as opposed to having a fan actually blowing on them But usually you'll get the same result with that And then another one. Um, can you use incandescent energy efficient light? You probably could I mean incandescent are going to give off a a different spectrum of of light so It could very well be possible. I don't have any experience growing plants under incandescent lights. All of my experience has been with using cool white fluorescence Another question here tap water or well water and then at what temperature? I would say whatever you have access to is going to be fine. I guess the one caution on well water you know, if you happen to have a lot of A lot of salts or a lot of alkalinity in there that could potentially pose a problem But I would assume at that point, you know, you probably have some type of a water conditioner that is Taking that out with tap water assuming that's running through a water softener Granted you are going to have maybe some more salt in that water You should be fine for seedlings because you're not going to be growing them inside for You know, the whole season they are going to be going outdoors. What I would recommend is that every time you water Go ahead and water and then once you're done with the first water Follow it up with the second watering and what that'll do is that that that first watering If there's any salt that is building up it will dissolve it in In water which would be your water soluble salts and then that Second watering you can flush everything through and that way you're not going to have a buildup of of salts And again for the few months that you're growing seedlings indoors You shouldn't be having a problem with this. So I would say, you know Whatever you have access to is great and if you can keep it on the warm side Um, you know, if it's warm to touch, I think that would be would be perfect Uh, do you do anything different when growing spinach indoors? Um I don't grow any spinach inside. So I don't have a good answer for that question Let's see another one here. My eggplant leaves bleach and die. Is that due to the lights being too close? I guess it's possible if you're using fluorescent lights I I just don't think you're having your I don't think your lights are Are too close although maybe if you have a very high output fluorescent light, maybe there's a there's a chance I would try raising your lights up and see if that if that helps Another question should the potting soil be sterilized before using Will this reduce unwanted pathogens or fungus? The answer to that would be would be Yes, I mean having it sterilized would Definitely reduce any unwanted pathogens or fungus if it's present, although I will say most of the soil is mixes when you're buying them they You're probably not going to have to go through and and actually sterilize those if you're buying a reputable potting soil So I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about going through and try to sanitize or Sterilize the soil, but again if you wanted to it's it's sure not going to hurt anything But again with the soil is mixes you usually don't have to do that Curious about the students indoor fruit bearing plants, how did pollination take place excellent question with tomatoes You don't need a pollination from You know say by bees or or by an by any insect What the students would have to do with tomatoes tomatoes will rely on wind or you know say a bumblebee for example would come in and They just need something vibrating that flower to release that pollen In an indoor environment as long as you're tapping the flower for the the tomato Even somebody walking by can cause enough of a disturbance to release pollen So the tomatoes were relatively easy With the cucumbers you may depending on what kind of variety you're growing you may end up having to take pollen from a male flower and then physically do pollination to Be able to get fruit set and with the cucumbers I don't recall if the students actually went through and they were taking male flowers and and doing pollination themselves Or if they had a variety that was for the most part Would produce fruit without actually Having pollination take place Let's see here. Okay. We'll need to wrap up questions That that sounds good With that again, thanks for having me on Oh, thank you so much randy. This was a great session and I think we are all anxious for spring So I thank everyone for their participation And I hope to see you next week and in subsequent weeks We will be archiving this webinar if you want to watch it again and we'll in the future. We'll get the power points Available as printable PDFs if you want to do that So thank you everyone. Hope to see you again and special. Thanks to randy for walk. Can you think on your feet? Good job? Thank you