 Hello and welcome to Getting Clean on Prairies. We are downstairs in my indoor growing space here and I've just taken another little harvest of some tomatoes off of my crocky plant here. But the purpose of today's video is to start talking about getting our indoor seedlings started for our outdoor garden this spring and I wanted to just start out by showing you how I plan my indoor seedlings and when I plant things and how I kind of figure that out and one of the first things you need to do when you are planning your plantings is to figure out when your last frost date is depending on where you live. So I'm going to just show you quickly on the computer how you can Google that to find out when your last frost date is and then we'll take it from there. Okay, so at your Google screen just type in what's my last day of frost and that should take you to a website that the old farmers on Manak has and on that screen there you can just type in your city, your state, province, postal code, click on the search button and it will bring up for you your last frost date, your first frost date in the fall and also the number of days growing season in your area. Okay, so once you have determined roughly when your last frost date is that's when you can start kind of planning to figure out when you should start your seedlings and I always recommend using a calendar. It's the easiest way to go for sure. According to my growing zone that we just looked at the last frost date is around May 15. I've always planted my garden on the May long weekend, which is the Victoria Day weekend here in Canada. And my grandmother that was always what we did on the long weekend in May was plant garden. So I have I've kind of used that as my date, which is a little bit later into May, but on the calendar this year it would be somewhere in the week of May 23rd. So that's the date, the week that I'm going to use as my planting date. And then I'm going to just count back on the calendar here. I actually write in one, two, three so I can figure out how many weeks back I need to go for certain seeds. So when I'm looking at my seeds here now, that's where you can just determine what week you need to plant them. Petunias is something that I'm going to try and I know they have a long indoor growing period. They say at least 10 to 12 weeks before you transplant them outside. So that takes me all the way back week 12 is at the end of February. So I will be trying to start petunias the last week of February or maybe into the first week of March. So I just write it in here to keep track of that that's what I'm going to start planting in those weeks. Celery was another thing that has a long indoor starting period. It's also 10 to 12 weeks. So I've written that I'm going to try starting it around the 7th of March. Tomatoes and peppers are probably my favorite thing and it's hard to just stick with one or two as you can see I have so many here. And tomatoes and peppers are usually around 6 to 8 weeks according to these packages. So the end of March is where 8 week mark is from my last frost date. So there will be a lot of seed starting going on end of March, first couple weeks of April getting ready for the spring garden. Another thing that is only a few weeks before frost date is my melons here. I have some watermelon and cantaloupe and they are three to four weeks before moving outdoors. So that will take us to the end of April here. So I have marked down cantaloupe and watermelon to be started indoors. And then by the time we get to the last frost date here it's time to plant the outdoor garden. Any of my direct sowing seeds such as corn, cucumbers, carrots, peas, usually those I just put right into the garden as soon as I can. So I start to just kind of watch the weather and monitor you know how wet it is. Sometimes we have a cool spring, sometimes we have a warm spring. So around that time is when I'll be doing my direct sowing. Things like potatoes, I like to try and stick them in the soil a little earlier than the last frost date because they can usually handle that. So I really like using a calendar like this. After I've moved out to the garden I take my calendar and hang it up in the green, in my garden shed. And I just use it to record any further things that I may plant in the garden. Sometimes you stick stuff in later. I write down rainfall, different weather reports kind of throughout the summer. So I just find it a great way to keep track of things. So I hope you found that helpful. Another thing to take note of when you're looking at your growing zone and your frost date, it'll tell you how many growing days you have approximately between the two frost dates. And for here it's 126 days. So when you look at your seeds, when you're considering planting them, always make sure to check and see what the the date to maturity is for something like this watermelon here. For example, it has quite a long period of growing which is 80 to 85 days. That's pretty long for my zone. Most of my stuff I try to stick around 50, 60, 75 days. So that means and those days are from the date of transplant. So that's the day that you put them into the garden, not the day you start the seeds. And I find anything in the 60 to 75 is your best time because you'll get it into the garden and hopefully by early July, mid-July you're harvesting some of your vegetables already. So that's about it for this video today. I hope you will keep following me along as we start our seeds indoors. I hope to make videos of all the things I've started and what I've used to start them and the kind of grow lights I'm using. So I hope you will keep following along with me. If you haven't already subscribed, please hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so that you can be notified when the next video is up on the channel. So thank you for watching and happy gardening.