 I lost Happy St. Patrick's Day. We're here today with Charlie Nardosi doing a workshop about gardening. My name's Megan Humphrey. I'm the Executive Director of Hands. We're a small nonprofit in Burlington, Vermont. And we offer all kinds of programs regarding food security for low-income seniors in our county. And we also have a holiday dinner where we delivered over 1,000 meals on Christmas Day this year, during a pandemic and in the pouring rain. And we have Hands in the Kitchen, Nutrition Education workshops. And we also have a program called Support Buddies, which we implemented when COVID hit a year ago, right about now. And that helps get food and supplies and other resources to folks that are isolated at home. So I wanna welcome everyone today. And we're going to talk about seed starting indoors, which is great. And because it's green, it's kind of perfect for St. Patrick's Day as well. And the next workshop is going to be on April 21st and where we will be talking about companion planting. So here you go, Charlie. Thanks so much for joining us. Yes, it's great being here as usual. We're doing these once a month all through the growing season. So we started last month with indoor herb gardening, which I did more as a demonstration because I had a bunch of herbs here. And then to this one, I thought I would do more as a photo or digital image presentation, kind of giving you the basics of seed starting, because it is the time to start your seeds. March and April is traditionally the time to do it so you can get things up and growing, ready to put in the ground, at least by Memorial Day, maybe earlier or a little later, depending on where you are. So without further ado, let me share my screen. Here we go. Seed starting 101, the basics. There's lots of reasons to start your own seed. And I'll go through a bunch of those in a minute here, but one of the things I really love about seed starting is that it gets you into the soil, be it potting soil, much earlier than we normally can in this kind of climate. You normally hear if we're out in April and May doing some gardening, cleaning up a little bit, we're feeling good. But with seed starting, you could be starting a month or two before that and you have that smell and the aesthetics and everyone needs a little relaxation and kind of revitalization of our mental health because of the pandemic and all the things we've gone through this past year. So having some things growing inside is really a great idea. So it all starts though with what seeds you wanna start indoors. So you don't have to start everything indoors. I'm gonna really gear this more towards vegetables and annual flowers and herbs. Even though we can't start perennials, I'll talk a little bit about that. But what seeds you wanna start indoors? So let me just kind of go through a checklist here for the vegetables that you can directly seed in the garden, meaning you don't have to start them indoors early. You can just put them in the garden, they'll grow and they'll do fine. So any of the legumes, the beans, the peas, the soybeans, those are big seeded vegetables. You have to wait, of course, for the beans and the soybeans so it gets warmer and more like Memorial Day, but the peas, you can put out probably even the end of April, depending on where you are in the Champlain Valley or the lower Connecticut River Valley is a little bit warmer. If we have a warm April, you can be popping your peas into the ground so they're up and growing really fast. You could be doing all the root crops directly sown in the ground. In fact, you probably want to do these directly sown. Carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, parsnips and potatoes. All of these either are started from seed or from, of course, little spud potatoes. And they don't transplant that well. The group above there, I've actually seen people buy beans and peas as transplants, which is kind of interesting. I guess if you have a small garden, it works. With the root crops though, you might find beets as a transplant, but mostly you have to direct sow them. Any of the greens, any of the leafy greens, and these kind of go both ways. They can be as a transplant or as a direct sown seed, the Swiss chards, lettuce, arugula, all of these. And these will be ones, again, especially arugula and spinach that we'll be sowing pretty soon. Once we get into April, get some warm days and the soil dries out a little bit. We can put those in the ground. And then finally, so other seeds you can directly sow are cucumbers, melons, squash and corn. Corn is funny because I've seen that as a transplant too. And all of those can be grown as transplants. So let's talk about that for a minute. There are certain veggies that you really have to have as transplants. You can't direct sow a tomato, pepper or eggplant from seed into the ground in end of May and really expect to get much production out of them because they're long-seasoned plants. So those you have to do as transplants, the ones I just mentioned, the cucumber, squash and melon, those you can do as transplants. And in fact, in our cold climate, especially if you're up in the hills a little bit, you probably wanna do these as transplants. I've started doing that much more with these about four weeks or so before your last frost date or when you're gonna put them in the ground. So probably early May in our climate in most areas. You can start these seeds indoors. They have four weeks of growing under lights with some nice warm temperatures. So when you transplant them, they're gonna be more likely to be successful. Then the greens and what we could do with the greens is we can stagger them. So you can put some transplants out early. You can put some seed in. So as you're eating the transplants, the seed is coming up to be the next crop of greens that you're gonna have. And then anything in the broccoli family, the cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, all of these again, kind of like the tomato family, they're long-seasoned crops. So you could probably try to throw some broccoli seed in the ground and you might get a broccoli by the end of the summer, but it's much better if you can start them as a transplant and then have them growing in the ground. And then a few herbs like basil, parsley and chives are all good to grow as transplants to get them started. Certainly basil, you can grow direct seed in the ground, but I like it growing as a transplant to really get it off and running fast. Just a few flowers that you could start from transplant. Here are ones that you will be sowing indoors. One that I sow indoors is zinnias. I love zinnias. We got so many zinnias. What's great about zinnias and marigolds and calendulums, there's so many varieties. So you can really go kind of crazy with the seeds. That's one of the nice benefits of starting some of your own seed indoors with vegetables and flowers. You can try some unusual varieties of things. I'm growing a plant this year. It's a solosia, an annual flower that's called the Chinese wool plant. And it produces these bundles of flowers that are burgundy color that look like bundles of wool. You're not gonna find that in most garden centers. So you can really experiment with different varieties. Sweet peas are a really nice one to start indoors. Like regular garden peas, these plants like a cool soil. And so a little tip when you're trying to sow the sweet peas or the garden peas is to scrape them a little bit with either sandpaper or a nail file, just enough to mark or scar the seed surface. Then soak them in warm water overnight, the night before you're transplanting them. So the next morning you get up, you put them into the garden or you put the seeds into the garden or you put the seeds into a pot if you're growing them indoors. But sweet peas are nice because, once they get them up and growing, that's the key thing with sweet peas and garden peas. Once they're up and growing, they're less likely to rot in the soil. And sweet peas are just magnificent, especially if you get those heirloom varieties like Couponny and America and Miss Wilmot. These are all really fragrant varieties that are really nice to have as a cut flower in the house too. Cosmos, another great one kind of like the zinnias. We love growing those and you can grow those as transplants and you can even grow in the sturchums. The sturchums, of course, you can start from seed, just put in the ground in the summer. But I like to start them as little transplants because you, again, get them up and running, get them growing a little bit faster. Sunflowers, you can even start those as transplants and that's a nice thing to do because a lot of times birds will go after the seed if you put them in the ground just as seed and you think you planted a whole row of them and you only have one or two coming up. Well, it might have been the birds or even the squirrels going in there digging them up. If it's a transplant, they're gonna be a little less likely to go after them. Four o'clock's are beautiful, fragrant flowers that do really well and in fact, they do open in the afternoon. That's why they call it four o'clock. And then some perennials like Columbines and Lupins are nice to start indoors. You're gonna start perennials indoors. Again, make sure you know the timing of it when you wanna start them. But also look at getting some deeper pots, deep-rooted pots because these, especially the Lupins, have deep roots on them. So when you transplant them, you're less likely to damage those pots and the roots of that plant. So the different kinds of seeds that are out there, one of the things that a lot of us have to deal with is, well, we got all these seeds from last year. Can I grow them again this year? And the answer is maybe. Like so many things in life. So you can do a germination test. If you have some old seed that's, if it's last year's seed is probably gonna be okay for everything except maybe onions and leeks. They're kind of iffy as far as germinating the second year. But most, any other seed, if you stored it in a cool dark place and it was dry, the seed is probably fine. But if you have seed that's three, four, five years old, old tomato seed, for example, you wanna do a germination test. And simply what you're going to do is just get a paper towel, take about 10 seeds if you have enough of them, extra of course, take about 10 seeds, put them in the paper towel, moisten the paper towel, put it in a Ziploc bag and keep it in a warm place, but out of direct sun. Just leave it there for about a week and then check it again. If you get seven or eight out of those 10 seeds germinating, you probably can use that seed. If you get less than that, if you get even sevens, it's kind of iffy. But if you get less than seven, throw the seed out, buy some new seeds, probably a better idea. How many seeds to start? Well, that's always a good question because lots of people will start too many seeds. We always do that. We sprinkle maybe three or four or five tomato seeds in one pot and we have all these tomatoes and then like most gardeners, we don't wanna kill anything, especially a little seedling. So we end up growing them all out to a transplant size and now instead of having five tomatoes, we'd have 25 tomatoes, right? So we do have to be careful about how many seeds you wanna start in the garden. One of the ways to know how many seeds you really should start based on the size of your garden is these online garden planners. This is one from the San Francisco gardener that's up and they're really simple to use and really fun. You can see the grid that's here and each one of those squares is literally a one foot square. So it tells you how many vegetables or flowers can fit in that one foot square. And this one even tells you when you should actually be starting them, which I'll get into in a minute. So with this, what you do is you can't really demonstrate it here but you would drag and drop. So they have a list of the different vegetables and flowers. You drag them and drop them into each square. They automatically fill that square and it tells you, oh, I need four arugulas per square. I need nine, I can plant nine leeks per square. I can put one tomato in a square. I can put four chives in a square. So you kinda see the idea. And this gives you an idea of not only how many plants to start to transplant in there, but also how far apart they need to be. Because if you space the four lettuces in there, you're spacing them evenly apart. You'll see how they fit in pretty well. So look for these online planners. This is one from San Francisco. It's free, it's online. I know Gardener Supply used to have one. I think they've redone their website so they may not be as available right now. But there are other ones online too that'd be good to have. So your indoor seed starting setup, before I get into this, let's talk a little bit about when to start your seeds. So I know lots of people tend to go by the tradition of starting seeds at a town meeting day, right? Or even St. Patrick's Day. But that's really early for a lot of seeds. We're getting closer to when you start most of your seeds. The only things I have started right now here in mid-March is onions and leeks. And I just started, I just seeded my Brussels sprouts and broccoli and kohlrabi. So because those are cool seeds and vegetables, I'm gonna be able to put those out a little bit earlier. Most seeds need anywhere from four to eight weeks of growing indoors. That's kind of the general rule. The onions and the leeks need more. They need the age or so weeks. And they're easy to grow indoors because once they grow up, you can always give them a little haircut, cut off a third of their growth. And that'll just help them get beefier roots and they'll be fine held underlights eventually put outside like on a deck or patio until it's ready to plant them. But both of those, again, are like the broccoli, are cool season plants. So you can probably plant those. I'll use the Champlain Valley as an example. The last expected frost date in the Champlain Valley is usually around mid-May, around Mother's Day. So with broccoli, with leeks, with onions, with peas, you can plant those plants into the ground usually two weeks or so before that last frost date. So late April, early May, depending on the weather, depending on the year. If it's cold and rainy, you wanna wait. If we get some hot and dry weather, you might even plant a little earlier. All depends on what kind of temperatures and conditions we have. So the cool season props can go out really. So that's how you'd figure it out. So say you said May 1st, I'm gonna put my broccoli and you go back six weeks, you end up mid-March is when you actually want to start them so that you can have them ready to go into the ground on early May. The opposite is, or a different situation, it happens with tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, melons, all those plants. They again need four to six weeks, eggplants and peppers maybe six to eight weeks sometimes, but you're not gonna put those in the garden until it gets really warm, usually at the last frost date and often after the last frost date. So that could be Memorial Day, towards the end of May, which is traditional planting day throughout the state. But I'm again using a Champlain Valley as just an example. So those then you count back from the end of May and you're thinking early to mid-April is when you're gonna start those inside. Same thing is holding true with the flowers. The zinnias, I'll start probably at the same time. Early mid-April, the cosmos, the marigolds, they all need four to six weeks indoors and they like a warmer soil. So kind of knowing what your frost date is, wherever you are in the state and how many weeks those vegetables or flowers or herbs need to grow is gonna help you determine when to start transplanting them and when to start planting them indoors and then moving them outside. The thing that most gardeners do is we get so antsy come January, February, we start things too early and then come April we've got big tomato plants, right? We got big pepper plants and you can't put them out yet because it's too cold and then it's a whole effort to try to hold them back. The best thing to do is have a small transplant that's actively growing and that's the one you wanna put in the ground. To get that, you wanna wait till in most cases, like I'm saying, early to mid-April to plant a lot of these. So let's talk about the indoor seed-starting setup. First of all, you wanna think about the location, where you wanna have your seed-starting setup. Think about the different kinds of containers. I'll go through all of these in more detail. The soil that you're gonna use for them, the lights, because you do wanna use some kind of lights in the most situations. And maybe some extra heat, a little fertilizer to keep them going. I'll talk about watering and then a few things on different problems. So let's just dive in to setting up your own seed-starting situation. And like I said, it's not too late to do this even in mid-March when I'm talking about this right now, because like I said, a lot of things you're not gonna be starting for another two weeks to a month. So we're in the house to start them. You could be a living space, which is great. You know, it all depends on if you have a small apartment, a small house. You can have it right in your living room area and there's pluses and minuses to that. And I'll talk about that when we get into the lighting. It could be a basement. That's where ours are. I have a very shop-oriented light system. Basically it doesn't look that pretty. So I put it in the basement. It's a little cooler down there. I've got much more room, but it's cooler. And I'll talk about taking care of them down in the basement. That's why I'm gonna talk about heating. If you have a special room, a little mud room, a little alcove, I have a friend who has a whole room dedicated to seed-starting. You can go that far. And windowsills, not highly recommended, especially for plants that you're starting this early, because even though we might be getting sunny days and it seems the days are longer, the sun is stronger, it feels warmer, it's still not enough to keep those little seedlings from getting leggy. And all it takes is a few days right after they germinate, from them not getting enough light. Maybe it's a cloudy period or a rainy period, and they start getting leggy. And once they're leggy, you can't fix them. So the containers. Let's talk about different kinds of containers and different ways to do it. There's basically two types of as far as the layout of the container. You can get certainly plastic containers that are there that either have individual cells like this one, or they're gonna have more like a tray kind of setup. So here's one with the individual cells, and here's one with more of a tray setup. There's advantages and disadvantages to each one of these. So if you have the individual cells, it's nice because you can just pop in that plant that's there, you can thin it out. I use these a lot. So I put two tomato seeds per cell. If I have older seed, maybe just one seed per cell, but I have new seed. And then I thin it out to one plant, and then you grow it up. And it looks pretty well, it does pretty well. Of course, we'll have to transplant, but I'll talk about that in a minute. But for something like this, if you're growing a lot of plants, and that's what I think this is better for these trays, you can look at all the tomatoes that grew in that one big tray. So those are all gonna have to be transplanted. They're a little leggy too, but it gives you the opportunity to grow a lot of plants in a small space. So transplanting, the rule of thumb for transplanting for a tomato, a pepper, an eggplant, a broccoli, anything like that, usually ones that take a little bit longer, ones that are gonna be more than four weeks growing indoors. So for example, you may not have to transplant basil, because you can grow it for four weeks and pop it right into the soil, or lettuce. But anything that's gonna take longer than that, it's gonna be good to transplant them into a pot one size larger. You don't wanna start them in that big pot because the seed won't germinate as well because of all the soil mass that's there. It needs to have kind of a small little area, a little cozy area to germinate in. So the rule of thumb with when you transplant is when the seedling that you're growing, the height of that seedling is three times the diameter of the pot. So if you have a two inch diameter pot and the seedling is growing up and it's six inches tall, you know you're three times taller, so now you will do your transplanting into a pot one size larger. And that may mean that you have to also transplant when they're small like this. You get a whole bunch of little dill plants and you'll have to kind of tease them out. So it's a little more work when you're transplanting from a big tray because you have a lot of plants, you have to tease them out. Some are more amenable to this like chives for example or basil for that matter, much more amenable. Onions is another one, how I grow onions is in one pot, a whole bunch of seed. And then when I transplant them out, you pull them out individually, separate them out and they seem fine. They transplant really well that way. So transplanting those plants that are gonna get larger into a larger pot one size larger. So if you have two inch cells, you go up to about four inch pots. From there, you should be able to grow that to a size that you can transplant into the garden. You won't have to do another transplanting after that. There are different kinds of pots other than plastic that's out there. Plastic's nice because it's reusable and you wanna reuse it because it's hard to recycle unfortunately. But there are other kinds of pots that you can use such as these biodegradable pots. And the biodegradable pots are nice because you can start your plants in them and you don't ever have to disturb the root system when you plant them in the ground. There are pea pots that do this and cow pots. The downside I find with these is that they tend not to degrade very quickly in the soil. So what'll happen is you have say a tomato plant in one, you put it into the soil, you bury it in, you cover the top of the pot and everything. And the tomato keeps growing but the pot's not breaking down really quickly. And if it doesn't break down really quickly then the roots are gonna get constricted. So what I do, if I use these biodegradable pots is I break up the pot bottoms before I put them into the soil and I'm ready to transplant them. That way they have a way to get out into the native soil and continue to grow. You can make your own pots with paper pot makers. It's like a little mortar and pestle almost but you could use something as simple as a little tomato paste can and just cut a piece of newspaper print about the size of that, about the height I guess of the tomato paste can and wrap it around and just scrunch the bottom of it and you can just put soil in it and you get these. And this is a great way not to have to buy anything to start your seed starting and you also, these are biodegradable. And in fact, you probably wanna use them on plants that you're gonna be transplanting into the ground maybe about four weeks or so after seeding them because they will start breaking down in your house and then it kinda makes a little bit of a mess. But if you have something like a nasturtium like this plant or a basil or lettuces and plants like that that only need about four weeks you can use these paper pots, they work pretty well. The seed starting soil you use for it, this can get a little bit confusing because there are so many different kinds of materials out there now. There's germinating mix, there's transplanting mix, there's seed starting mix, there's seed starting mix with fertilizer, there's this and that. What you wanna look for is a germinating mix. I like germinating mixes because they're milled down, they're finer, especially if you're doing small seeded things like a cosmos or something. It's gonna germinate a little bit easier in that soil. What's in these soils tends to be pretty consistent. There's gonna be peat moss a lot of times. Now a lot of people don't like using peat moss because it is not really a renewable material. I mean, it's mined and supposedly the bugs come back but it'll be generations before that happens. A lot of growers now are moving more towards quar which is a coconut husk fiber material which is really nice to use because it drains water really well, it holds moisture but doesn't get really wet. It's got a lot of advantages over peat moss and it's a recycled product. So if you're looking at your bag of germinating mix you might wanna look for one that has some quar in it. And then the white stuff is the perlite, the yellow stuff is the vermiculite and often you will get compost especially if you're an organic gardener, you might wanna look for one that has some compost in it. The perlite and the vermiculite by the way are natural materials that are just heated up and then they expand into those a little lightweight little pieces you see in the soil and they're there for water drainage and air flow that's in the soil. So it's very natural to have those. So once you got your soil, your germinating mix, you got your pots, you kinda figured out what system you're gonna use, you're probably gonna wanna do a little bit of lights, do something with lights because as I was saying, the plants get really leggy if they're just in even a self-facing bay window even sometimes even in a greenhouse depending upon how many cloudy days we get when those plants first start germinating, they need as much sun as possible. So the sunny window just doesn't have enough light and this is what happens. You can see some of these little plants just germinated, those are our little cod-leading leaves but look how long the stems are. Because they're long now, that means they're never gonna really get short and stocky like they should be getting and you're gonna have a plant that you probably can still use but it's just not gonna thrive as well as one that's short and stocky and it's had enough light. So when you're getting light setups there's really two main types that I would suggest now, the fluorescent and the LEDs. Now the fluorescent tubes used to be those shop lights you think of, you know, the ones at home and the schools and industrial sites and stuff, those have come a long way from those big tubes. You now get ones that are smaller tubes, they're more energy efficient. They are still not that expensive to get but they have a longer shelf life, they have less energy costs involved with them. So they're called compact fluorescent tubes, that's what you wanna look for. I have one called a T5, a T5 I think I can show it to you, there it is. So the T5 bulbs just like that, those are nice, they'll last a long time, you don't have to replace them very often and they'll give your plants enough light so they can germinate well. The second type of course is the LEDs and this is the one more and more gardeners are using out there. These are much more efficient, energy efficient, they take less energy to actually run the lights, they last a lot longer, they don't have some of the toxic materials that can be in some of those fluorescent tubes like mercury for example, but they're much more expensive and I'd also add they're much brighter. So this is a thing that's gonna come in when we talk about where you wanna do your lighting. So your basic lighting setup, this is something similar to what I have in my basin, very simple, two tiers, having plants in there with trays, it works out really well, you have a T5 setup, you get plenty of light for them to grow. But if you have a small space, say you just have an apartment or a condo and you just have some desktop space here or there, you can get these desktop versions, which are really nice because you still can grow a bunch of little seedlings, but it's right on top of the counter. And in fact, you could probably grow some little lettuces and herbs and things year round with a little setup like this right on your kitchen counter. Imagine making your mama's tomato sauce, and you're gonna need a little time and some oregano, you're gonna need some basil, you can have it right there, we can just snip a few and throw it in even on a December or January day. But this setup here is really geared more towards the little seedlings and you can see how well they're doing under these lights. And you can get setups that actually look like pieces of furniture. This is kind of a cool look and these are all grow lights in there and they're all LED. So this is what I was saying about the downside of LED is the brightness of the light. And then that's something, if you're considering doing anything like this or doing seed starting in a living space in your room where you're gonna be there a lot at night, you might wanna just look at the lights and see them in action before you actually buy them because they can be really bright and really glaring. And it could just be too much. If you're looking for a kind of a calm soothing place with just a few little lights on, this could be a little bit much to have. But if you use the right lights in the right setting and it's a good spot for you, you can have something that looks really nice in your home. When you're watering your little seedlings, usually you can do some above ground, you might say, watering. You wanna keep the soil moist, of course, and those potting and germinating mixes are good for that. But you also might wanna think about the type of water. If you're in the city and you have, well, let's go in the other direction first. If you're in the country and you just have a well, tap water usually is fine. If you're in the city and you have water from water treatment facility, you might wanna use filtered water. So we use this a pure water filter. We're out in the country and I use that mostly because we have a lot of minerals in our soil. But I could see using that if you're in the city, if you have things like fluoride and other kinds of materials in there to purify the water, this is a good way to kind of take them out. Or you can go really hardcore and get distilled water. And that would be what a lot of real expert growers you might say are going into. That way you're assured that that water is nice and clean and it's gonna be good for your plants. The best way though to do this watering is not so much from the top like I showed you, but through self-watering systems, through bottom watering. So this is one from Gardner Supply, but you've seen many of these out there now. You see that tray in the bottom is a reservoir and then all the plants in those cells are sitting on top of a false bottom. And on top of that, I'll show you a little graphic here, is a little capillary mat. And that capillary mat goes underneath the tray on top and the water goes from the reservoir up into the capillary mat, up into the soil. This way, all you need to do, excuse me, is to fill that water reservoir and keep it filled and it will take up as much water as it needs. This works really well for getting seeds started. And this works really well too if you have a busy life and you forget about things because you have so many other stuff going on. This way, if you didn't water for a day or two, it's gonna be fine, you didn't check your plants. Because when they're small like this, you do need to check them if you don't have a self watering system, probably every day. So this is a nice way to save some time and save a little English. Most of these seedlings, if they're growing, especially in an organic potting mix, you're not gonna need to do much fertilizing of them at all. But if you are gonna fertilize, I would suggest an organic one versus a chemical one. And there are some compost based ones that you put in a jug of water. There are some based on worm poop, vermicompost, which is great, kind of like a compost tea. There are some that are time-release and most of these are the chemical ones with those little pellets, but there are some that are organic as well. And then of course, there's fishy motion, which I always put a little caveat on because with fishy motion, what ends up happening is that even though it's deodorized, it's not. So do not use it inside unless you love the smell of rotten fish because it will reek throughout your house, your apartment, your home. So that's really a better one for when you're moving them outdoors and you're gonna put them into the garden. Give them a little shot of fishy motion when you water them as you put them into the garden and it's all outdoors so you don't have to smell it. So this is something that you might do if you have long season growing plants, like the tomatoes and eggplants and peppers are a good example of this because you're growing them six to eight weeks indoors, they might need a little shot of fertilizer at some point. If you have an organic soil, like I said, they may not at all, but you can watch the leaves as they're looking a little kind of peeked, not as dark and vibrant green. You might wanna give them a little shot of one of these fertilizers to get them going. There are a few accessories that I always like to talk about that work really well for me and probably would for you depending on your situation. One is a seed heating mat. And this is a mat that has coils running through it that you would plug into a wall and it's waterproof. So you don't have to worry about that. It works really well. It heats up to about 70 or so degrees, I believe. And then you put your seedlings in your little trays right on top of it. I use this because I garden in a basement and the basement is about 45, 50 degrees. So it's cold there and it's not great for seedling germination. By putting a seed heating mat underneath those little seeds, as I plant them and put them out there, they're gonna germinate much faster. The faster they germinate, the less likely they're gonna have a problem like I'm gonna show you in a minute here. So that might be a consideration. This is something, I have a couple of them. I bought them years ago. They seem to work without any problems. I've never had a problem with them and they come back year after year, I use them. The other thing is your lights. And if you have lights, especially again, if you're in a basement or an area where you're not gonna be frequenting very often, you might wanna put them on a timer. That way you wanna have 14 hours of light on your plants a day. You don't wanna have 20 hours or 22 hours. You wanna give your plants your little seedlings a rest. They need that just like we do. So 14 hours is usually recommended. A timer like this is not that expensive. Once you have it again, like the heating mat, it's something you'll have for the rest of your growing life. So let's wrap up with a few seed-starting problems. Things that might happen like these poor basals. Oh, look at how leggy they are. So I just wanna talk about this actually before we move on. So they're leggy for two reasons. One, it could be light, but also you could see they weren't transplanted at the right size. Those are little one-inch cells. So if you remember the math, when those basil plants were about four inches tall, three to four inches tall, they should have been transplanted into a bigger pot. That's why they look like this. That's why they're kind of very yellowish color. They're nutrient deprived. Because basil is basil, you can put them in the ground and they still will grow, but they won't be as healthy as ones that you started that were small. So I talked about legginess already and about the light level. They really need a lot of light and they need not just natural light. If you're doing little seed-starting, say you want to grow some things in June to transplant in July for a fall garden, for example. It's okay to put them in a sunny window. That might work okay, even though I would be a little hesitant because those windows often have filters on them in houses, depending on the window. So they do block some of the light that's coming in. But as a most part, you really need to have grow lights and those complex fluorescence and LEDs are full spectrum grow lights that you can grow these kinds of plants in there. The legginess also, by the way, it could be caused by, as I was showing there with the basil before, not transplanting at the right time and sometimes putting too much fertilizer on them. Sometimes people put a lot of fertilizer on them early in their growth and they get these grows so fast that they end up getting leggy. This is probably the number one disease you're gonna find in your transplants. And this is called damping off, it's a fungus. It's often happens you could see there from this UMass photo that happens right around the soil line where the little seedling is growing fine and all of a sudden, seemingly overnight, a whole bunch of these start having this problem. The reason it happens so uniformly is that the soil is too wet. And when the soil is too wet, that's the perfect environment for this fungus to get growing. It's just kind of in the pots or in the soil. It's not something you can really avoid having around, but it's really activated when it's really too wet. So the key with that is if you do have damping off and it does kind of run through like that, look at that. Oh my God. You can see how wet that soil is too. It runs through your seedlings. Then you're gonna have to either start over or if you have some that haven't been affected yet, you might want to just quickly separate them from the ones that are infected and see if they'll survive. And maybe you can get some of them to make it. The same problem that happens when you water too much is you start getting mold. And you can see all that little pearlite I was showing that's supposed to be white. It's all green and that's mold and that's gonna be another reason why you get this damping off is because that mold is forming there. All of this again is because everything is just too wet. So think about that self watering system I mentioned. It's better to be a little bit on the dry side than a little bit on the wet side with a lot of seedlings, especially when they're young. When they're a little older, then it's probably better to keep it consistently moist. But when they're younger, a little on the dry side is not too bad. Once they're up and growing like these pansies here, you can see they can have little yellowness on their leaves. That's usually a lack of nutrients. It could be cold temperatures. If you're growing something indoors and it's close to a window, we have a lot of cold air coming through it. That could also cause this, but mostly it's not having a little nitrogen. So those nitrogen fertilizers I mentioned before, the compost based ones, the worm hoop tea ones, or even a time release ones, they'll all take care of this situation. Go with a liquid fertilizer because that can be taken up by the plant and by the leaves themselves and it'll quickly green it up versus one that's a granular that will take a little time. So if you do all these things, you'll have some healthy seedlings that you'll be ready to just pop into your garden. So you have a nice, healthy vegetable garden. Nice. Gardening always feels hopeful. We need that. Yes, especially this year. Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Charlie. This is great. Yeah, thanks for coming, Megan, Ken. Thank you. This is actually gonna be up on CCTV. So we'll have lots of people watching it.