Jill Winger Podcast Notes

Shawn McLoughlin of All About The Garden recently had the honor of chatting with Jill Winger on her much loved podcast, Old Fashioned On Purpose. If you are joining us after listening or viewing that podcast episode...thanks so much for tuning in and welcome to All About The Garden! We hope you find this resource page and show notes helpful. Email us at info@allaboutthegarden.com if you have additional questions. We'd love to help you on your gardening journey.

If you haven't seen or heard the podcast, it's a DEEP dive into seed starting in module trays from seeds through planting in ground. You can view the video version on Jill's Old Fashioned on Purpose YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theprairiehomestead OR stream the audio version wherever you listen to podcasts.

On the podcast episode, Shawn and Jill walk through the entire seed starting process: Seeds, Soil/Planting Medium, Tools and Equipment, Germination, Caring for Seedlings, Planting, Seed Saving, and Seed Storage.

Intro:

Shawn McLoughlin loves his wife Jenn, he's a dad to four homeschooled kids, a co-founder of All About The Garden, and an accomplished gardener. He and his family live in a small town in southcentral Texas on a little under one acre of land with about 1/3 of that acre under cultivation in the form of vegetable gardens, a herb garden, and a sizeable food forest. Their micro homestead also includes hens and rabbits. They are on a mission to produce as much of their own food as possible and to TEACH other people to grow their own food too!

Seeds: 

 - we tend toward non-GMO heirloom seeds. Our favorite sources are Gary Ibsen's Tomatofest (tomatofest.com), Baker Creek Seeds (rareseeds.com), and Survival Garden Seeds (survivalgardenseeds.com)

Soil/medium: what you put your seeds in when planting in module trays

• consistency is key. Whether you use your own compost, a store-bought seed starting mix, or ingredients to make your own seed starting mix….we are looking for consistency
• we want consistency in texture, quality, aeration…I’m looking for a repeatable process with few variables
• if you’re very comfortable with making your own compost, or if you prefer to use store bought compost that’s fine….but if I use compost I always sift through a ½” screen.
  • You can very easily make a sifter with an 8ft long 2x4, cut into four 2”ft sections, screw the fours pieces together into a square and then attached ½” hardware cloth to the bottom
  • We want a pretty fine consistency once sifted
  • Those tiny feeder roots can’t hold onto an inch long stick. So if your compost is woody, you really want to sift it well.
  • Although we make our own compost for our garden, we don’t use it for seed starting because it has the potential to retain too much water and cause mold, and fungal issues. Again, we are looking for consistent, repeatable, and as few variables a possible
• We recommend purchasing a seed starting mix or mixing your own, just make sure it’s organic.
  • we personally use a store-bought seed starting mix for almost every seed we start
    • Jiffy makes a great organic seed starting mix with coconut coir, peat moss, and vermiculite. Google "Jiffy Organic Seed Starting Mix" and you'll find it at Home Depot for $7.57/bag.
  • And because we use durable seed starting trays with right-sized modules that don’t require so much soil…we can start our entire garden with about $35 worth of seed starting mix…per season, spring and fall.

Whatever you choose as a seed starting medium, you want it to be consistent…Consistently fine in texture, consistent in quality and characteristics from season to season so that your results are consistent and you don’t introduce too many variables into your process.

Tools:

• Warming mats – I consider this a must have. And I’ll get into the why I say that when we talk about seed germination in the next section
  • VivoSun is the brand we use, they cost about $20 per mat and we’ve had the same mats for going on 7 years now.
  • We started with one and now we have a stack of them!
  • Go to Amazon, search “Vivosun warming mat” and you’ll find it for $19.99
• Lights –
  • Seedlings need lots of sun
  • Putting it by the window isn’t going to be enough light, it will make your seedlings leggy and weak
  • So you either need a greenhouse with full sun or you need lights
    • For best results those lights should be full spectrum LED grow lights
  • We use 4ft long 80W Full Spectrum LED Grow lights by Sunco Lighting. Go www.sunco.com and enter this in the search bar. “SuncoGrow Full Spectrum LED Grow Light, 4ft, 80W, Linkable” They are $49.99/light or a bit cheaper if you buy a 4-pack or 6-pack
• Module Seed trays
  • This one is near and dear to me!!
  • As you know we own a garden supply business called All About The Garden www.AllAboutTheGarden.com and we specialize in super durable, long-lasting seed starting module trays
  • And by module tray, I’m referring to a tray with individual cells that you fill with soil and then place seeds into each individual cell.
  • We carry 13 different seed trays on our site, for various uses, ranging from as many as 77 individual cells to as few as 10. You can find our entire line of trays here: https://allaboutthegarden.com/collections/long-lasting-seed-trays
  • They all have their uses, but most of what we plant goes into either a Charles Dowding 60-cell tray or a 40-cell tray. And those two are the ones that most people tend toward.
  • No matter where you get them….I very highly recommend investing in durable seed starting trays that are quite rigid.
    • Things like toilet paper rolls or Paper egg cartons are okay, but they are inconsistent.
    • And you’re introducing variables like glues and dyes, and inconsistent water retention
  • No matter what you use to start seeds it has to be…
    • consistent and repeatable
    • It has to produce firm root balls
    • It needs to promote feeder roots rather than tap roots
    • You have to be able to remove the seedlings from the tray without transplant shock
      • Because transplant shock is an absolute killer (we’ll talk more about it in the section on planting)
    • AND I rarely never do something, but I’ll say you should NEVER use those 72-cell flimsy trays that they carry at the big box stores (and I’ll tell you why in the seedling care section)
  • Bottom watering trays
    • I always use bottom watering trays and I definitely recommend bottom watering
      • But I’ll soften this by saying you don’t have to purchase a bottom watering tray to bottom water your seedings
      • I’ll talk more about

If you have a warming mat, a great light source, and a rigid high quality seed starting tray you have just about all you need for a very high level of seed starting success.

Germination:

• Understanding what seeds need to germinate is the key to mastering this step…
  • For a seed to germinate it needs warmth and moisture AT THE SAME TIME
  • One without the other leads to delayed germination, weakened seedlings if they do germinate, or total failure to germinate…meaning seed death
• So to germinate seeds at a high rate we need to keep them consistently warm and consistently watered
• The ideal temperature range for germinating most seed is from 75-95 degrees fahrenheit.
• If you think about it, what you’re mimicking is what we see in Spring.
  • You get a nice spring shower, the ground is able to maintain a high moisture level for multiple days, then you get a couple warm spring days…
  • Now we have consistent warmth and moisture…and suddenly things start to pop up from the ground. Usually weeds first!! Then bulbs and wildflowers
• WHY heating mats???
  • Germination rates and time to germinate
    • If the seeds are good, you can expect germination rates in the 90%+ range
    • And for germination times,

• ONCE the seeds germinate…when you see green poking out of most of the modules, you should move the seedlings OFF of the heating mat…or unplug the mat.

You need to keep seedlings consistently warm and watered, and they best way to do that is with a warming mat.

Care while in tray:

• how often to water?
  • The short answer is when it needs it!
  • Never allow a block of soil to go completely dry.
  • Dry to the touch at the TOP is a good thing
  • Dry at the bottom is a problem
  • Depending on the size of the seed tray module, we may water as often as every two days or as
• how much light
  • Seedlings need more light than full grown plants, sometimes as much as 16-18 hours a day.
    • We run our lights on a timer 16 hours on, 8 hours off
  • Distance
    • unofficial rule of thumb: You need 20-40 watts of power per square foot. Lower wattage LEDs of around 200 watts should sit between 12-20 inches from the top of the plant.
    • The ones that most home growers use are more like 60 or 80 watts
    • We use 80watt full spectrum LEDS and keep them 4-6 inches from the top of the plants
  • One thing about using a coco coir based seed starting mix is it can become nutrient poor over time, and water leaches nutrients out of the soil over time.
  • If our seedlings are going to spend more than three weeks in a tray before being planted in the ground, we amend the soil/medium by adding organic liquid fertilizer to the water when we bottom water our seedlings
    • AND be sure to use one formulated for root growth and foliar growth we use MicroLife Super Seaweed you can find it on Amazon for $26.99/bottle, but you only need 1oz per gallon of water so a little goes a long way

Planting –

• Seedlings don’t like change, they’ve been inside or they’ve been sheltered so they need some time to get used to their new home
• The best time of day to plant seedling outside is in the evening
• watering in?
  • Yes, but WATER THE SOIL NOT THE SEEDLINGS
  • water the soil early in the day, in prep for evening planting
  • you want to the moisture in the soil to be the same as the moisture in your seed starting trays.
• THE NUMBER ONE THING is preventing transplant shock
  • Roots hanging down past the seed ball? Cut them off and wait a day to plant
  • Seed ball falling apart? Yikes!! Do your best to keep it together while planting and then say a prayer
  • DO NOT water brand new seedlings from ABOVE, pounding them with water the “shower” setting on your garden house is way too rough
  • NEVER plant seedlings into dry ground
    • It will immediately suck the moisture out of the seedling, insta shock
  • Hardening off?
    • YES!! although the time you need to spend hardening off your plants depends on how different the condition are between your seeding environment and your outdoor planting environment
    • If it’s 70 degrees in your house and 40 degrees outside, you may want to harden off your seedlings over a period of two days. It’s 70 inside and 80 outside, a single day of hardening off should suffice
    • If it’s particularly windy when you are planting, consider that as a shocking factor too. You can place an oscillating fan near your seedlings to prepare them for the wind they’ll face outside.

 Seeds saving: – there’s so much here, so I’ll just give you a few tidbits that work for us

• selective stock development. Take the seeds from your most productive plant, your most delicious tomato…that’s the one to save.
• By savings seed from your most success plants you'll create plants that are hyper-local, super-resilient, and PERFECTLY suited to the unique micro climate of YOUR garden. Selective seed saving make super plants!!
• Tomatoes germinate best after the seeds have fermented
• Ferment tomato seeds by cutting a tomato into chunks, dropping it in a mason jar, place cheese cloth over the top of the jar, screw a lid ring over the cheese cloth. The cheese cloth allows are to pass through while preventing fruit flies and maggots. Let it sit for 4-7 days until it smells a bit funky, then remove the tomato chunks and rinse thoroughly until all you are left with is clean tomato. Spread the seeds on wax paper and allow to dry completely before storing in a paper seed packet.
• The best time to collect seeds that develop INSIDE fruit (tomatoes, cucumber, melons) is when the fruit is very ripe, but not rotten, the more ripe the fruit is the better the chance the seeds within are fully mature
• for seeds that develop outside of fruit (like flowers, or leafy greens) it's best to gather seeds when seeds pods or seed heads are 99% fully dry...just before the wind blows them away
• All seeds need to be fully dried before storing 

Seed storage:

• Seeds must be stored properly to remain viable
• Think about what causes seeds to sprout…heat and moisture.
• Then think about what causes them not to germinate….the application of heat or moisture SEPARATELY
• If our seeds are stored in inconsistent temps like a shed or garage, it may trigger them to begin the germination process, but there’s no moisture….so some die.
  • What a seed considers “warm” is simply a temp that’s warmer now than it was 5 minutes ago.
• If the package gets wet, it may trigger them to begin the germination process, and some die.
• When it’s time to seed, take out just the seeds you need and get that seed packet back into storage as soon as you can
• When direct sowing, DO NOT TAKE THAT SEED PACKET TO THE GARDEN WITH YOU. You place the seed packet on the moist soil, the seeds get wet, they try to germinate. The sun hits that seed packet, they get warm, they try to germinate
• We store our seeds in a plastic bin in our refrigerator.
• You could store seeds inside your fridge without taking up very much space:
  • Place seeds in paper seed packets in a 1-gallon Ziploc bag
  • Tape the 1-gallon bag to the back of your fridge
  • You can do one bag on each level of your fridge and store a good number of seeds and barely use up any of your fridge space
  • For extra credit you can even toss a couple drying packets (like silica gel packs) into the Ziploc bag to really defend against moisture.

We hope you find this information helpful. If you want to learn more follow us on social media, our Instagram and YouTube links are at the bottom of the page. If you have questions, you can message us on Instagram or send an email to info@allaboutthegarden.com.

Our next big adventure is growing a Victory Garden. If you've never heard of a Victory Garden it's worth a Google. Then follow along on our socials as we walk you through the entire process.

Thanks and Happy Gardening!!

~Shawn & Jenn McLoughlin