For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."
what's in your seed starting mix?
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So here's a question I often get from readers: Why would you make your own seed starting mix when you can just buy it at the store? This is why: Some—not all—seed starting mixes have unnecessary additives that help with wetting the mix. But if you saturate the mix thoroughly before planting and keep up good watering practices, your mix doesn't need any wetting agents. And for seed starting mix, in particular, you don't need all those soil boosters and fertilizers either. Seeds come with everything they need to germinate and survive for the first week. ​(Here's a cool visual guide I created on what happens when a seed germinates.)​ The cotyledons (those first green "leaves" that appear) store the seedling's initial supply of nutrients. Only when the cotyledons fall off and the first true leaves appear do seedlings require outside nutrients to thrive. So if you usually transplant seedlings within a couple weeks of germination, there's no need to spend extra money on special seed starting mixes with fertilizers when you would just move them into larger pots with potting soil (or outside in the garden) at that point anyway. Not to mention, a lot of seed starting mixes come in 8-quart bags (or even smaller) and if you're starting an entire spring garden from seed, 8 quarts don't go very far at all. So use the most basic seed starting mix you can and save a few bucks! ​Here's how you can DIY your own seed starting mix with only 3 simple ingredients.​ If you start lots of seeds every year, it's also worth buying the ingredients in bulk, mixing them up, and storing this blend in a large bin (or a lidded trash can) so it's always ready to go! Some other questions I get: Do you really need to start your seeds in seed starting mix? No, not at all. Seeds sprout just fine in the ground. But if you're starting seeds indoors (in flats or seedling pots), regular garden soil is often too dense and full of weeds or unwanted hitchhikers, making it more challenging to manage inside. Is this seed starting mix sterile? No, and it doesn't need to be. Sterilization rids the soil medium of all bacteria, including the good bacteria that plants need to survive. Please don't follow the suggestion of other blogs out there and bake your seed starting mix in the oven. It's so unnecessary! Can you make your own potting mix too? Yes, my seed starting mix is a good base for homemade potting mix (in fact, you'll find the recipe for it right in that article). P.S. If you don't want to make your own seed starting mix, here's a store-bought mix I've had good results with in the past. P.P.S. Ready to get more organized in the garden this year? Let my Ultimate Garden Diary help you keep track of all the things! Inventory your seeds and soil amendments, record important dates (like seed germination, transplanting, and first blooms), and write down everything you want to remember about your garden in one place. |
Garden Betty
For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."