5 Biggest Mistakes Made When Starting Seeds Indoors

Starting seeds indoors can be daunting. There are mistakes that could cost you your seedlings. But if you know the most common mistakes ahead of time, you can be successful with starting seeds indoors.

MENTIONED VIDEO
Prevent & Control Fungus Gnats: https://youtu.be/LtqoAr2hX3Y?si=mh-rppeN7OpId-1G

MENTIONED PRODUCTS
Heat Mat (Small): https://amzn.to/3vzTybu
Heat Mat (Large): https://amzn.to/3O0y1iB
Moisture Controlled Seed Tray: https://bit.ly/47CdQhI
Professional Grow Light: https://amzn.to/3vfNJev

Table of Contents
00:32 – When to Start Seeds Indoors
01:36 – To Cold to Start Seeds
03:04 – Lighting for Starting Seeds
05:53 – Don’t Be too Nice to Your Seedlings
07:04 – Should I Water Seedlings from Above or Below?
08:50 – Bonus! Simple Way to Harden Off Your Seedlings

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hey guys today’s video is very straightforward I’m going to make it as quick as possible going right through the mistakes five seed starting mistakes that a lot of new people make I am going to give a bonus at the end of the video because you can avoid all five mistakes and if you make the last one it takes all the work you’ve done over the past several weeks getting your seeds going it takes them and just makes them absolutely useless so stick around for that all right let’s get started let me know in the comments if you have any mistakes that you’ve made and how you fix them that I don’t mention today mistake number one is starting your seeds too early a lot of people make this mistake I still do sometimes because you get the cataloges in the winter you order your seeds and you you’re just so anxious for spring you want to get it started the problem is you can’t rush the weather and if your last frost date is 12 weeks from the day you start your seeds you’re going to be babying seedlings turning into actual plants indoors now a lot of people have room to to grow seedlings like on this tray there’s several hundred seedlings this table could not hold several hundred actual full grown plants and that’s exactly the problem you’re going to get into if you start too early so four to six weeks before your last frost date if you don’t know your last frost date I’ll put a link down below or you can just Google your ZIP code your city uh and last frost State starting too early also you’re you’re not going to be able to grow these in these seed containers so you’re going to have to CAU up all the plants instead of just taking them out and putting them in the garden when the time is right mistake number two heat a lot of times you know I have nothing fancy here it’s just in a garage but in some climates garages freeze or certainly you know don’t get to the heat level that is needed for some seedlings to germinate cool season crops you’re not going to really have an issue with they like to be germinating you know between 50 60° F unless you have a freezing garage then you’re still going to have to uh warm that up a little bit but certainly seeds like tomatoes peppers eggplant cucumbers all of the summer crops but especially those they need heat peppers for sure if you’re going to try to grow peppers indoors or start them indoors they need heat so you want to invest in a heat mat preferably one that’s got a thermostat on it so you can choose your temperature you want to choose around 75° fah and what that does is that just heats the the potting soil just enough to give that seed its initiation its start into the world whereas if you didn’t have that they could sit until your wherever you’re starting those seeds ends up producing those temperatures that it needs now if you just had a couple of trays and you have an appliance like a a refrigerator um a window sill over a radiator most seeds don’t need light to germinate so you can just put those in those locations that are warm until they start to sprout out and then they will definitely need sunlight and that brings us to number three this the third mistake people make is to not have enough light for their seedlings first off there’s no grow light no light bulb that is as powerful as the sun if you have a south facing window that gets 6 to 8 hours of full direct Sun every day then you can grow them in that window if you have a greenhouse that is heated depending on your climate it gets full sun you can grow them in there I don’t have either of those things I think most people don’t and so I have to opt for grow lights now that doesn’t have to be a scary proposition you can use any type of bulb it doesn’t matter if it’s a long florescent tube if it’s a CFL if they still make those led doesn’t matter the shape of the bulb and it definitely doesn’t have to say grow light or made for plants it doesn’t have to say any of that stuff they will actually charge you more just for those words you can go to any light bulb section go to Home Depot Lowe’s wherever and you’re just looking for the label on the box to give you certain numbers you’re looking for the words lumens and Kelvin and you want the number between lumens to be500 to 2,000 lumens that is the intensity of the light the brightness of the light and you want 4500 to 6500 Kelvin that is the color temperature not the temperature it puts off but the color temperature on the Spectrum from Blue to Red uh you’re wanting to mimic the same color temperature as the sun now it might say for Kelvin it might give you the numbers and then say daylight that’s what you’re looking for so as long as both of these numbers are where you want it to be you can use them for starting your seeds now I have a professional grow light here that’s a bit different that is more powerful now the other type of bulbs if you got the Lumin and Kelvin they will work but you have to have the light bulb about 2 in at most 2 in I would say to get the amount of light into your plants that you need so you can either if your light lowers and raises you can raise the light along with the growth of the plants or you can set them up on uh bricks boards whatever so they’re close to the light and then lower those things take out bricks or whatever to lower the trays as the plants get taller but you always want the plants about 2 in from that light source with professional grow lights like this their intensity is a lot stronger than any of those other type of bulbs they’re more expensive but they also light a wider area so you have to figure out how much area you want how many of those other types of bulbs you would need to cover that area and see if this doesn’t make more sense I’ll put a link to this one down below so you at least check it out not sponsored by the way the fourth mistake you can make is to baby your plants in here so much that when they go outside they’re thrown into a completely different type of setting and they will possibly not die but they will be set back one of the great things that you can do is to use something like this an old fan now I haven’t had it on during our talking here because it’s loud and old and creaky but take a look what it does here to these seedlings it is an oscillating fan so as the fan moves across they start to blow in the breeze all right I’m going to turn it off cuz it sounds like it has arthritis so why do you want your plants to blow in the breeze well because that’s what they do in nature when those plants shake back and forth and bend in the breeze it is strengthening their stems it is causing the plant to be more resilient so when you put it outside it’s going to do a heck of a lot better than a plant that has been completely in this still nurtured environment so that is a big one and you don’t have to have anything special any oscillating fan even if it’s on its last leg like this one will work the fifth mistake before we get to the bonus the fifth mistake is watering your seedlings from below now there’s a lot of reason for this you don’t want to have the top of your soil in your containers constantly damp it causes fungal diseases like damping off it attracts fungus gats to lay their eggs in there and that causes a whole other problem many problems least of which is the annoyance of having gnats flying around everywhere it also keeps the moisture off of the leaves you don’t want leaves wet in an indoor space now the fan does help with both of those things actually I should have mentioned that keeps the leaves it dries off the leaves and it dries out the surface of the soil so that fan kind of does double duty watering from below and making sure the lowermost portion of each of those cells is wet causes the roots to grow downward rather than staying on the surface now you can do this by setting your uh seed tray in a tray that doesn’t have holes in it that you can fill with water put it in there when you see it soaked to the surface of the soil take it out you don’t want them sitting in that they will drown I’ve fallen in love with these seed trays they’re self-watering trays from Gardener Supply there’s a reservoir for water under here there’s a stand that keeps the tray elevated out of the water but then they’ve got a wicking mat that soaks up the water distributes it AC cross this panel and allows the bottom of the tray to soak it up so they always get the perfect amount of water again not sponsored but these have been a game Cher for me and I’ll leave a link down in the video description so you can check them out they’re not cheap but they are worth it they are very strong these these will last for a long long time all right the bonus we’ve spent four to six weeks germinating the seeds taking care of them getting them to the proper size and our weather outside is ready frosts are gone it’s time to move them Outdoors but you have to do it slowly in a certain way called hardening them off if you just take these even with the fan they’ve been in a sheltered environment much different than what you’re going to be putting them into the sun even with this grow light here the sun is way more intense than they’ve had ever in their life and they have to develop a thicker skin literally they have to kind of develop their sunscreen to be protected they don’t they can’t just go out into a full day of sunshine they’re also not probably used to uh the temperature fluctuations that you’re going to get outside at this time of year so there’s two ways to do it there’s the traditional way and there’s the lazy way so the traditional way is every day you take them outside for an extended period of time every day gets a little bit longer start with a hour in the shade bring them back in next day day two hours in the shade bring them back in the next day uh maybe 2 hours to 3 hours in partial sun bring them back in the next day 3 to four hours in partial sun bring them back in the next day you can leave them out for five or six hours in full sun then bring them back in and then after that it’s about a 7-Day process uh where you’re going to finally have them accustomed to all the different variables outside and then they can now be left outside and planted in the garden well I don’t know about you but I think a lot of people have jobs and so if you’re not home every day all day to to take care of this process uh there is a lazy man’s way or maybe I would say a smarter way to do it look on your upcoming 7-day forecast and find a period of time that you’ve got three days in a row of overcast weather when you see that that’s your 3-day window you’re going to take them outside out in the open where it would normally be full sun but youve you got that cloud cover to protect them three full days of overcast weather that’s all you need to do so set them out when you go to work bring them in when you come home definitely don’t leave them out overnight and after that 3-day period they will be ready to plant out in the garden now I did mention fungus snats very quickly if you’ve ever had little FL little black flying things around your your plants indoors those are fungus Nets and they can really cause a lot of damage to the root system of the plant plus they’re super annoying so if you have that issue click on this video right here I’ll give you several ways to deal with them to prevent them and to get rid of them once you’ve got them I’ll see you guys on the next video