Mastering Seed Starting: Insider Tips for Indoor Gardening with Grow Lights! #gardenplanning

Seed starting can sometimes feel intimidating. Starting seeds indoors with grow lights does not have to be!

As a busy mom, I have to find the time in my daily activities to start my seeds inside. From making sure my kids don’t “play” with my tools and the dirt! To also make sure I can squeeze in the time and use my time wisely. Here I show you how I can get things accomplished what tools I think are the best and why in this busy season of life.

I will also go over what tomatoes and peppers I am planting this season and why they are my favorite varieties.

Starting seeds indoors https://pioneerhealthhomestead.com/starting-seeds-indoors-with-grow-lights-a-beginners-guide/

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Matthew and Serra have been married since 2016 and have 4 children:
Piper 11
Luke 5
James 4
Adeline 2
Samuel Born October 2023

Natural living, Birth, and Homesteading topics from a holistic nurse (RN) perspective.

We live in Paradise, CA with our 5 kids & chickens. We have a garden; chickens and we homeschool. We are learning to get back to basics as best we can with cooking from scratch and using as much of what we grow and make ourselves as possible. Since we can’t yet live out in the country, we are doing whatever we can right now while on a 0.34-acre lot in this small town, until the day comes when we can have a farm of our very own. We hope to be a part of the rebuilding of Paradise post-Camp Fire of 2018.

Serra left the medical field as an RN in 2021 and has been a full-time stay-at-home mom with the kids.
00:00 Introduction
00:33 Setting Up
04:47 Preparing the Soil
06:18 Setting up Seed Trays
08:13 Planting Seeds
09:17 Pepper Varieties
12:36 Tomato Varieties
17:22 Final Tips
18:07 Conclusion

it is that time of year again where it’s time to start seed preparation for the garden for spring and summer I grow a lot of our food for the year and preserve it so this is very important for us let me show you my stepbystep guide to seeds starting I have been gardening for several years now and I feel like I have a very good routine down and let me share that with you along with the varieties of tomatoes and peppers that I’m doing this year [Music] so I don’t know about y’all but I am just super excited that spring is essentially around the corner here we are almost mid-February and I get to start playing in the dirt again yes that’s what I said I get to start playing in the dirt again um so I am just getting my lights and heat pads and everything like that situated I’m going to be checking to make sure that the bulbs are working working I’m going to set up the timers all of that kind of stuff just in preparation before I start putting things onto my racks and these two black racks one is actually an LED and the other is you know the normal fluorescent lighting these are both from Gardener Supply I can put a link below if you’re interested I do love these racks but you’ll notice that on each level there’s two small lights narrow lights and nothing in the middle so what I ended up having to do since buying these and noticing that when you put your seedlings really close to the light like you should so that they don’t stretch there is a large gap of light in the middle so what I have had to do is buy a bunch of shop lights that I String across the middle of these it is tedious but it works works and you may notice that I’m wearing my abdominal binder I am still only maybe 4 week four months excuse me postpartum from my fifth child and this is um supposed to be helping my diastasis recti I’ve used it the last couple children with really good results and hopefully that this will do the same thing again for me so we did have one light bulb out up at the top and my husband is kind enough to change it out for me I just love that I have a handy husband cuz I don’t have to worry about it myself but um so like I was saying the shop lights you can kind of see them over there on the table and here I am with one of them I have a couple different kinds and if you’re curious as to what kind of Lights you can do for a DIY setup there is a blog post Link in the description where I go over this the lumens versus the Kelvin um um and basically what kind of light that you’re wanting it’s very very helpful it’s taken me a long time to learn that myself so um again down in the description it’ll be on my blog P Pioneer health homestead.com so this is definitely my least favorite part of getting things ready for my spring and summer garden it’s very tedious and not something I enjoy but I am grateful that I do have the space and the opportunity to start my seeds indoors and for those who may be having this being their first time doing a garden you may be wondering why I’m going through all this work to start my seeds indoors well a it saves a lot of money and B it’s super fun because you get to choose all these really different varieties of seeds your local Nursery is not going to have nearly the plethora of seeds available to for you it’s just mindboggling when you go start researching seeds online and I’ll put my favorite seed companies in the description as well they’re also in that blog post but basically Baker Creek and my Garder for sure Botanical interest things like that Seed Savers they’ve all been really good companies to me um and then here is my little 3-month-old he’s been behaving nicely on the ground every so often allowing me to not have to baby wear him and lets me get some tasks done here and there but it’s nice to take a break and give him some [Music] snuggles I’m only doing one for you got to teach a man to fish [Applause] so you’ll notice I’m emptying potting mix into a tote here on my table I don’t like to use seed starting mix I feel like that’s just it doesn’t have enough nutrients in it and I’m having to fertilize really early on potting mix works just fine preferably you’d find one that’s organic and doesn’t have large sticks in it like this one does so I definitely don’t recommend this one it was my first time using it um I do usually use like a spoma organic pting mix and I haven’t had any issues but I wanted to try something new for budget friendly and yeah so not too happy with this one but it’ll work for now I do have my espoma waiting for me over in the corner after these two bags are done but basically you’re wanting to wet your soil prior to putting it in it just makes it so much easier and you want it at a brownie consist Y and here is after I’ve put probably a couple lers of water into it you can see there’s a little water that comes out of it and the soil holds its shape and that’s really what you’re looking for so I have used many different types of seed starting trays and different methods this is all from bootstrap farmer.com I love this setup you don’t even need these little black inserts to hold the little containers my little colorful ones off over there because they’ll stay in the trays just fine these are normal 10x 20 or no excuse me these are the normal 1020 trays and they’re just super sturdy I believe that epic Gardener has some just like this but I’ve gone with the bootstrap farmer ones and so basically I’m just going to be filling my little containers with the Wet N soil and go all the way through you don’t really want to pack it in too hard you want it to still have you know a little bit of Iration so you just kind of you know Smash down a little bit and that’s that really everything should be cleaned and washed beforehand or at least before you put it away but you know I had a baby in the fall and I still have a baby in four other children so this is where I’m at right now I took these apart and I had a spider jump out at me and I screamed for my husband in the middle of the night while the kids were sleeping but you know so I was still able to get that little hand back over there and muster up enough courage to suck up the spider and yes I am a gardener I love being a gardener I was a tomboy but I am definitely afraid of spiders but I’m trying to adult these days and let my husband sleep and try to show my my uh children that you don’t have to be scared of everything all the time so like I was saying I really like these little containers because they are a bit bigger than the other things that I had previously been using like from Gardener Supply they I don’t have to up poot them as often and as a busy mom that is something that is super important to me so using the bigger pots right now works fantastic so you saw me just take a pencil and kind of make like little holes in the middle which really does work better for larger seeds so you’ll kind of notice as I am seeding my plants that I’m not really going for the hole but right here I’m just doing my labels and then after after each section so like I started with peppers and I see them I will put that stack away then I’ll do another batch of labels which I believe is tomatoes and just kind of go from there back and forth and then that way I’m not walking away because a kid you know something happened and I lose my [Music] spot some of the varieties these are the peppers I did way too many last year and as I’m seating over there with what I thought would not be very many turns out to be probably just as much we’ll see what actually germinates and how it goes but here’s what I’m doing this year I have the shushito peppers these are most of these are from Baker Creek vc.com these are an old Japanese variety they’re 3in long slightly wrinkled fruit I’m told that if you blister these like in cast iron and butter that they’re supposed to be really good make a good like garlic aoli with them so we’re going to try that this year na aenos um this is basically a jalapeno with not a spice try those pablanos these are just fun to barbecue love growing those Tabasco I grew a nice big plant this year but with being pregnant and do when these came to hot enough to being red and where I would want them uh the baby so kind of put them in the freezer for now so I want to try this again and see maybe what if I can make Tabasco sauce with them Grande jalapenos because I mean who doesn’t love you know bacon wrapped jalapenos that’s basically what these for I have so many pickled and candied jalapeno still from last year only doing one plant sugar Rush Peach these are supposed to be really good for like a salsa going to try that my husband’s obsessed with salsa Cayenne so I use these in like my Elderberry syrups I grow them dehydrate them store them myself I haven’t bought them in years so I’m not running low but I want to make sure that I keep replenishing cuz I have not replenished in a couple years maybe one year so I have this um to grow next year to replenish some more um I’m not even going to well the Quin yellow these are a tiny yellow Brazilian pepper Tangy and sweet with just a hint of heat so we’ll see how these turn out they’re cute little things uh King of the North these are basically like a bell pepper they’re just King of the North I’m growing a lot I love bell peppers we eat bell peppers on absolutely everything and last year I guess there was that pepper debacco I didn’t really get any they ended up being other peppers so um I’m growing a lot I have these the the king of the Norths and then I’m going to do these are three packets of the same thing basically California wers and then a yellow monster this will be a first for me this year doing this um Jessica Three Rivers Homestead said that this was like prolific for her last year in Northwest I very it obviously so we’ll see but I’m curious since I love those kind of peppers and then last year I grew over 40 different not 40 different but over 40 it was like 42 tomato plants probably one to two of the same plant at most so I did a lot of I had like three beds of tomatoes way too many tomatoes so I’m limiting myself to 12 plants this year that’s why my like my tray was not very full trying to cut down be more manageable I tend to overdo things so the ones that I’m going to do this year I’m going to try the little sweetheart cherries my kids love little snacker Tomatoes I mean they just when I send them outside that’s what they do they go snack in the garden so little sweetheart ones they’re they’re cute you see these ones I grew last year they’re one of the many their little mushrooms they were they were very meaty and Hearty I liked these so I’m going to I think I did probably three plants of these I’m going to do one this year of these these were my favorite Bonnie best these are basically like store-bought Tomatoes they looked they felt but they tasted amazing they did not taste so if you’re looking for that uniform you know beautiful looking tomato this this one is absolutely that I was astonished watermelon beef steak yes this is a ginormous one I want to say that these grew really well last year and that’s why I’m tempted to do it again let’s see Ace 55 these are determinant meaning that this is a bush and it’s only going to go so big and have so much fruit and it’s all going to come at once essentially so this is kind of what you do when you’re going to do canning I don’t plan on canning tomatoes next year I have like 2 years plus worth of sauces soups all that stuff in the pantry already um I need to clear that out before I really store some more but these were just so good I mean who knows I may just miss canning Tomatoes I want to do it so I’m going to do one one or two bushes of these cuz again they’re determinant they’re not going to last last all year I’ll probably have a lot of volunteers of this one out there already because this one was beyond prolific this is a yellow pair of tomato a little snacker and the kids just absolutely love these but they grew up on our trellis and they’re in the ground they off a lot of them fell down cuz kids got tired of eating them and I got tired of picking them and we’ll see how many um volunteers we get this year food so we’re going to do that again anyways Amish paste just because I like the mey uh Tomatoes I’m not necessarily going to make a paste with them but these are good Chadwick Cherry we’re going to try that this year it’s again snackers for the kids the same thing with Supernova I haven’t done this one before it’s another little snacker mortgage lifters these things are just fun to grow because I want to see how big I can get them um I think I had a couple pounder one last year um so I’m just this one’s more for fun and then no I don’t think I’m doing them in draw um these are just other ones that I’ll be doing for the local community things like AB Lincoln I’ve done Dr witchie oh I’m also going to be doing Kellog’s breakfast I love the orange I just fold this put away when it’s empty and then I know to look and make sure I have another pack before I throw it away it’s my system so a Lincoln I just didn’t need another ginormous tomato but I highly recommend a Lincoln if you don’t want to do mortgage lifter or both very good Dr witchie I wasn’t too thrilled with Dr Richie last year got ax this year this one I had a volunteer of it’s a black beauty it’s still actually hanging up in the garden on a track charless dead but it was my last to go and it was a volunteer they it was just super strong these just take forever to ripen because of the dark skin so we didn’t really eat very many of them but we did enjoy some into the fall and early winter because it was still good one and then black strawberries and Jersey doubles I’ll be growing for some others some other things that we will be doing is you know onions cabbages stuff like that I’m going to be starting soon I just have to kind of do this stuff in phases I don’t know if you can tell but it’s dark right now the kids are all in bed so this is the easiest time for me to do it but now that I have the dirt out and I have it all set up I can kind of throughout the day sit down write some tags and the kids will help me pop the seeds in I got the pencil over there and they’re just going to do the little holes for me so from here on out it’ll be pretty simple it’s just getting up getting started getting the lights situated getting the heating pad situated got to figure out the lighting make sure that I got the timer correctly all that stuff it the startup is is a little bit daunting that is what I am growing so far let me know what you’re going to be growing if there’s anything here that you have a question on let me know i’ would love for get to know who’s watching and if you have any questions let me know I would love to teach and I love to learn so if there’s something that you’ve seen me make a grave mistake on or something you think I can impove Ron I’m sure there is let me [Music] know