bringing the people behind our food to
life it's always shocking that in the
midst of the heat of the summer that
when July comes around it's actually the
ideal time to start planning your winter
garden so that means planting spinach is
and broccolis and things like that
cabbage that are going to overwinter
also carrots and beets can also be
planted for the winter time the best way
to start your winter garden is in the
seed trays and that reason being is when
we hit the really high temperatures of
August is that these seed trays can be
moved into the shade so that they don't
get dried out too quickly or start to
burn prior to planting them into the
ground the best way to start seeds is to
have a standard seedling mix that's a
very fine mixture of soil and I always
like to add a little bit of compost for
additional nutrients because most
potting mixes don't tend to have a lot
of nutrients to them so I added a little
bit of compost already and what I do is
fill this up
I'm going to fill each cell to the top
wipe off the excess soil I like to make
sure that there are all the big chunks
from the compost or out and then what I
do is I like to set the soil so that all
of the air pockets are out and I give
set it up a little bit above the ground
and I give it a drop and you can see
that this the soil has settled
significantly and it's ready to plant
I'm going to plant some lettuce they're
fairly small seeds and if more than one
lettuce plant comes up that's okay I can
thin them out afterwards but I'm just
going to try to seed as sparingly as
possible and get at least two to three
seeds per cell and generally when you're
seeding seeds need to be planted at a
depth of three times the largest
diameter of the seed that you're using
it's a really good rule of thumb for
seeding okay it's extra ones back and
then what I'm going to do is I'm going
to just loosely cover these so that
they're approximately three times the
depth
some seeds like to germinate with light
some seeds need complete darkness and
some seeds don't have a preference so
always look on your seed packet to make
sure that they don't need to be sown on
the surface that they require light for
germination so I'm just going to do that
and then I'm going to just lightly press
each seed cell to make sure that there's
seed to soil contact and then give them
a little sprinkle of water it's really
important not to over irrigate your
seeds so just a little bit and we're
done make sure to check on your seed
trays daily to make sure that they're
not drying out in the heat of the summer
they tend to dry it very very quickly
and will need a little bit of extra
water every day