He’s the “Joe” behind Joe Gardener! You might also know him as the Host & Executive Producer of the PBS show Growing a Greener World, or you may have seen him on NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, The Weather Channel, or the DIY Network.
Watch the below video about his seed starting trails with peat-free alternatives, posted to the @joegardener Instagram.
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Instagram video transcript
“Hey everybody this time of year I’m spending a lot of time in my seed starting room, so I thought it’d be a lot of fun to kind of show you what I am up to these days.
Right now, I’ve got a lot of seedlings started for tomatoes that will go into a plant sale towards the middle of April and then peppers, but really I wanted to show you what I’m doing with the seed starting mix trial that I’m trying to find the alternative to a peat based product. So let me flip around and show you what’s going on right here.
So first things first, I do a lot of dense planting and these are tomato seedlings that I germinated a week ago and they are already up and going. These are eighteen cell inserts and I sow about thirty to thirty-five seeds in each one and I have about forty five varieties in each one here. That’s for a plant sale in April with my daughter Amy and some of these go into my garden too. But all my favorite varieties are in here and I’ll have to divide these up and transplant them and then I have a space challenge issue to deal with, but I’m used to that.
Now I’m trying to find my next favorite seed starting medium. This right here is called BK25V and the V is for Vermiculite. It’s only got about thirty five percent peat in it which is great. I’m trying to use less peat to no peat but ive been using this for a long time and I really really like it. But it’s also got finely ground pine bark and then a wetting agent and a little bit of lyme and that is it. So it’s as much wood product as it is peat moss. Actually more wood product than peat moss. But I have good results with that.
And I’m doing – I eat a lot of peppers. I start those right at the first of January because they take a really long time to get up and going. They just like warm soil and you need to dial in that temperature to get them going. And I have my fans.
By the way, as far as the lights, this is Active Grow LED T5s. I really like those. I’ve got several of those light systems up. Lot of success with those. On this side, these are HOT5 fluorescents. I like those too. So it’s not like what’s the best grow light, it’s how to make the grow light that you have work.
But to my point of what I wanted to share with you today. It’s my soilless mix trials. So I talked about the BK25 there. Core is another go to product – this is not Core, let me just be clear on that. But a typical Core go to product would be like the burpee bagged product or the brick that you often find in the box stores and I trial that a lot. I’ve been doing it for a few years. The results are unimpressive. Even though I flush the salt, I do side-by-side trials. These seeds of these tomato seedlings were sown on December 26th. They look like they – if somebody didn’t tell me I’d say that they were 5 days old by the looks of them but they are six weeks old at least and they don’t look good. So anyway, there’s a comparison right there. For 12/26 and we’re talking about almost the middle of February right now. That’s crazy.
Now here’s what I want to show you. Those right there. They were sown in the same sort of cell tray, not the same mix. Those were sown on January 16th. And so less than a month old and look how nice they look under HOT5 fluorescents. So I am very very excited about the product here. I have nothing to do with this company, no monetary relationship or anything. I’m just trying to find my new go to source. And it’s called Plentiful. That’s a variety from this company PittMoss. You may have heard about this. It’s basically a paper fiber product. Here’s the front of the bag. They have multiple types of their product. But this one’s called Plentiful. I’ve been trialing several of them to find out which one I like the best and so far Plentiful is getting me those results. It’s got processed cellulosic fiber – 96.5 percent, other ingredients – 3.5 percent, and a little bit of nutrient, a little bit of MPK – only .3 percent in total. And that’s it. So here’s what it looks like. It’s just kind of a fluffy, soilly, seed starting looking mix. But there’s that kind of that paper fiber sort of looking stuff right there. But I have sown directly into that and that’s 100 percent Plentiful and look at the color, the leaf formation, I mean everything about this I could not be happier with this. I am so thrilled with it. Look at the roots here. Those are nice looking roots right there.
These are all ready to be transplanted into larger containers. I know it’s early but i’ll deal with that because I really want to have these go into the garden. They just look so good. But I also mixed it up. Like I did a fifty fifty mix here with the Jiffy seed starting mix that you can buy off the shelf at Home Depot to see how that would look. And the Jiffy has peat moss and Core in its mix, but here I did a fifty fifty. So it looks like the Plentiful is really offsetting the seed starting mix that’s got the Core in it from Jiffy. So again just to refresh your memory, that’s 100 percent Core right there sown on December 26th. Sown on January 16th.
Okay, so here’s Plentiful mixed with another of the PittMoss products called PM1 which has a little bit of, it actually has a good bit of peat moss in it. But I’m just trialing stuff. But here’s the 100 percent. Here’s the 100 percent and I wanted to add a little bit of dried blood meal just here to see if it might need some extra nitrogen but because the nutrient ingredients it actually includes a little bit of trace elements here, you don’t need it because here it is with the blood meal and here it is without it and you can’t tell the difference really.
And then this is the Plentiful product mixed fifty fifty with Core the burpee bagged product. and you can see there, it is about half the growth. You can definitely see the difference with this one mixed with the Core. So the Core is holding it back versus straight Plentiful, straight Plentiful, and then a mix of the two.
Okay so that’s what I wanted to share with you today. I’m pretty excited about this and again no relationship with them, I’m just enjoying their product and seeing if that’s going to be my new go to seed starting mix. And there’s some peppers and just one more view. So I hope you all have a great rest of the weekend and I’ll give you another update really soon. Take care.”
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