Cooking Dirt & Planting Seedlings

Today I am cooking dirt, which is the first step you need to do in order to sterilize the soil for mixing and making your own seeding mix. The recipe I’m using is one part sterilize soil to one part peat moss to 1/2 part perlite. To cook your soil you must fill a heat resistant container with it then add water to moisten but not soak and cover with foil or a heat resistant lid. Bake at 350° until the soil reaches 180° then bake for 30 minutes and remove and allow to cool before mixing (make sure you have a stainless steel candy thermometer to check the temperature of your soil). Cooking your dirt allows the steam and heat to kill bad bacteria and fungus is that will kill your seeds and seedlings.

I have never done this before because I have always bought prepackaged seeding mix in the past, but with the circumstances in the world I didn’t feel that it was prudent to travel a long distance to obtain seeding mix. If you don’t have perlite then you can also use large granular sand for drainage and if you don’t want to buy soil you can use compost that you’ve already made as long as it’s broken up very well. Doing research on the Internet I have found that there are many different ways to make this and out of many different types of ingredients. Once this is all mixed together it is my suggestion to make sure not to forget to sanitize your seeding trays with a 1 to 10 bleach water solution and allow to air dry before placing your soil mixture in them.

Once the soil is in them place 2 to 4 seeds per container toward the center and cover the tray with a plastic cover to help maintain its moisture and place near a sunny window or on a germination heating pad. Make sure to keep the soil damp, but not soaked and to keep the trays warm, because this will encourage quick germination of your seeds. Allow the seedlings to get 1/2 to 1 inch in height and start growing its second leaves before you thin them out to 1 to 2 plants. At this point it is a good time to give the plants a bit more light and this can either be done by a sunny window or through a UV light that is hung directly above the plants by about 2 inches to ensure they do not over grow.

The next phase of growth I will talk about in an upcoming post and for now I hope you enjoy starting your own plants at home. It is definitely an activity that is fun to do with children and very educational. It is definitely a trial and error process and it is sometimes best to write a growth journal so that you observe how plants grow and to help you do any problem-solving.

Until next time happy growing and…

Namaste!

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