welcome to the rustic garden today I wanted to quickly go over how you can make your own seed starting mix and I want to thank all of you that are watching my show the rusted garden show it's a long format video series 25 to 35 minutes but I'm still going to make the quick videos for those of you that enjoy those today we're going to talk about peat moss perlite vermiculite and how do you make a seed starting mix that is sterile and won't have fungus net eggs in here so down the line when you're growing your seed starts like this you won't end up with fungus Nets coming and causing a problem and it's real easy to fix we're gonna either pour boiling water into the seed starting mix or we're going to microwave it and I'll talk to you about that after I get through the ingredients I'll also bring a bowl in and we'll go and go and do a couple different mixes so you can see what they look like so let's start with the basics if you are just going to do a flat like this then there's no need to really make your own because it's going to cost you more money in the long run of course you have more supplies you could use over the years but you could just pick up a bag of the jiffy starting mix in a jiffy starting mix is really just peat moss and some vermiculite there's no perlite in there if there is as well that piece might be if there is it's so low it's it's not even relevant but peat moss vermiculite and this is basically the mix we're gonna make if you go to the store and buy this bag it's gonna cost anywhere from six to nine dollars depending on where you get the bag 12 quarts in there perfectly fine for something like this but if you're doing a lot of flats and then you're using your starting mix to transplant these up into cups you're gonna want to make your own and the reason for that is you can buy let's move my greens flats out of the way you can buy find vermiculite just like this this is the vermiculite in two quart bags from anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars that's two cubic feet I think I might have said two quarts it's a two cubic foot bag it's a huge bag like this and it really breaks down to about 60 quarts of vermiculite and that's 12 right there for six eight dollars now it's not an exact science I think you actually end up with more courts especially when you get to the peat moss because it's so loose and fluffy peat moss you can buy in 2.2 cubic foot bags from anywhere from ten to fifteen dollars so between those two that's at least a hundred and twenty quarts of material and it's going to cost you somewhere between say thirty and fifty dollars which is a lot cheaper than buying it that way now the ratios and we're also actually I'm going to show you how to pack these the right way so that you get you know outstanding steets seed starts from the beginning you just want it to be nice and dense when you do that so let's go with the ratio that I start with the ratio can be three things of peat moss three equal parts an equal part just means you're using the same measure so these are all the same size bowls so three equal measures of peat moss to one measure equal measure of vermiculite this is perlite I don't use this in my seed start mix it doesn't have any value in my opinion you could use it it's not going to hurt but it's just an extra ingredient and you don't need I like to use this when I make my potting mix to you know up pot the small transplants from here into eight ounce twelve ounce containers and I'll show you how to do that too so let's try and keep this simple three parts peat moss to one part for Mickey light that's the base that I use you can go to four parts peat moss to one part for Mickey light if you want that works perfectly fine you could even go to five or six parts peat moss to one part for Mickey light and I think you get the point that there's no exact way to do it and here's the reason this is the mix right from the jiffy bag in it's mostly peat moss with a little bit of vermiculite put through this is what the starting mix that I made looks like when you take three parts peat moss to one part vermiculite you can just see a lot more vermiculite this works well too now no matter what you set up in design for your starting mix or if you're using jiffy mix the problem is that gnat eggs the fungus gnat eggs can sit dry typically in peat moss you're not going to find any problem with the perlite you don't need to microwave this support boiling water into that probably the same is true for vermiculite I'm just not sure but you get around it this way this is a ball of three parts peat one part vermiculite and I microwaved it for one minute four times so I did a one minute microwave stirred it microwaved it again did it four times put saran wrap over it leave it on there about 15 minutes let all that heat and steam work in there the microwave the heat will kill the fungus and that eggs what Kyle funguses you won't have any problems now before I go and let me just say one thing make sure you start your starting mix with a dry mix like the jiffy bag any kind of starting mix that is dry or you use dry ingredients if you go out into your garden and you bring in any kind of dirt or soil and you put it directly into your seed starting mix and you don't heat it or treat it you're definitely going to get diseases fungus and insects you're just gonna be bringing in stuff from the outside as soon as you put it under the lights where it's warm where the environment is perfect to get those things growing they're gonna start to grow so I took my peat my vermiculite put it in here mixed it through then you add water you always want to add water when you are packing your seed cells this should be a pre-moistened starting mix the dry mixes would go in here you would try and water them they're gonna float it's gonna be a mess always pre Morrison so we pretty much in the mix of three to one it goes in their microwave for one minute I take it out stir it take it and put it back in for another minute and I do that four times now word of caution because you're using a microwave with stuff that could potentially catch on fire that's on you if you don't feel comfortable using the microwave I'll talk about boiling water in a second so if you're using the microwave make sure you're watching it the whole time so after that I can feel the heat coming up just make sure you don't put your hands straight into the air you'll get burned but this is completely sterile it's perfect for seed starting you're not going to have any trouble with fungus with any diseases or with insects you're going to basically kill them off so I'm just going to stir this for a minute to let it cool down so I can show you how to set up your seed starting cells just like that now instead of using the microwave boil water bring it to a full boil this would be the dry mix of a three-to-one ratio in there and just pour the boiling water in and mix it up with a spoon until it looks something like this so this is the dry mix of the three-to-one ratio and this is what it looks like when its moist and pre-moistened once you have it pre-moistened I do this in all of my videos you're gonna drop the starting mix right into your seed starts and you're gonna press it down you want it to be nice and dense the vermiculite and the peat moss will keep plenty of air pockets in there for your roots and this is what you plan into alright so let me clean this up a little bit I'm going to bring out my big bowl and we're going to do a couple different mixes so you can see what they look like and decide what you'd like to use in your garden all right so let's make some seed starting mixes and I'll talk to you about how you would use them for potting up to the next level and that's when you would take them out of your seat cells and then put them into bigger cups first thing is fertilizing I don't use any fertilizer in the starting mix you can if you want to but you have to make sure that it's soluble which means that the plants can use it right away if you use any organic products that have to be broken down by soil biology they're just gonna sit there usually smell and grow fungus because there's no soil life in there to take care of they were to get organic fertilizers and make them available to your plants now my belief is a garden wants to give you just have to help it along and this is one way to really get your garden started the right way is really half healthy seed starts so remember the ratio that I start with three balls of peat moss three parts peat moss one part vermiculite and this is what it looks like if you want to use something like this it's extremely light it's just like the stuff you buy in the store it has a higher concentration of peat moss I'm sorry I ever make you light in there but this will do perfectly well to help take care of your plants and get them off to become great transplants now if you don't like the higher amounts of vermiculite and a little more vermiculite or a heavy amount of micky light will keep it moist longer and in some cases you may not want that depending on what you're growing I find it's valuable because my seed starts dry out so quickly I like to have something that holds moisture a little bit longer this is what four parts peat moss looks like to one part vermiculite and you can see it's hard to tell I wise but you know obviously there's more peat moss in there it's more inexpensive that way peat moss is much cheaper so the more peat moss you use the more money you're going to be saving and this is a lot of starting mix right here and then this would be a five to one ratio and you could go higher but I wouldn't really recommend going past that this is a really nice ratio now some people do put perlite in here for their starting mix I just don't think you need it but when we get to the point that your seed starts have started you know they get to about you know an inch or two depending on what you're growing you're gonna want to move them into containers and when you get to that point you can amend any extra starting mix or make a new batch by putting in that's four ounces of perlite and because your transplants into the cups are gonna have more roots more growth you might want to loosen up your potting mix a little more so that was about four ounces in there and you can see the perlite let's go with another four ounces so a total of eight so this I think is perfect for a potting mix to pot up your transplants just to let them grow a little bit longer before they go into the ground so this would be 5 parts peat moss one part vermiculite and then eight ounces of perlite in there for your potting up mix and this is probably let's just take a look that's about another 8 ounces if you want it to be more this is 16 ounces of perlite and you can kind of be your own scientist and decide what you want your plants to grow in this is how I recommend making your own starting mix how to make your own potting mix and make sure that you put in boiling water or that you sterilize it with the microwave just so you don't get fungus disease or fungus Nets I also have a seed in garden shop at eww a rustic garden calm I sell seed starting supplies I'm also selling shirts this year they come in this color maroon and grey and it's the rest of garden and it says a garden wants to give something I really believe that if we help the garden along it gives back to us as we give back to the garden hope you enjoyed the video please check out my blog again or X on my blog at