From away to garden.com and Robinhood Radio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. When growing from seed, the list of decisions starts with what turns out to be the simplest question of all, which variety of bean or tomato or zinia to order. But then things get more complicated. Questions like figuring out when to start what and whether any of your choices need any special pretreatment or particular conditions to germinate, including what germinating medium shall you use. We've all heard the recommendation to use less peat. The standard for seeds starting until relatively recently when this non-renewable resource has been under scrutiny, but what Pete's substitutes work and don't. That's just one of the many questions that today's guest, Joe Lampell, answers on social media and in the online course he offers about his favorite topic growing from seed, and it's one we'll explore today so first these messages.

Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends wholesale flower bulbs. A third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. and by high mowing seeds, Wulkevermont Vegetable, Flower, and Urbal Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMohingSeeds.com and by White Flower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants. On the web, WhiteFlower.com. Joe Lampel is host of the popular Joe Gardner podcast and creator of a suite of online gardening courses, or perhaps you know him from his former long-running Emmy-winning public television program, Growing a Greener World. Joe Gardner is in the Atlanta area, and I don't know any other home gardener who starts more seeds each season. He's also the author of the vegetable gardening book, Your Complete Guide to Growing in Edible Organic Garden from Seed to Harvest. Hello there old friend, how are you? I am good Margaret. I'm just fine and I'm excited to be talking to you. Thanks for the opportunity. You don't like seeds or anything though, right? You don't start any, right?

I love seeds so much. Maybe my favorite thing of all related to gardening. Yeah, and the pictures you and that greenhouse. It's like four billions. Five billion, but who's counting? Oh, right, okay. Yeah, it's just, do you still use the basement grow room too, or just now it's all in greenhouse? I do. I use that for the germination phase. So when I'm sewing my seats because I'm usually doing that in January and February and actually sometimes even in December like this year, you know, it's crazy cold outside even down here in Atlanta. So I need more of a controlled environment because the greenhouse can get very cold at night and very hot in the day. So I have safety with the seed starting room and I've been doing it for so many years. I'm, you know, it's hard to break that habit.

So, you know, it's hard to break that habit. Ah, so, you know, it's a, it's an aspect of gardening seed starting is that has a lot of questions and decisions as I mentioned in the introduction, including growing medium and which one is best. And there's so many considerations and more of course in recent years about the subject than ever. I suspect your students in your course, which is I believe starting soon. What's the course called? What's... Master seed starting. Master seed starting. And I expect they want to know what to use. I bet that's a question that comes up, yes. Yes. And not only that, the nuances of it, because I have a very curious group of students. And I love it. And they're nerdy and geeky, which is even better. So they're going deep dive on those questions. But yes, there are many at this time of year, especially. And I'll give information about the course with the transcript of this show over on a way to garden.com. You know, I was always taught that a seed starting medium that it should not be a potting soil.

It should be a germinating mix, which meant that it was soilless and that it was a pretty fine texture, but like certain qualities that it had, but especially that it was not potting soil. There was a difference between germinating mix and potting soil. So, what are your guidelines and then let's go into the peat or no peat? Yes, indeed, absolutely. That's a great question. Start off, though, because I get that one from time to time. Unlike garden soil, I'm glad you use that example. Seed media is really designed to be low nutrient sterile or near sterile actually in highly porous and a properly designed seed starting medium that's engineered by professionals. It's really designed for roughly four things. Airation is the first one, moisture retention is the other one. Structural stability, you want the roots to be able to hold together without compaction, and then biological neutrality, because you want to limit the pathogen pressure. And compared to garden soil, that introduces a whole lot of things into the mix that aren't or shouldn't be included in seed starting mix. So those are some of the qualities. And then of course, as I said in the introduction, also in recent years, we've been made aware of the environmental issues around pit harvesting. You know, it's a non-renewable resource and many gardeners have sought to reduce their pit usage. I mean, interestingly, like in the United Kingdom, you know, the government set timetables for banning Pete in horticultural products. And besides taking Pete products off the garden shelves, the garden center shelves on a schedule, it also accelerated that impetus, the government pressure accelerated product research and development about alternatives. So people there, gardeners there got more products that were more, they were farther along in the research process as alternatives right away, you know. I feel like we're still tinkering, but what that's. Yeah, we're a long way from getting to where the UK is with their lack of use of Pete, which is fine. And I love watching gardeners world. And there's not a show that goes by where they don't mention Pete-free compost. However they say. My dad compost. Compost. Yeah, I still can't say it. Nor can I say, Quar, which is COIR, and how I have been pronouncing it, Quar, but it's supposed to be at least two syllables core. I don't know.

I don't know either.

So just give me some grace there.

But that seems to be the fallback. And I'd love to talk about that as we progress through this conversation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know whether we want to start with what we use or I mean, have you totally said, oh, I'm never using any p to get in or I mean, I'm going to confess first in case there's any shine about that. I always used it's from Johnny selected C you know 512

mix it's a germinating mix. It is peat based, it has other ingredients. It has mature compost and perlite and fish meal and seaweed meal. You know, I'm just used to it and that's one of the things that I think is really important

is used to it. I understand how it feels, how it handles water. Do you know what I mean? I know it. It's like when you're baking and you know if you change ingredients when you're baking. Margaret, I so know what you mean and I am in the same camp as you and I readily, I am trying my best to move away from Pete Moss to something more alternative and sustainable and has less environmental impact. So I'm working on it, but at the same time, at the scale that I'm growing seedlings and many of them are for our seedlings sale with my daughter every spring. You know, there's 3,500 or 4,500 seedlings that we're growing out. And I never have enough time. So I'm always racing the clock. And I go, I default back to what I've been using for years. Just as you said, the consistency, the predictability, the uniformity of what I use is Prometx BX, which is a commercial grade, Pete-based seed starting starting in propagation mix that has roughly 70% peak moss in it and then some pearlite and some wood finds, maybe 25 or 30% of that. So there's a good bit of other amendments into it, but the bulk of it is peak moss. And there's core and there there's core and there's pit moss and you know, there's not a lot of competitors out there that I've found yet that I'm happy enough with to fully convert to. Right. And one thing I will say is I use so much less germinating mix that I germinate things on a much smaller scale than you do. Then I do say potting mix for my big containers outside. With those, I have been very much more aggressive to move toward, well, there's a lot of products that have a bark base or a wood base, so to speak, you know, and have compost in them and things like that. I found that transition a lot easier with my potting mixes than with the seed starting mixes. And even, you know, a leading expert in this subject, a professor at North Carolina State University, I talked to him a couple of years ago and this was sort of really all getting to be louder and louder the issue about Pete. And Brian Jackson's his name and he basically said, go slowly, even though he's an expert and he's doing all this research and so forth as his industry, go slowly because you can't just say, oh, I'm going to go from using this for all these years to using 100% quar or whatever and necessarily have good results. So yeah In the potty mix, you have so many more options that you can put into it. Plus, you're putting in established plants that aren't babies coming out of seeds. Yes. And so there's that hardening off phase where you just can't really subject your seeds to so many unknowns. And you've got to have that sterility base and the fine texture. And it has to do all those things as far as retaining moisture and releasing enough of it And then you have to think about the pH and so it limits your option significantly Which is why we're back to just a handful of acceptable choices now you said pit moss before and people may have said peat moss but pit moss a brand of alternative, germinating medium that's made from recycled paper products. Yeah, it's basically recycled paper. It's post-consumer cellulose cardboard and paper waste that's been upcycled, it's been cleaned and pulped and engineered into a peak alternative. And they'll even tell you

that it's not... The intention is really not to make it 100% replaceable with peak because they

recognize it's got a different texture, it's got a different mechanical cohesion factor that

helps it bind together if that's what you're looking for and some other things that make it more of

a compliment than a replacement. And the compliment may be 30 to 50% of the total and when you use it that way and you get used to the nuances of using it, it's, I think it does a great job of holding moisture, almost be careful about it, but once you dial that in and I have done this, it is amazing. In fact, I recall one year when I was really testing it, the best trays of seeds and seedlings that I had came out of the pit moss formula. And so have I changed entirely to use 30% of that in my mix? No, I haven't because, as I mentioned earlier, I get time crunched and then I have to default back to what I know I don't have to think about and then it ends up all mixed. Yeah. Right. And that's basically what what Dr. Jackson, you know, at North Carolina state said, he said, try using your familiar thing and gradually adding a little bit of something different. So like the pitmoss or whatever. And and and Quar was one of the ingredients that a lot of people have also tried doing that with now. I'm just going to be sound like you know an old whatever which I am by the way about 127 years old. But but don't I sound good for 127? But but Quar isn't exactly environmentally groovy in my mind either. Because it gets you you know, it comes from other places in the world. It has to get shipped all over the place. It used a tremendous amount of water to clean the saline, the salt out of it, to desalinate it. And it's a complicated thing in its own right. I mean, if I lived near a bunch of coconut trees, do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do.

That'd be one thing.

But this is a whole another. So I have my own issues with that. And that's not really the solution I really want. So I like that you're saying that you've been trying the pitmossin that you've at least been able to add a percentage of it with good result. Yes. And back to the quar. You said it very well.

I'm still working on it, but back to the coconut.

Yeah, well, back to the quark. You said it very well. I'm still working on it, but that stick with the coconut. Yeah, well back to the coconut husk. Can I just call it that? Yeah. You know, in principle, it can be an excellent propagation medium, but here's the other thing about it, Margaret. You mentioned the environmental issues with it, and they do. It has a whole other set of the issues we need to think about in concert with whether or not it's a good alternative, but raw core, untr-unprocessed core often are usually contains residual salts, semen, potassium, and nutrient imbalances are thrown out by it. That can hinder the germination and the seedling growth. And what happens all the time, and I know this over years of having nursed my students through this process when they're trying to use that alternative of coconut husk, and they have really dismal results using it straight. So they go to the home depot or lows and they buy the core brick or the agovate, and they plant straight into it. And they like me when I did side by side comparisons. I'm gonna send you the pictures so that you can put it into the post if you want to thank you The the it's unbelievable how stunted and stagnant and Stalled the seedlings are after they barely germinate and the side by side comparison shows four different Seed mediums one was core and the others was, you know, it was the normal stuff. And I say in this picture, how old do you think the one on the left is, which was the core? And everybody's compared to the other ones. And so on the other ones, they'll say, oh, I don't know, those look like about four to six weeks old. And then one on the left, they say that four days, five days, they were started on the exact same day and they were all five weeks old. Wow. So that's the issue. But what happens is people don't know that it needs to have a buffering period. So we hear about the salts. And so forever, people would say, okay, I just need to get the salt out of it. And there's very few companies that go to the extra trouble and expense to process or buffer out the chemically bound salts. So, so there's one thing, you know, where they grow, you've already talked about that, think of Gilligan's island and- Right, they wash it, right. Yeah, they rinse it, but the chemical binding of the ions and salt is, is, think of it as, think of the core fiber as a magnet that's negatively charged. And the salt ions are very attracted to that because opposite to track. So they chemically bind to the fiber. And so, rinsing doesn't release the bound ions. They're still adhering. So when it comes to us on processed, and we just hydrate the brick and we plant into

it, and we experience what I just talked about, they're thinking, well, what just happened?

And then they say, well, I'll fix that. I'll just, I'll, I'll make a new batch and I'll rinse it all out. So they put it out in the bucket or a hose or something like that. Well, guess what? doesn't do it either because maybe you wash off the external bits of salt that the bound

pieces are still there, the bound ions.

And so you have to buffer it.

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