“Dont judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Now the cooler weather has arrived, I have been getting busy in the greenhouse.
Until fairly recently, my seed raising success has been patchy at best.
Seeds used to really intimidate me in the garden. I really couldn’t be bothered. And I was a bit impatient. It was just far easier to buy punnets. But, before long, I wanted varieties that just weren’t grown by the punnet distributors. If I wanted to grow the interesting stuff, it had to be from seed.
Besides, punnets are expensive. Eight plants for $3.00 or a packet of 1000 seeds for the same price. You don’t have to be an economic expert to figure out that math! Plus, heirloom varieties, with some careful planning, return seed to you year after year. Clearly, growing from seed is much better value.
So, when starting to experiment with seeds a few years ago, I sought the advice of a well-known nurseryman .
“Just dig up some soil you are planning to plant them in” he said. “And stick ’em in that. If they’re not going to grow in that, you’re buggered the minute you transplant them anyway.”
And because there was some truth in his reasoning, I gave it a go. The problem was, my soil was effectively beach sand. It offered no nutrient, compacted in the pot and was water repellant. Not much other than nasturtiums survived that experiment.
So I hunted around and found another recipe for seed raising mix.
I blended peat moss, coarse river sand (yes, despite being surrounded by sand, can you believe I was encouraged to buy the “right” sand), carefully sifted compost & worm castings and a handful of blood and bone for good measure.
This worked much better!
But, I still had a few problems. It took forever to prepare and mix. It was expensive. My sifted compost introduced dozens of uninvited seeds, making it hard to determine if indeed the right plant was showing up in the pot, or if it was an impostor. Often, there was a number of competing plants springing up in the one seedling pot. I even suspected the compost worms introduced into my mix snacked on the germinating seeds.
So back to the drawing board.
I reckoned I didn’t really need a super-dooper nutritious mix. Seeds have their own sprouting food source in the germ of the seed itself. What they need is warmth, and soil that isn’t going to get waterlogged, or dry out too fast. It has to be friable enough for delicate roots to penetrate. Not too expensive would be nice too. Plus, it has to be easy for me to mix, and good for the soil I will eventually plant into.
After a bit of experimenting, I think I have found the winner. And it couldn’t be simpler. Two ingredients.
My Never-Fail-Two-Ingredient Seed Raising Mix
1 measurement of reconstituted finely shredded coir fibre.
1 measurement of vermiculite. (I buy mine in big bags from the pet store. It’s MUCH cheaper than getting it from the garden centre or hardware store.)
Mix thoroughly.
Done.
Too easy. It’s good in punnet trays, my little paper pots and of course, plastic.
It holds it’s water without getting soggy and is freely draining. It works a treat. I only plant with freshly mixed seed raising mix. No chance of contamination.
See? Purple broccoli, tomatoes and lettuce all love this mix! In fact, they love it so much, you can see I have a bit of thinning to do before I plant. Since using this mix, I can be more conservative with the number of seed I sow.
When the seeds start to grow their second set of leaves, I water them with diluted compost tea to boost them with some nutrient and bacteria before they make their way out into the big wide space that is my veggie patch.
I save my compost for my actual garden soil or potting mix.
My seedy success has just sky-rocketed with this mix. I urge you to give it a try.
What do you use for seed raising mix? Have you tried this mix before? Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear from you.
Sounds very good. I’m going to give this a go! Thanks for posting 🙂
Thanks am going to give it a go . spring on this side of the world down under. Am looking at planting lots of edible flower seeds . will let you know how I get on
Thank you so much for sharing your tried and tested recipe – will definitely be trying this!
You’re welcome Jeanette, enjoy!
I have trialed this mix against many others here in Australia and it works extremely well. It follows the logic of the traditional Cornell University mixes (where they use Peat) the advantage being with Coir is that it is not nearly as acidic, so doesn’t need lime or dolomite to correct the pH. As seeds need very little food for the first few weeks, the minerals present in this mix, potassium in the coir in abundance and Ca, Mg & Fe in the Vermicuulite and no doubt some P in both and other traces elements supplies the extra minerals req’d. Coir also has Trichoderma (a microbiologial beneficial), which also helps some plants form better and more efficient root systems. I am currently adding some controlled release fertilizer (2 pellets) to each cell to see if that helps, but suggest liquid fert is probably the go after the 4th day only . Hydroponics formula is brilliant at half strength. Seeds germinate best with low water conductivity (so low fertilizer) at most. Once germinated they can be given a routine balanced feed. I put my 3 to 4 inch cells in a tray and keep half an inch of water in the bottom. (never top water, so in 20 years since I have been doing this, I have never had any disease issues with any plants. Here in this part of Australia half the year is warm to hot, so this keeps them fed while I am away at work and they only get checked every night. I flush the tray once a week with fresh diluted half strength hydroponic formula, which is what they are fed once per day after the 4th day. My professional grower customers (I sell perlite and vermiculite to them), tell me that once you pull on the stem and the whole cell lifts out of the tray, they are ready for transplanting, which means it has formed a solid well branched root system. Many don’t use bottom watering (some growers do however), but us amateurs don’t have the luxury of hovering over our plants constantly on hot or windy days. My seedlings look as good as any professionals and transplant beautifully. Coir has the advantage over Peat in that it rewets very easily if it dries out. If using peat suggest 1:500 addition of dolomite powder and maybe 10 to 20% medium to small perlite intimately in the mix which aids initial peat wetting and future wetting of the peat, when it may get dry, (plus half vermicultie. Finally if using hydroponic nutrient you can use straight vermiculite, but the coir fibres short as they may be, help to hold the root ball together a bit better (but only about 2 days better in most cases) so you can actually use just medium grade Vermiculite and for some plants like beans it is brilliant and all they need. A great raised bed or pot growing media is perlite, vermiculite and peat or coir or composted pretty much anything. 1:1:1 ratio. Go to a local manufacturer to get the best prices as both P&V are cheap. To make a single garden pot here is the ratio. eg. 9 litre pot. 3 litres coir, (hydrate with water), then add CRF and 3 litres perlite, Mix again….Finally the 3 litres of vermiculite, (this is softer so leave it to last) fold through gently.
Water with a liquid fertilizer. The pot will weigh about 6 kg. “perfect”. This gives plenty of water but the particles have 25% air space called AFP or (air filled porosity) with this combination. You can also add compost to this mix, without too much harm. Add a good quality controlled release fertilizer at the manufactures recommended rate for the crop and give occasional shots of diluted liquid fertilizer towards the end and particularly just on flowering and fruiting when nutrient demand peaks. This is a very green way to grow ironically as the plant does not waste any fertilizer and natural biological life flourishes in this mix including nitrogen fixing bacteria and others if you add a little compost, compost tea or worm castings or the tiniest amount of top quality garden soil (that has lots of worms) I am talking a few ounces of soil only, as soil and pots don’t mix. I always suggest where possible growers use raised garden beds as they more closely mimic nature and growth rates are phenomenal with this mix because of all the oxygen available to the root system, enhancing the natural biology. My beds are in a courtyard on solid concrete and only 8 inches high and yet I grow amazingly good quality sweet corn in these low tech raised beds. If you feel to double that by all means go ahead, it may reduce your watering frequency a little, but I irrigate my corn about 10-15 litres per day in the peak of summer per 1.44 square metre bed and that is plenty for most but the hottest days, when I may double up if it hits 95 degrees F or more. Hope this information helps. Once you get the media and nutrition dead right it gets a lot easier to garden and you are able to get grow without pesticides as you get very little bug attack, save perhaps with brassica family but for them there is always Dipel if one must to keep the white cabbage moths at bay. I don’t bother, and have beautiful native bees here in Oz and get visited by lots of coloured butterflies too, so no pesticides here for 15 year now.
Wow, Thank you for such a comprehensive description, Rod. I love to hear about other gardener’s successful experiments, thank you. Especially your last point about not using pesticides for 15 years, very interesting!
Cheers
Melissa
Hi, where do you get those cute little pot papers? Do you use them for all seeds? Thanks Katrina
Hi Katrina, I have a neat little paper pot making tool you can see here… http://afarmofyourhome.com/stark-raving-potty/
You can buy the one I use here…
https://www.ebay.com.au/p/?iid=201862535926&&&chn=ps
They’re fantastic. I use brown paper because my free newspapers go into the chicken coop and I dont like getting the ink all over my hands when I roll them!
Cheers
Melissa
I’ve been using of 1 part each coir perlite and commercial seed raising mix, as I was worried
that without the SRM the seedlings might miss out on something.
Guess I don’t need to worry about that.
Just wondering what pet store you buy vermiculite from and what it’s meant to be used for, as the local pet warehouses around Melbourne just gave me a weird look when I asked if they stocked it.
Thanks
Gerry C
Hi Gerry
I think it was City Farmers where I found it, it was a coarse vermiculite apparently used as cat litter. But I am back to buying it from Bunnings because they stopped stocking it a while ago.
I once asked for sphagnum moss at general store, after much puzzlement and explaining, she said “Oh you mean ‘terrarium moss’!” Turns out ‘terrarium moss’ is just regular sphagnum moss in a tiny box with about a 1000% markup!
Cheers
Melissa
Sounds great and super easy, going to give this a try, but just want to check… when you say one measure of each, is that a measure of the Coco Coir soaked already or un-soaked against the same volume of Vermiculite? Thanks
Soaked, naturally 😉
Hello, do you add any compost or only vermiculite and coir? Thanks!
I use vermiculite and coconut fibre but also add an ordinary (cheapish) potting mix which I put through a coarse seive first. Plain seived mix without the v and cf give a lovely fine mix for pots AND the very coarse stuff taken out is a perfect orchid mix or goes on the top of pots as a mulch!! A cheap bag of potting mix gives me three different types of medium which would be REALLY expensive if bought separately.
the best than ever. i grow mexican corriander seed, it got a sign of success up to now. thanks so much