Video: How to Plant Planting Seeds Indoors

This Season: Tailgating; New Year, New You; Tax Time

Take the proper steps to keep indoor plants safe and healthy. Learn more in this free educational video series.

Comments

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Doug Smiddy of Smiddy's Gardening Services here on behalf of expertvillage.com. Today we are here to talk about starting your plants from seeds. Where do we grow our plants? Now, most people are going to rely on a South facing window. Why a South facing window? Because that is going to get the sun from East to West and that is real important. As you can see I have this in the window. It's getting some late afternoon sun here and that is a great way but bare in mind your plants are going to follow the direction of the sun as the day goes on so keep that in mind. And also before you go to work too you want to make sure your plants are well watered too because that sunlight coming through the glass creates a tremendous amount of heat and you don't want your plants to dry out and die. Now in my opinion, the best way to start your seeds inside is make the investment in a grow light system. These come in all shapes and sizes. They have multiple tier ones. I got a simple one. I don't plant a lot of seeds every year. So the single tier system works great, fits in a small corner and what I like to do is kind of combine both elements. Put it in the, near a sunny window so you can have the grow light and the supplemental light from the sun and there is a reason for that. A grow light does not reproduce sunlight exactly. It doesn't produce the full spectrum of light that the sunlight does. So again the sunlight from a sunny window will supplement that. This is a great grow light system because you can just raise and lower the light as the plants grow. So you want to start off and having your plants maybe three to four inches below the light. This way they are not going to reach for the light and get all leggy. Now as I mentioned before when you have a plant in the windowsill it's going to follow the light. In this case your outer cells, the plants may reach inward towards that light. So what you want to do is once a day just simply turn your system around so now the plants will just reach in the opposite way and that really helps strengthen up the stems too. With this forty watt grow light system you want to expose your plants to this grow light for about sixteen hours a day. So you can either turn it on when you get up in the morning and turn it off before you go to bed or you can incorporate a little timer which is what I like to do. And it simply plugs into the grow light system. They are really really easy to use and it turns on and off automatically. Now, since we have started our seeds and our demo plants are up and growing. As you can see we no longer need that humidity going and like I said you can adjust this height and you want to keep an eye on it because once these plants get too high and they start touching that florescent bulb you could burn them. So just keep and eye on them as they grow. You can just raise your light a little bit at a time and then when they are big enough you are going to transplant them into bigger pots. And again you are not going to sit these plants outside until that last frost date. And one more thing you are going to want to consider when you are choosing a location is the temperature in which your plants are growing. Most seedlings prefer an environment of seventy degrees or more. That is very, very important. So you don't want to put your system near a drafty window, that draft is going to kill of a plant real quick. If you turn down your thermostat when you go to work, well remember your plants aren't going to work, they are staying behind. So you may not want to turn your thermostat too low when you leave. And another thing you want to consider too is putting a grow light of course near an outlet so you can plug that in too. And you will also want to put a small fan nearby too. Put it on low just to keep a little air circulation going, keep the plants healthy. It's going to reduce the chances of getting a fungus and result, you know that will result in much healthier plants.

Follow eHow: Follow @eHow

How to Plant Planting Seeds Indoors

Comments

Related Ads

Related Articles & Videos