Jenny (00:28)
For a lot of people, seed starting might be really enjoyable. It might be something that you really look forward to. And I know for me, it can feel like very peaceful and grounding, but it can also be very time consuming when you just really don't have the time during the main growing season.
So although seed starting might be a task that you really enjoy, like I really enjoy, I'm sharing some tips today on how to make it simpler, easier, and quicker so when you are really busy and you just don't have that much time to spare, this will really help you speed up your processes and keep seed starting enjoyable.
I think activities like seed starting.
are so enjoyable for us because it's one of those quote unquote mindless tasks where you're just doing something repetitive over and over and over again. And I think it's great to have these tasks. And I actually think this is why a lot of people are attracted to gardening and farming because there are so many of these tasks where those repetitive things really help quiet your mind and they can be very calming and very grounding and help like connect you to the world around you. And it's just like very peaceful and enjoyable.
And so I think that's why a lot of us enjoy seed starting. Maybe you hate it, but I like it. And although we might enjoy it, just like all the other things we enjoy on our farm, like harvesting and growing flowers, but the truth is there are definitely times of the year when we are just strapped for time and we just gotta like get things done quickly, get it out of the way and move on to living our lives and being able to have dinner with our family, because that is important too.
But some of the tips I'm going to be sharing today are just ways that can help speed up the process, make it simpler. And I think a lot of the things I'm going to be sharing today are definitely a little bit more personal to me and are based on my own experiences. And while some of the principles apply across the board, I'm kind of just sharing my own experiences here today. And this is something I'm actually going be trying to do more here on the podcast, and I would love your feedback on it. So if you listen to this podcast and you're like,
Jenny, just want to stick to the hard facts. Give me like straight up information. Let me know. Also, if you're like, yeah, I loved hearing your unique perspective or your experience, let me know that too. So send me your feedback and a DM on Instagram. My Instagram handle is trademark farmer. So let me know what you think. But let's move on to my top five tips slash thoughts about seed starting and how to make it simple, easy and quick.
The first tip is to just start with a simple seed starting schedule.
I have in my hands my crop journal, which has my crop plan right in front of me. And it's really simple, you guys. So I am a huge fan of keeping things simple and streamlined. I love that saying, fancy fails, simple scales. I also love the saying, keep it simple, stupid. KISS, I think, is the acronym. But I just apply that whenever I can in my life and in my business.
So that goes for my crop plan as well. I found that when I tried to start too many flowers and I have too many successions, it can get like pretty overwhelming. And then as we used to get deeper into the season, like, you know, May, June, July, a lot of our seed starting plans would kind of fall off the rails and we had a really hard time sticking to them because it just seemed like there was other tasks that we had to prioritize more.
And so keeping a simple schedule can help you stick to it and be consistent with it and have a plan that actually works. And so obviously this is going to look different for everybody, but I'm just looking at my plan right now and we don't start a lot of things from seed. Let's see, I'm looking at the list. do Snapdragon's, Dianthus, Zinnia's, Solosia, Sunflowers, and...
sometimes marigolds, depending on the season and our mood. So that's five to six flowers that we start from seed. And then we do buy in some plugs. The only plugs that we buy in are Lysianthus, Fall Snapdragon's and Fall Campanula. So that's not a lot of flowers. And I just feel like, you know, our farm, our crop plan is very simple. And so it's very easy to stick to and be consistent. We also don't do a lot of successions.
I know a lot of people do like five or six zinnias successions a year. And if zinnias are a key crop for you, like awesome, you keep doing it. I'm not telling you not to. But we only do two successions of zinnias, one for early in the season and one for late in the season. And we just try to keep our harvest windows going as long as possible, you know, obviously as quality allows.
just having a seed starting schedule that you can actually stick to is really important here.
And your crop plan might not have as few crops on it. You might grow a lot more variety. It might be really different, but just finding ways to simplify it any way that you can. And an example that you might use is I used to start seeds like every single week of the season, like week 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. And after a while I was like, I don't know if I need to be doing this every single week. Maybe I can batch these things.
You know, and so just start a bunch of seeds on week 12 and then another bunch of seeds on week, you know, 14, starting seeds every other week or something like that. And so for some crops, this won't work for if you have a crop timing that you like really need to harvest it like, you know, early August or something like that. Obviously, that won't work. But if you can have some flexibility in your targets and when you're going to harvest them, it can be a good way to help simplify things.
So moving on to tip number two is having all the information you need before you start your seeds. So this also starts with your crop plan. So looking at my crop plan, know exactly what, obviously what flowers I'm starting, which successions, the varieties, the final number of beds that we're gonna be planting, the number of seeds I need, the harvest, know, target week, or.
so weak or transplant weak. And then of course, when we're doing our seed starting, the actual number of trays we're going to be seeding along with the cell sizes. So, you know, if we're starting 10 trays of snapdragons, that means 10, 128 trays. Or if we're starting 10 trays of zinnias, that means I need to get 10, 50 cell trays ready. So we have all that information done ahead of time.
And every planting is assigned a bed on the farm. So when it's done being in the greenhouse and it's going out to be planted out in the field, we have it assigned to a bed so we know it's going to be ready to go into. Because nothing is worse than having 20 trays of zinnias ready to go out in the field and you don't have a bed to put them into. Ask me how I know. I have totally been there before. And it's stressful. It's stressful and it's chaotic and it's no fun.
A lot of this is just like making your life easier and taking all the brain power out of it during the middle of the season. So if you can do all the heavy lifting ahead of time, have a really solid plan in place before the season starts, like your brain is gonna thank you when you are trying to run to the farmer's market and get your CSA sold and answer customers and do some transplanting and do seed starting and do all the things at the same time. And so another part of this that
I didn't mention, and I should have mentioned, is that also knowing when things are going to be transplanted out, so when you will be moving them out of the greenhouse to either harden them off or go out into the field. I could probably have an entire episode about hardening off because it's something that we don't really do. I mean, we kind of do it. But to me, it's not super efficient to do really in-depth hardening off.
Let's talk about that next. So tip number two is having all the information you need before you start so there's no guessing or forgetting during the season. just streamlines everything. So get it done over the winter, get it done. So moving on to tip number three, my third tip is using efficient seed starting practices. So one big thing that I don't do, and this might be controversial, but I don't do soil blocking.
So if you do soil blocking, I am sorry. If it works for you, please keep doing it. Please keep doing it. If you love it and it works for you, that's awesome. For me, I think it's terribly inefficient. I think making the soil is inefficient. I think making the soil blocks is inefficient. I also just don't think it's my...
It's not in my wheelhouse. It's not in like my powerhouse of things that I'm amazing at. There are companies out there that make incredible soil mix and soil seed starting media. so like I will happily just buy that from them. I'll let them do that heavy lifting and I'll just buy it. And so anything that saves me time, I just do it because time is my number one constraint. So I just think that making the soil blocks takes a lot of time. And for me,
I think it's inefficient. When I start everything in cell trays, and when I carry things from my greenhouse out into my field, I can carry four cell trays at a time, two in each hand. So I think it's just efficient for moving things around. I also don't have to be super gentle with them. I can just pick up a tray on its end. I could literally probably hold it upside down, and most of the cells, the plugs would just stay in there, so you're not gingerly carrying around these little...
Soil blocks on whatever piece of plastic or wood or styrofoam or whatever you use. just not for me. Okay, and again, if it works for you, that's great. But if you do soil blocking, looking at it in a way where you can do it more efficiently. I know for some people, space is a concern. So like soil blocking.
you can fit theoretically more soil blocks in like a very small space than you can sell trays, but you just have to weigh the pros and the cons and the costs.
Jenny (11:15)
If you're somebody who really likes the effects of soil blocking for like the air pruning and everything, I think a good compromise would be wind strip trays. There are these cell trays that are made out of hard plastic, but they have open or I guess I should say more open bottoms and sides that allow for that air pruning and possibly better quality start. So it's W I N S T R I P wind strip trays. You can look those up online.
Jenny (11:43)
I hear they last like 10 years or more. I don't think they've been around for that long, but I hear that they are pretty good and people like them. But just generally looking at what you're doing when you're starting your seeds and
if you can make it more efficient. And I know someone will have the argument here that you get better quality starts, better quality plugs by doing soil blocking. But for me, I haven't found that to necessarily be true. I get really good quality starts by using cell trays. I think that maybe the small amount of better quality I would get from soil blocking, like I don't think it's worth it to me. And so I made those decisions.
when I very early on in my business, when I looked at my seed starting practices. So my third tip for you in summary is just to try to find ways to be efficient with those seed starting practices. So remove the touch points, like touch the materials and the seed and the flowers as few times as possible. and don't bump up for the love of God if you don't.
have to. Bumping up is another, I think, inefficient seed starting practice. And so you guys know this, but anything that I say, like, this is just what works for me. If bumping up works for you and you like doing it, I'm never going to tell you that there's just one way to do things that's not true. But I'm telling you, like I said, my opinions and my thoughts on seed starting as we go along today. So moving on to
Tip number four, tip number four is batching your tasks. So this means just looking at the process and breaking it down into steps and then completing one whole step at a time. So what you could do is you could take a cell tray or make your soil blocks, whatever you choose, but take a cell tray and fill that tray with soil, then,
seed it, so drop a seed in every cell, then make a label, slap it on there, then walk it over to your heat mat, put it on, water it. Okay, you could do that with every single tray that you start. Or you could batch those steps together and look at your crop plan and see like, all right, I'm just gonna open mine up right now and look at week number 15. Okay, week number 15, we are starting Dianthus, Zinnia, Oklahoma's, Giant Binary, Oklahoma, I'm sorry.
Oklahoma zinnias, then giant binary zinnias, and a few other things. And I can look here and I see that I'm gonna need, let's see, about 20 trays. So about half of those is gonna be 128 trays, the other half is gonna be 50 cell trays. So I'm gonna get out the number of 128 trays I need, and I'm gonna fill all of them. I'm gonna put them all out on my potting bench.
put the soil on, tap them out, stack them kitty corner and fill all the trays. And I'm gonna grab the 50 cell trays and I'm fill all those. Then I'm gonna make all my labels that I know they're gonna be sticking onto my cell trays. And so I use masking tape. I've tried everything like the China markers, Sharpies, the wooden or plastic popsicle sticks. we just find that masking tape works best for us. So I would make a bunch of labels, get them ready to go. Then I'll...
grab my seeds and I will seed all the trays labeling them as I go. And I just like kind of stand in one spot as I do it and stack them all next to me or just place them next to me. And then I move them all over to heat mat, like carrying multiples at once, if I can. Cover them all at once, take my vermiculite, cover all the trays at one time and then water them all, put humidity domes on all of them and I'm done.
So I'm taking this one giant task and I'm breaking it up into multiple steps and I'm doing one whole step at a time. So fill all your trays, make all your labels, then seed them all, then you're doing it all in batches. And what this does is it just really speeds up the process. you don't have to take my word for it, you can time yourself doing it. And maybe for you, the timing might be different. Maybe you're faster at doing it a different way.
but time yourself and see, and then whatever way is fastest and most enjoyable for you, just do it that way. But for me personally, think batching the tasks when you're doing your seed starting can be a huge game changer to simplify the process and make it go quicker. So when you're in May, crazy mode and you're selling boatloads of flowers, you're transplanting and you've got teams to manage and you also gotta do seed starting, it'll go smoothly.
So finally, I have one last tip for you, which is to refine your processes. So this is a little different than batching your tasks. The main point I wanna make with refining your seed starting processes is to have procedures written down so the process is the same every single time. So our SOP, our standard operating procedure for seed starting, outlines that anyone who does the seed starting process
does it exactly how I described in the last tip. So they would batch those steps together, fill all the seed trays, then make the labels, then seed all of them. So everybody does it the same way every single time. And what that does is it makes it so the process becomes automatic and it's like secondhand nature for you. And it may seem like, okay, seed starting is basically second nature for me, but for people that are on your team, it might not be. And it also is like,
Seed starting, on my farm, we don't do it year round and a lot of tasks on the farm you only do once a year, twice a year. We only put shade cloth on our hoop house once a year. And every year we're like, wait, how do we do this again? And so this is why documenting and refining your processes come in really handy. And a big part of this with seed starting is I don't remember what the perfect temperature is to start my snapdragons at.
to start my cilosia at, to start my zinnias at. Like, I just don't have the brain space, the brain capacity to remember all of those little details, but I have a nice neat little document where it's all written out for me. So when I'm starting Snapdragons, I look, okay, hey, like these need to be started or, you know, the heat mat temperature needs to be set at 68 degrees or whatever it is. I don't remember right now. I don't have it in front of me, but I probably should have. So anyways, you know.
You don't have to remember all the information is there and available for easy access. And again, you're just taking out any of that brain power out of it. The less brain power you have to use during your busy season, the more you and your family and your friends and your employees will thank you. So another part of this is like just nailing it, you know? So quick story, I was going to DIY make a germination chamber many years ago. I...
I bought all this stuff to DIY and make it. I was super excited about it. And then I just never really got around to it. And I think the reason is because it was never a big enough pain point for us because we really nail our germination rates. We're pretty good at it. I get bang in germination rates as long as we have good quality seed. And so the reason why we're good at that is because I've documented our processes over the years. I've taken a lot of notes.
and I've really refined it. So we have really detailed notes in those SOPs on like how we start our Slosha, how we start our Snapdragons. know, Snapdragons are surface stones. Slosha barely gets any vermiculite put on top and the humidity has to be like perfect. you know, that is something that we've gotten good at over time because of refining our processes and all this stuff. And also,
For the love of God, if you don't have a heat mat to start your seeds at and set it at the right temperature for germination, please just do it. Just go buy one. I know that they can be pricey, but it's so worth it. I just know that in the past, I've had struggles with silocia specifically in the past, and I feel like I've gotten it down now, but in the beginning, I struggled with good germination rates on silocia. And I remember this one.
day in particular where it was just like super hot and they were in the greenhouse and I had a really busy day and I just didn't check on the greenhouse in the afternoon like I normally do and the trays dried out just the tiniest like they didn't even really dry out just like almost dried out and our termination rates were so bad that we got like 10 % termination. I mean it was awful and so then I had to like find the time and the energy and the brain space to go start
all of those trays all over again. And it's like, you're doing the same task again, unnecessarily, you're wasting that time. Plus you're like, I don't know, for me, was like, I don't freaking have time for this right now. I have all these other things I need to be doing or would rather be doing. And so that's really hard. And it came down to, mean, you could say it was just like an off day or whatever, but really it just kind of came down to my process.
I had time set aside after lunch to check the greenhouse like I do every day. And that day I didn't follow that process and then I paid for it. So refining your processes over.
And lastly, this is not really a tip I was going to include, but just some of my thoughts and my experiences I just want to share is that seed starting germination and water management in the greenhouse is really more of an art than a science a lot of times.
as all of farming is. And I struggle with this because I've become a very systems oriented person over time just from owning a business and like basically being forced into it. But we're working with the natural world here. A lot of it is out of our control. You have sunny days where the trays dry out. You have cloudy days where they don't have to be as watered as much. They need more water, less water, judging the humidity, factoring all of that into it.
you have to still take that into account in any systems you put into place on the farm. And so this is a reason why I manage most of the seed starting and greenhouse stuff still myself, because I think that it is kind of an art and a science and everybody does it a little bit differently. Like, I know I don't overwater. I'm very like I'm a light waterer in the greenhouse.
but I know other farmers who are deep waters and they tend to water much more than I do. And we both get really good results, but it's just like the art of the way that we go about caring for those seedlings. And so if you're going to have somebody do the seed starting and the greenhouse management for you, my tip is just to assign one person that task so it's all done consistently. So I think consistency in your processes, in your...
know, batching your tasks and making simple, streamlined, easy plans to follow are all things that are gonna make your seed starting processes simple, easy, and quick over the season when you just don't really have time to think about it. So there you have it. Those are my top five tips for making seed starting simple.
So there you have it. Those are my top five tips for making seed starting simpler, easier and quicker. And again, this is just a lot of my thoughts and experience and opinions,
But if you have something else that works for you, awesome. I'm so glad to hear it. So lastly, if you have not left a review for this podcast and if you have gotten any value out of it at all whatsoever, I would really, really appreciate it if you could take 30 seconds, honestly, it takes less than that, to just go leave us a review no matter where you're listening to this, especially on Apple or on Spotify. I would really, really appreciate that. Just leave a quick little review.
takes no time at all and it would mean the world to me and a lot of other flower farmers who could use this information as well. So thanks for joining me for this episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. Don't forget that we release new episodes every Monday, so I will hopefully see you next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
Jenny (24:46)
Hey, one last thing before you go, I have a super quick favor to ask.
If you haven't yet, could you please leave the six figure flower farming podcast a review on Apple or Spotify? If you've gotten any value or insight out of this podcast at all, it would seriously mean the world to me and to your fellow flower farmers because those reviews help them find the valuable information they need to build their profitable and sustainable flower farm businesses. So please just take less than 30 seconds. It literally takes no time at all to just
go ahead and leave a review now and I will be forever grateful. Thank you so much in advance and I'll see you next time.
