This is a soil blocking demonstration since I'm making blocks to plant I thought I would just show how I do it.
We have a small pile of charcoal, small pile of vermicastings that I just got out of the bin and a pretty decent size pile of organic all purpose potting mix that is peat free.
The first thing we are going to do is add a little bit of water.
So this is just rainwater you can also use filtered water, anything that doesn't have chloramine or chlorine in it ideally.
add some water - you need more than you think you do and you can always add more or add dry potting mix depending on how its going.
we'll start with that... let me grab a spoon...and i'm just going to mix this in really quick and see what the consistency is.
It feels pretty good so I'm going to go ahead and mix in the worm castings.
When the castings are really wet like they are right now, which is how I prefer them, they're a little bit challenging to mix in so you just want to make sure you're diligent about that.
Going to sprinkle in the charcoal which acts as a porous space to house biology or the bacteria in the worm castings.
So hopefully they will multiply as they get comfortable in this mix.
I do this because when you're starting seeds the seeds themselves don't need all this but when you transplant it matters.
So when I transplant peppers, or tomatoes, or cucumbers that have been started in soil blocks I like
that they're going out with a little packet of nutrition and biology and everything they need to get off on the right root we'll say.
So this feels a little bit dry to me so I'll add just a little bit more water.
You want it to be muddy and tacky but not standing in water and so that's kind of what I'm looking for.
This feels better. You can use a spoon I honestly think it's easier to get a feel for it with your hands.
I like these gloves that are semi-waterproof on the bottom.
Get that out of the way. Alright let's start with that and see how it goes.
So this is a 2"x 2" soil blocker - one of the bigger, I think it's the biggest one you can get, maybe not but it is one of the bigger ones.
I use it for peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash if you wanted to start squash from seed you could do it in these.
I've also done lettuce in the size. It's a little bit big for greens but it does work really well if you have enough time to get them big enough.
So that's what we're using today. The 4-up does make a big difference doing one at a time would take forever.
So I do like that there are 4 here I know the smaller ones come in bigger grids which is nice also.
We'll start by just going to put even pressure on the soil here and turn back and forth and then
move your way back over top of the soil pushing really firmly and turning and twisting as you go.
The ends are the ones that don't like to get filled as easily so I try to put more focus on putting pressure at the end.
As you go you'll start to feel that the blocks are getting full. Flip it over, perfect.
I'll take my spoon again and just scrape along the bottom which makes the blocks sit more evenly on the tray.
Feels pretty good I can feel that it's firm with the spoon.
And then I'm using the bottom of a microgreens tray because I like to bottom water everything including soil blocks.
You can overhead water them they do fine, just be mindful of how much you're saturating.
When you're ready put it down onto your base and give it a squeeze. Lift up. Pretty cool!
I can fit 16 blocks in this 10 by 10 tray is what this is called. I will go ahead and demonstrate how to plant the seed in here. I will fill this tray up later on.
I'm going to do jalapeno this is from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange here in Virginia.
I'm going to do 1 seed per block, sometimes I'll do 2 or 3 depending on what I'm planting
particularly lettuce or greens or anything I'm not entirely confident in the germination rate
I'll do more than one but generally peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers have really good germination rate and are easy to start
you can see that the seed is just sitting down in the little groove that the block gives you.
then I'm going to take some of this dry potting mix that I have in this bucket here and just going to drop some into each hole.
I use dry because it's easier to work with than for this than the wet and the blocks are so wet that this little bit of dry doesn't matter.
Now while the blocks are really wet like this you don't want to handle them they will fall apart.
but once they get set up they are really sturdy and you can pick them up and move them around once they're set but I generally don't.
What will happen next is that i'll take this tray inside and put it on a heat mat until everything germinates and then it comes off the heat mat and go under lights.
It's too cold here to use cold frames for these really warm loving plants so they'll stay inside
until our evening temperatures stay above 45°F or so and then they can stay in the coldframes.
but under the lights they go and then when I need to water I'll just pour water into this tray and then it absorbs it from the bottom up. And that's pretty much it.