Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

From the earth to the dirt, come let we till up the soil, till up the soil, from the earth to the dirt, come let we keep planting on a while.

You see the homegrown I said it come from earth.

I say the good food come make me plant me we own.

I say the good food, good food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said I food, I food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, Your food, your food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown.

We're on the big island of St. Croix today as we continue our homegrown project and we're at the Rudolph Shulterbrandt Agriculture Complex.

And with me today is the honorable Louis Peterson, the commissioner of agriculture.

Commissioner Peterson, welcome to Home Grown.

Thank you very much.

Have you?

Glad to be on Saint Croix and got to be at the complex.

Tell us where we today.

Well, welcome, everyone, to the Rudolph Shulterbrandt Agriculture Complex.

This is the headquarters for the VI Department of Agriculture.

And our mission, everyone is to develop the promote the development of a sustainable and economic food production industry.

And one of the ways that we do so is by supporting our producers, by providing healthy plant seedlings.

That's good.

How many facilities do you have here that just produce the good seedlings?

We have three basic sections.

We are standing in one right now which is actively in production.

A second one which is going to come on land very soon.

And then the other area is where we actually have a fruit tree operation.

Okay.

But that does tell you right into what we're going to talk about the day we're going to be talking about seedling production.

We wanted you to get an opportunity to see the whole aspects of seeds from watering seeds.

How do you get seeds?

How do you plant seeds?

The whole process.

And I think, Commissioner, you and I have done our gardening and we've instructed people in the past and we continue to do about taking care of seeds.

How important is understanding this aspect of gardening?

Extremely important to begin with.

We want to really advocate that anyone into gardening, including the home grown participants, use very good quality seeds that support for production.

We also want to recognize that the plurality of seed type what is tomato, cucumber, etc.

is also important because that every variety does well where we are.

Good point.

So how good quality seeds is important, but as well, knowing what varieties do well here in the Territory is important.

Okay, so the seedlings that you have here at the department generally work well under our conditions.

Yes, they do.

They've been tried and tested and the varieties that we have here to provide to our producers have been ones that have been traditionally doing well in the territory to tolerate or high temperatures or dry conditions sometimes.

And basically, like I said, produce well under those conditions.

And so it is good for homeowners to know that, you know, you don't just gather up seeds from anywhere.

There's a method to it.

And here here at the University of Virgin Islands at the research center, they've done test on some of the seeds that we actually use here.

And these have been found to be the ones that do best under our conditions.

And so as we've shared with you before, if you need information or education or just some advice on seeds or seedlings or anything having to do with agriculture, you can call the Cooperative Extension Service.

You can come by the Department of Agriculture that professionals in both agencies or the commissioner, of course, that are able to provide us with information.

And one of those professionals is Ms.. Jacqueline Kowalski, as the Commissioner has pointed out.

And we'll be going now to look at how seeds are produced.

We'll talk a little bit about seeds and ordering seeds, catalogs and some other things that you need to know as a home gardener in order for you to be informed and to make the right decisions regarding the kind of plants that you want to grow.

And we want informed home gardeners, don't we?

Commission Yes, we do.

When gardeners last year, producers, it doesn't matter who, especially those in a whole growing program.

We want it to be successful so that other homeowners can garden as well.

Then seedling production and knowing about season an integral part of it.

So now we're going to go to the worksite and look at home as Jacquelyn Kowalski puts together Seedling Tree and how seeds are started.

And we'll give you some other tips in raising seeds.

Jacqueline Kowalski Welcome to Home Grown.

Jacqueline is the one who's responsible for all the seedlings that you see here today.

But actually one of the things that homeowners generally do is that they go looking for seeds, and one place they can find seeds is here at the Department of Agriculture, correct?

Yes.

Certain types of see certain types of seeds.

Okay.

But I know, just like all of us, we get things in the mail, catalogs, etc., And I know most of our our listeners and viewers also get mail catalogs.

There are some things that we should look for in catalogs.

Yes.

What people have to remember is that it all starts with a high quality seed.

Okay.

And your beautiful fresh tomato, your beautiful, crispy lettuce that you have this out.

I'll start with that tiny seed that has eventually grown up into a full grown plant and fruit.

But you have to have the right type of seed and the right quality of seed to get that productive plant.

Okay.

But we have several catalogs here.

Okay.

Now, seed cards are extremely valuable if you look inside seed catalogs.

You see the variety of different types of fruits that can be grown from that type of seed.

You can see things like how long it's going to take for that plant to produce seed.

Mostly they actually provide you some information.

Okay.

Wealth of information in these little descriptions of different types of seeds.

It'll tell you things like how big the fruit will be, how much it away, and the characteristics of the fruit.

Say it's a green tomato or a red tomato or a yellow tomato.

How what types of say diseases it's resistant to?

If it's resistant to things like cracking and how well it ships ships, we don't tend to ship things here, but basically how well to keep once you pick it out from the field, what type of market it's good for.

If it's good for a roadside market, if it's good for the home garden, etc..

So again, if you're just picking up a catalog and you're looking through and you're not sure it provides some information and quite a bit of information that will help you to make an informed decision.

Exactly.

And most importantly, what it's going to tell you is if that seed is appropriate to our environment, correct.

That's great.

The thing about saying Koroit is we have a very long period of here.

We have a long period of drought often during the summer and the descriptions of the types of seeds will tell you if those types of seeds are tolerant to those types of conditions, because the same type of see, that's going to grow well in Michigan or Oregon may not do well here.

It might, but in many cases it will not.

Right.

And that's where the Cooperative Extension Service and the Agriculture Experiment Station here on Saint Croix, they do the research on the seedlings and they gather all them up and they grow them under our conditions so that we can see how they respond under our conditions.

And then those are the ones that are recommended to homeowners.

We sometimes in some of the hardware stores, we find packs of seeds.

No, I notice again, we have a lot of different kinds of seeds and different companies as well.

Jacqui, what do some of these seeds I know there's writing on some of them.

What do some of these seed producers put on these packages in the same way that you find the descriptions in the seed catalogs, you often find the same descriptions on the seed packets.

The first thing that you want to look for is the hardiness zone.

What zone is going to grow well in and to determine whether it's going to grow well here.

The second thing you want to look for is the sell by date.

Oftentimes, you'll find in some stores the seed has expired, just like milk or eggs seed, It has a shelf life.

So if you're buying seed that's beyond shelf life, chances are it may not germinate very well.

And yeah, I noticed that this one had a 93% germination rate.

And the sell by date is the use by date is February 2009.

So that's fast.

Yes.

But then is it that you can't use the seeds again or do some seeds have a longer period of time where they can stay dry than others?

It depends how the seed was treated.

If you bought the seed and you put it in the refrigerator and kept it, showed a, chances are the viability has remained okay.

However, if you've put it out in any type of heat, the germination will probably be very low because once again, seeds are alive.

Okay.

And there to slow down their respiration rate, they need a cooler temperature and if there have been in some type of heat, they've either been heated to high and it's dead or it's just really used up its resource.

Okay.

So when you buy your seeds, first of all, again, look and see where the proprietor has the seeds.

If they're out in the open, chances are the ability and the viability of those seeds and their ability to germinate is reduced quite a bit.

It doesn't mean that they won't Germany.

But if you have a seeds with a pack of seeds with 100 seeds, if it were under general conditions, you may get 93%.

If it's too warm, you may just get 5%, 10%.

And the longer it is and again on the back of some of the seed packages, you will find a lot number and date like 27 or 29 if you buy a pack of seeds and it says 12, eight or 25 or 1999, if there are any seeds out there, should they buy it?

No, I wouldn't buy it either.

So that's a tip for today.

Now, what we're going to do is to show you how seeds are started.

And with that, we're now going to go to one that Jacquelyn Seedling trace and she's going to show us how she does starting seeds.

And you could do that at home.

What do we call this?

Jack?

And we're going to move there.

This is a this is called a speed link tray.

Okay.

And that's the brand name of this type of tray.

There are several different things you could use to draw matrices in.

You can use a tray like this, which is Styrofoam.

You can use plastic trays, you can use cups, you can use biodegradable newspaper cups.

We use these because they are reusable.

We use them over and over again.

This type of tray, this is a brand new tray.

So it has not been exposed to any type of bacteria.

Molds or fungi.

So we can be rest assured that it's basically pretty sterile.

The other thing you want to look at is the potting blend that you use.

Is it an appropriate potting blend?

The party plan that we use is going to be a sunshine mix number three.

And if you look at it, it is what we call a soil, this mix.

Now how can you grow seeds in a soil mix?

That doesn't make any sort of sense?

Well, this mix has several different types of materials that provide the support for the ceilings as it grow.

And you have vermiculite, you have peat, which is basically small, broken down, decompose sticks, and you have a little bit of per light.

And it's a very light mix.

Even with wet, it's not very heavy.

And you would use something like this as opposed to topsoil, because topsoil will contain a lot of pathogens that are harmful to the tiny seed.

It's heavy.

And so it could potentially smother the seed as it's germinating.

So you need to make sure that you have a sterile type of blend to start your seeds off with.

And again, this is soil, this soil as well.

Yes, there are several different types.

There is mix or sunshine mix.

As far forward mix, though, they come in different numbers, which means there are different blends and we just like to use this one.

It works best for us.

Okay.

Is a couple of things you need to know about seeds that I think people don't realize.

You have many different types of seeds.

For example, these are beet seeds which are very large brown ish, and you have these are tomato seeds here.

Now, one thing you notice about tomato seeds is that these are pink.

Now, they're not naturally pink when they come out of the tomato.

These have been treated with a fungicide to ensure that over time they don't begin to decay in the pocket.

Or they have they have a better chance of survival once they're germinating.

But you need to be careful when you are choosing what type of production system you are using.

If you are using our organic system, you cannot use treated seeds in your system.

And once again, going back to your catalogs, it will stay whether it's organically grown or whether it is grown in a conventional manner, because that's where your organic system, part of the beginnings of it, is choosing the organically grown seeds.

Once again, as you had noticed when we were looking through the seed catalogs.

You could have an entire catalog devoted to different types of tomatoes.

We grow a variety here called Roadrunner three.

The reason we've decided to grow that is because it's been tested by the university and shows great production.

It's very heat tolerant for our area.

It's what we call crack tolerant and bottom end rot blossom and drought tolerant.

So these are characteristics we want in the tomatoes that are grown here.

Another place might want different character esthetics, but this is what we that serves us best here in our environment.

And as you said, there are different sized seeds.

You've got these I mean, you can spot these with your eye there.

You can when you look at them, they're fairly large.

And these tomato seeds are really, really smart.

Now, in I guess you're going to show us in planting these, there's a different method of using a depth of planting these seedlings.

Okay.

Well, then let's take a look at that.

You can show us which these you want to start with.

Now, when determining your planting depth, you're going to look at the size of the seed.

Okay.

And how long the seed takes to germinate.

Once again, there's a lot of differences in the seeds.

You have seeds germinate within two days.

Okay.

You also have see if such as parsley or celery, that can take up to two weeks to Germany that love.

And remember this if you are going to be a little tiny seed, a little tiny plant, it's going to take two weeks to Germany.

You're not going to be wanting to be buried all the way down to the bottom of your seed container.

Okay.

You may want to be close to the top.

Okay.

Because what you find, especially in the smaller seeds to take a larger amount, they do not have a lot of food reserves.

So they're going to want to get to the top as soon as possible.

Okay.

Those other seeds, such as beans, they can be planted a little bit deeper because they're bigger seed right there and they have a lot of energy to push themselves out.

Okay.

So take note of that.

The seed size determines how deep you're going to put the seed into the soil.

Again, the largest seeds like the bean seeds, can go much deeper at maybe two inches that much or I would not put that too far deep.

Maybe an inch.

An inch.

Okay.

So and then you have the smaller seed like we showed.

The tomato seeds are much shallower and they would require less, less depth than the bean seeds.

But again, size is important when it comes to planting depth.

Exactly.

Now, there's many ways you can plant your seeds or create your holes.

You can use a very high tech method of just provide the holes yourself.

We use what we call a drip board because it takes a very short period of time.

All we have to do press it down, done.

Oh, it's all taken care of.

And this created about a half an inch hole, which is appropriate for tomato seeds.

So basically all we do at this time is is drop one seed in each hole.

This is a difficult process because you notice that these are kind of small.

So it's a challenge to try and get one seed in each opening.

So sometimes you end up with two animals too, and depending on how heavy your hand is, you may end up with four.

Yes, this is true.

And what you will do at that point in time, if you get one or two plans or excuse me, if you get more than one plant, you'll often go and take the other plant out and transplant it.

Okay.

Or just get rid of it entirely.

Because if you have two seeds growing and one small, this is called a cell.

They're fighting for resources from each other and they'll tend to dry out faster.

They'll.

So they'll tend to be smaller.

Okay.

And oftentimes they can shade each other and they're not taking up as much nutrients as they need to be to maintain their green ness.

Now, once you have your tray covered, this one.

Okay.

You also you use a very high tech method of just covering it in that manner.

All you want to do is make sure the seeds are just slightly covered.

Some people like to plant a seed pack the soil down.

Not a good practice because it will compact the soil to where you can't get water appropriately.

There's not enough air and the seed sealing does not have enough energy to push through that that hard hot what we call a hard.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so you just want to very lightly cover them.

Once we have finished, what we do is we tag the tray.

Okay?

Because if you put them out there, you could have 50 different types of seedlings, But you don't know what they are unless they're labeled.

And oftentimes, you'll grow a couple of different types of tomatoes.

And if you don't leave them until you have fruit on the tree, you don't know exactly what you have.

And even once you have fruit entry, you might not know what you have because there can be extremely similar sometimes.

And that's important because, again, sometimes we get calls at the extension service or at the department of Agriculture asking us to come and help them solve a problem.

And one of the things we generally ask you is what type or what variety it is, because even though they're all tomatoes or they're all cabbage or they're all eggplants, certain things happen to certain types of varieties.

And if we don't know it, it makes our investigation a little bit more difficult.

So one of the things that we encourage you to do is to keep a journal, even keep a map of what you have planted in certain areas so that we can identify them by name, date when you plant it and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

All right.

So now it's covered.

What next?

Well, we're missing something to help our plant grow.

Yeah.

Are we missing?

It's very dry.

It's very dry.

So what we do at this point is we take our trays, we move them to our greenhouse, and we set them on what we call our racks.

The reason that we produce in here, rather, inside the greenhouse, is because there's more room to maneuver in here.

We're often doing 150 trays at a time rather than just one.

In addition, we don't want Promax to be all over the ground in the greenhouse because it's a organic material that draws in insects.

We want to avoid that.

And also at certain times of the day, the greenhouse will get very hot because it's a covered structure, it's covered in a plastic, and it's very difficult to work in there certain times of the day.

So let's head over there.

Okay.

So this is what you're calling the rack, and this is where you put your seedlings.

Okay.

So now it's time to water.

I notice you have a pipe running along the top.

Is this how the.

The.

Yes, This is our sprinkler system.

It is battery operated that comes on twice a day for 6 to 8 minutes at a time, depending on the time of year.

It isn't the time for it to come on yet, right?

No, not okay.

No one knew.

That's how low.

That's how we know when to close up for lunch.

Is that when the sprinkler comes in or closed for lunch?

Okay, so what will happen at noon?

The sprinkler will come on and begin to wet the trays.

Now, the train might not be fully wet after the first cycle, but by the second cycle, it'll be when it all the way through.

Okay.

Now we can grow about 600 trays of seedlings in here at a time.

Obviously, it's a lot of work.

There's three of us that work here.

Mr. Nieves and Mr. Sobriety are necessary assistance.

And what'll happen is what?

In a few days?

I see tomatoes.

It'll take about seven days.

You'll begin to see them start to sprout.

And from that time, you can begin to have an idea of how long it's going to take before you can sell the ceiling.

Okay.

It takes certain seedlings a lot longer to grow than others.

For example, you can grow cucumbers for sale within a week's time.

Oh, okay.

Tomato will take about 20 to 23 days and commodities like time passing so it can take up to two months before they're actually ready for sale.

They're ready for sale?

Yes.

And that it depends on the time of year as well.

In some cases, the hotter the weather, the plant growth, faster interest in other types of plants, they grow slower or not at all.

Okay.

So plants are very specific.

You know, one one chute is not fit.

Everything okay.

So that's a lesson to be learned that you don't expect the same thing from every seed as it's germinating.

So trial and error, it would be good to test it out.

So these are some general seedlings that you have here.

I have already started.

These, I believe, are eggplant seedlings.

Okay.

And that's what the soil would look like once it gets moist.

Yes.

Okay, great.

So now I know a homeowner probably wouldn't have a set up like this, an overhead to irrigate.

Exactly.

We have ours because we produce them out of seedlings.

It's more economical for us to produce them this way.

What a homeowner might do is have their container with it, be a spilling tray, a cup.

What they might do to start with is put in a wet potting mix.

So actually wet the potting mix before that, Right?

Okay.

Because they don't have this type of system.

You wet it, you put your hole and then cover it in the same manner.

But the soil is already wet so you don't have to worry about the sprinkler wetting it all the way through it.

Because another problem with these, this type of mix is what we call water repellent.

And oftentimes you might think that it's wet, but if you put your finger a little bit below the surface, it'll still be kind of dry.

Okay.

Even if you're wearing it and water is coming out the bottom, it still might be wet and might be dry in the middle.

So you're going to want to make sure that your mix is fully wet before you plant your seed if you're in a homeowners type of situation.

Okay.

And one of the ways of testing it is putting your finger in or taking a nail or something and just kind of scratching below the surface.

And if it's still dry underneath there, you know that you need to add more water in order to saturate the soil.

And again, you can't pour it on all at once.

You have to pour it on slowly.

But if you start attacking the thing with the the soil actually wet to begin with and then putting it in cup and then making a little depression and putting your seed in, that gives you a seed, a good start.

And then the entire ball of soil is saturated and wet and when you pour it on, it doesn't run out the sides and make you think that the whole bottle is worth that.

That's an excellent tip, Jackie.

And then also, if you do try and water the potting mix when it's dry, what you can often do is just shoot the seed right out of the pot, wash it right out, and you don't realize it.

You're watching your soil thinking you have these seeds that are going to germinate, but they're actually not even there any longer.

They're maybe on your lawn or someplace like that.

So then you can't you can't just drop water off.

Now.

You cannot it has got to be sprinkled on you.

It has to be a very a slow rate and the mist has to be very fine.

You can't take a hose and just put it in there and believe that that's going to be it's going to wet the soil.

If you if you do use a hose, you have to add one of those nozzles on there that gives you the variable sprays that have you seen them and we've all seen them.

That gives you a mist or a heavy spray and adjust it so that you don't beat the seeds out.

And that's a good point because, again, like you said, you'd be watering and the next thing you know, you'll be thinking or again, that germination you you'll see some germinated here or there, but not germinating everywhere evenly across the whole thing.

So it's important to to make sure that the the irrigation or the watering is even all the way across.

And like as I write, it's possible or you'll find it Germany in the gravel beneath the area that you're working in because it actually fell out of the tree.

Okay.

Well, Jackie, I think we've exhausted quite a bit.

We provide us with quite a bit of information and reading seedlings.

And for those of you that are home and want to have questions or even come by, will you allow folks in the community to come by and see how you do this?

Well, this area in front of the gates is always open to the public so they can come in and buy seedlings if they ask, they can.

We're oftentimes planting, as Mr. Nieves is planting right now, they can come back and observe the way that we're doing things.

Okay, great.

And so, again, this is seedling production.

And if you have more questions, call the Virgin Islands Department of Agriculture, call the Cooperative Extension Service.

And we'd be happy to provide you with information on taking care of your seeds, ordering seeds, growing them up the whole gamut of seedlings, because you you can't have a nice tomato unless you have a good starting seedlings.

And so that's our show for today.

We thank you for joining us and homegrown and we'll see you next time.

Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.