Hello and thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid American gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and joining me in the studio today at the demo table is my good friend Martie, and we are ready to start seeds.

We are ready to start I know this is such a great time of year, the catalogs, the catalogs are coming in.

All the things are happening.

We've got seeds.

We've got soil.

So we're going to talk about what you need to do to get ready for that.

Let's talk about hygiene.

Let's talk about garden hygiene.

Indeed.

All right, so this stuff has been sitting in the garden shed all season long, I'm sure.

So what do we need to do to get started?

Smells a little like mouse little bit.

What are you gonna do?

So I use old pots.

I use pots that I've already used.

I used trays from the year before.

All there's nothing wrong with these.

I mean, if I don't want them, I just recycle them when I use them, when I empty them.

But this is a perfect little size here.

I don't know why they're so recalcitrant about coming apart, but these, these will hold as you know, you know you can get these from the garden center, and they hold 12 little three or four inch pots.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

You don't even have to repot those.

Like, if you start them, I told Tanisha I was gonna bring those Jiffy pellets.

You know, they're like, little, little flat chocolate wafers.

Don't eat them.

And they put them in hot water and they foo, fry it up.

Yeah, yes.

Well, I am I supposed to eat them too, because I can't find them, but I like to just start with pots.

However, as you can see, these have a certain amount of debris in them.

They've been sitting around.

And these are trays.

This is a tray.

This is gonna be a tray that leaks.

And the pots have drainage holes.

This is a tray that doesn't leak.

So, for example, lid for the top, yeah, here's one that leaks.

I don't want to flip it, because I've got my little four packs in here.

But you want your, your pot, or whatever gonna you're gonna use.

This is the draining one.

And then this is the liner, I think, non draining, yes, yeah.

So, and then you have a now, before you use any of these things, you have got to sanitize them.

I've even used them from the store before, and I'm like, I kind of wish I had just wish you would have given them a quick I do.

I do.

And I've had damping off.

The heartbreak of damping off it's flexorized.

It's only worse.

And you don't want to do that.

No, it's really you put in all the hard work of planting your seeds just to have them sprout and then keel over.

No fun.

I'll tell you what.

So the seed starting material, mostly seed starting is just peat moss and some perlite, if it's been centered on for a little while.

You can also put that in, like, a two or three inch deep roasting pan, and we use everything we have, because we're gardeners, and we don't care, right?

Put it in there, put it in the oven on about 300 degrees for half an hour, bring it out, and then it's sterilized too, because stuff gets in things, and you're going to have virus and bacteria and fungus, and you don't want them to kill off all your hard work.

That's right.

So, so everything's Yeah, once you get it clean, yeah.

So I've got pots at home.

I little ones that fit just right in here perfectly, and these hold a dozen.

It's just the two of us, we don't put in a giant garden.

Wash all of these.

All of them, pots, four packs, lids, everything in hot, soapy, bleach water.

Get all the debris.

We're on Facebook or We're on TV.

Look at all the debris out of the corners.

You know, spider eggs, leftover roots, yeah, oh, gotta go.

It's gotta come off.

Those are all your enemy now.

Then you rinse them in milder solution of bleach water, and then you let them air dry.

Don't scrub anything else on with them.

Don't dry them off and nothing.

So then they're ready to use.

So we take our little pot, or we take our little, our little four packs.

Okay, and wait you.

Let me just do one.

Yes, go for it.

And it's a little bit pre moistened well, so it wasn't dusty.

Oh yeah, make sure you pre moisten the good at Good point.

And hot water, the hotter, the better.

Works better with these, because it's ridiculous.

They'll be going all the way as a bone.

You go all the way at the top, and then you smoosh it down, put some more in.

Okay, so, because this stuff is so light and friable, friable with an eye.

Look it up.

My brain is getting a serious thing.

Open my kit right now, from playing in the dirt, I can smell it.

I can smell the dirt.

It's definitely like a mood enhancer musher down a little bit, because these will and you want the seat up close to the top, I find I have a better result if I do it like that.

So just you don't have to cram her down in there.

But, you know, get it up, okay, and a little fluffy on top.

But when you push it shouldn't, it shouldn't go right down.

So then you put this little feller in here.

What kind of seed you want to start?

Well, so let's talk about that.

It's early.

We're talking late January, early February.

So where are we?

What should we be starting?

Inside right now, I would start tomatoes or peppers or eggplant now, like, the middle of January is the earliest I'm going to start any of that stuff.

But it needs longer.

It does need the problem is, if it grows really well, then it's going to get too big a like for these for four packs, that's awesome, but you're going to have to transplant them into something they will not last in a four pack from now until 15th, if the weather is helpful, we could do April, and we'll talk about that later, setting out early, but right now, you could do crucifers For sure, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, all those guys.

You don't need to start kale from seed, but you can if you want to.

You don't need to start chard from seed, but you can if you want to, because it'll you'll just be able to harvest it that much quicker.

Brussels sprouts, you're not going to get till fall, so never mind.

Don't worry about that right now.

All right, I brought I've got cabbage here.

Okay, is it pelletized?

Oh, whoa.

That's a big question for the host.

Seeds are usually pretty easy.

Can you can?

You bet we can.

I bet we can.

Where are we going?

Can you see these?

Oh, see they're perfectly round, and they're very roly poly, and they're pretty easy to to get a hold of.

They're not too bad I have used tweezers before.

Those come in pretty handy sometimes.

And that one's lost to the ages.

I don't know where it went now, did you say pelletized?

Yeah, are these pelletized?

No, but these.

But I brought it up because these look like pelletized seeds.

Some seeds are really, really small, and they pelletize them.

That means they coat them in some stuff to make it easier to get a hold of.

And they look perfectly round like this, but they're kind of tannish more, and so chopsticks are a fantastic Dibble or a Sharpie, excellent whatever you can grab if you think you're gonna need a lot more and you don't have as many in four packs, I would probably do just one or two at the most.

Don't put them right together.

Okay, put one about 1/3 of the way in, in the middle, and the other one two thirds of the way away from it.

That way.

If they both make it and they look really good, you don't have to thin them.

You can divide them, just tease them apart when they grow.

So she's put in there bigger pot, yeah, one, one there, and then she put in one.

Give us a demo.

Put one more in there, because we want to make sure everybody can see.

Put one there, and I'm gonna put one here.

Now in a three inch pot.

Pretend this is a three inch pot.

Pretend this half is a three.

It's a whole pot.

I will do across the corner from one another, because they need some room.

Yeah, they just need some room.

And I probably wouldn't do more than two in a pot.

Now, will I will we need to thin these down?

If these, both of these seeds, germinate and survive, will we need to thin or can we plant both of them?

Usually, if one is really scrawny and pitiful.

He just yanked him out, sent him to cabbage heaven.

However, if they both look really good, then you can keep them both, but you need to wait till they have two sets of true leaves, because when they come out, they'll have their little cotyledon, they'll have their their new their original little leaves, and they just look like everybody looks the same.

But then the new the true leaves, the second set will come out, and they look like a tomato leaf or pepper leaf or cabbage leaf, or all those guys.

So that's what you do.

And when you get your second set of true leaves, you can water them real well the day before push the bottom of the four pack.

By then, that soil will be all together, and there'll be roots holding it.

You push it out, you take each one of them, you just tease it apart a little bit, and you put each one in a three inch pot.

And by the time they fill that three inch pot and they get another couple sets of leaves, it'll be time to go the garden.

It'd be time to go with the garden.

Give me your seed packet.

I.

Was, well, waste these.

I opened it kind of tiny.

Did you put them actually on the table?

I did because you did.

It's TV and what we can fix it in post production.

I want to throw them over my shoulder, do that here, pop them in.

So do we need to cover these with soil, or do we leave them when I Dibble with my with my chopstick, and just make a little hole.

And then you can take the other end and just mush it over.

Mush it over because fingers are big and fat and chopsticks aren't or pins, or whatever it is you use, and you don't have to jam them clear down in there.

Quarter inch of soil over the top is plenty.

You have to put some soil on the top, because when you water these the it's going to wash around a little bit.

So you want them where you put them, but the top is going to, it's going to it's going to move a little bit.

You don't want to wash your seeds all over the place.

I would also recommend, again, like Tanisha said, she moisten the soil when you get this new and it's dry, use hot, hot water, and it will, oh my gosh, it'll save so much time, because even when you pour the hot water in, it'll dust like crazy.

I used to do this a wheelbarrow at a time.

Oh man, I'd break a whole barrel of peat moss in a wheelbarrow, and I'd get hot water, just gallons of it.

I'd leave it sit there, and I'd use it the next day.

It was dry as a popcorn fart dry.

So when you water these, water them with a squirt bottle, and it's going to take a little bit of time because but until they germinate, water them with a squirt bottle and then you put your lid on.

Got just a couple minutes left.

Now let's talk about care, as these babies are sprouting and just doing their best, if you have grow.

I have a window that's perfect.

So I just put mine in window.

I put a card table up, because I don't care what the house looks like.

And okay, I put, Did I did I talk about this already?

Not yet.

Okay, yeah, we need that.

I put a, get a flannel backed table cloth, cut it in half.

It's perfect for a card table, okay, cut it in half.

Put half of it down.

You can tape it under the edge if you want.

Get a heating pad or three or four.

Put them on your table.

Put the other half of the table cloth over the top, okay, and then set your trays on there you want to insulate.

And you put these on low people, we don't want to be cooking.

We don't even want ceviche.

We want just gentle warmth, a blankie.

Yeah, you're 98.6 and if it feels warm, warm tea, it's probably too hot.

But peppers, anything in the Solanum family, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant.

What else we talk about?

I can't remember.

How long does the work need to be there?

7075 I would leave it on until they have true leaves.

Okay, consider they have that, that second set of leaves, that the ones that actually look like tomatoes or peppers, and just keep these on low.

And then, you know it'll take you.

You'll probably have these running on low for two weeks or something, and after that, you're good, and you can unplug these, and away we go.

Tag.

But not least the label.

Oh God, we I had some craft sticks in our in my china cabinet.

I just cut them in half.

That's where I keep them.

And just, I'm fancy, and then just pop these right in there.

I'm gonna write, what are these cabbage?

I'm gonna write cabbage, not broccoli, and just pop that right in there.

No, I like to be surprised.

I just want to be surprised.

Alrighty, then, so cabbage, you pop that right in there, and when you go to transplant, it won't be a mystery what you're putting in the garden.

I've also tried plastic labels with a Sharpie.

I've also, I would recommend, if you do plastic labels with a sharpie, or even if you do wood sticks with a sharpie, the problem is they always wash off.

They always wash off paint, some clear nail polish over them for you, men, gardeners, scotch tape, or some scotch tape even it'll wrinkle up and go packing tape is okay.

But really, I think the clear okay is better, and then you can put it out in the garden and go, What kind of broccoli Are you?

Because I might not grow you next year because I don't like how you look.

I don't Yeah, all right, keep me mad well that we're out of time.

But thank you so much, Marty.

I think so much more.

There's so much more, but that was 15 minutes.

Oh, also start doing this now, winter sowing.

Yes, you do.

I do these in the summer, even around my tomatoes.

I put these around everything.

These are for cooler crops, because they're not clear and that cooler crops, the cabbage crops and the spinach and the cow, they like it cool.

These are for warm weather crops.

And is that in the ground or over a pot.

When they're in the ground, pop that right over top.

Yeah, now they're going to be shorter, you know, short enough to fit inside here.

But this is plenty, especially if you put straw around it that will insulate your crucifers forever.

And these are for the hot lovers, eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, but you can use these also.

Cool, and then again, put straw around them pretty thick.

You're gonna need to have to just come back.

I am.

We're gonna have to come back when it's closer to transplant.

We need to start cutting these now.

People need 15 or 16 of them.

Tell your friends.

Tell everybody all right.

Miss Martie, always a pleasure.

Now we're gonna check in with Candace Anderson from extension, and she's gonna talk to us about a big anniversary they're celebrating this year and how you can get involved.

And here we are joined with Candice Anderson here on the Mid American gardener set.

We're going to talk about a big birthday that's coming up this year.

But before we get into that, let's have you introduce yourself, or reintroduce yourself because you are a friend of the show, tell us a little bit about you.

Yeah, happy to My name is Candice Anderson, and I am the state Master Gardener specialist for Illinois Extension, which essentially means that I oversee our Master Gardener volunteer program for the state prior to that, it was a Horticulture Educator.

So I am a veteran of the show a little bit.

So glad to be back.

Wonderful, wonderful.

So tell us a little bit about the anniversary that you guys are celebrating this year.

Yeah.

So 2025 is a cool year because it is our 50th anniversary of the Master Gardener volunteer program.

So we're very excited to kind of highlight all of the amazing things that our volunteers do in their community.

So yeah, so we can talk a little bit about maybe how the program started.

If, yes, I would love that.

And I we were talking a little bit before this, I actually took the course.

Yeah, it was an incredible coming out of it.

You know, you just, you feel so like educated about planting and gardening, and so it's just, I can't speak enough positive things about the program itself.

And then I still pop into extension sometimes and get three seeds.

I mean, it's just you can do so much.

So tell us a little bit about the history.

Yeah, master gardeners, I sure can, yeah, yeah.

And then we can talk about kind of what it what it is now to So, yes, like we said, 50 years ago, the program itself started about like 52 years ago.

A little bit longer, there were some extension folks in Washington State Extension who were getting just a ton of gardening questions coming into their to their office and realized they don't have the capacity to answer all of these gardening questions.

So they kind of came up with this idea of, well, how about we train gardeners, give them some additional education, and then they can help us answer all of these gardening questions and educate the public.

So Washington kicked it off in 1972 and then a couple of extension folks from Illinois went to a conference over there, learned about the program, brought it back here to Illinois, and in 1975 we held our first training up in will counties up in kind of the the Northeast.

So the rest is in the rest is history.

So we have a program now in almost every county in the state, and we have about 2500 or so volunteers.

So now, for those who may not be familiar with Master Gardeners or with the program, what do you get?

What is the experience, if, right, if you become a master gardener, yeah.

So the way it starts is basically you inquire with your local extension office that you're that you're interested.

And the way that you start is with a training program, so you go through about 60 hours of education.

So as you remember, it's a lot of lots of information, a lot of content.

You have a manual.

You have instructors who teach all this information.

You have quizzes on each topic, so we can make sure you're reading your manual and stuff.

But yeah, so you go through this training and nowadays.

So when it started, of course, it was all in person.

It was a you're sitting in the classroom for 60 hours.

Now we have a lot more flexibility, obviously, with technology.

So you can take it fully online, where you basically kind of create your own schedule, do it at your own pace.

And we have hybrid, which is kind of, as the name implies, a combination of online and in person.

And we still have some kind of traditional in person classes as well.

So very nice.

Yeah, you you learn a lot.

You meet a lot of awesome people.

You know, if you're already gardening, it's just so cool to be able to blend the science with the vibes.

Oh, yeah, I was a vibe gardener, just a little bit of this, yeah, that.

But when you learn the science behind it, it just makes it so much more rewarding.

Yeah, you meet so many people.

And I could just go on and on and on, yeah, you and you learn the why behind like, Oh, I've been doing this for this many years.

Why was the why?

Absolutely, what are some things folks can expect during this anniversary year, this birthday year?

Yeah.

So we're going to be doing some special regional events this year.

Obviously, Illinois is a large state, long state, so we're going to be hosting some kind of five regional events across the state where volunteers can attend and kind of get to know volunteers in other regions of the state as well.

We'll have a big state conference as kind of the culminating event in September.

But then we're also going to be, obviously emphasizing to the public as well, sharing stories.

Stories of what the volunteers have done over these 50 years, of what they do.

There's still a lot of people that don't know what the Master Gardener program is.

So really, we just want to let people know the awesome work that they're doing in their communities.

Too Excellent.

And it's a lot of work between I mean, I've just seen in Vermillion County, my neck of the woods, we've got community gardens.

They're active in the schools, greenhouse sales in the springtime.

I could just go on and on about the the number of things that people can get involved in there.

Does Master Gardener look the same from the top of the state to the bottom of the state?

Does everyone pretty much do the same thing somewhat?

Yeah.

And that's what's what's kind of cool is that everybody goes through the same training.

They they learn the same content, but then the actual kind of projects that they might work on locally, like the ones you just mentioned, are really tailored to the needs of the community.

So like, if there is a specific audience in your county or your community that that needs help with a particular gardening project, then they're gonna, they're gonna work on that.

So topics, types of projects vary, but the overall kind of mission of and we should say our mission is helping others learn to grow.

That's kind of our official mission.

But yeah, overall, that mission of teaching others how to garden and kind of make their lives better with gardening stays the same.

Yeah, we talked about this a lot on the show right around 2020, when we were all at home and gardening just had a huge explosion greenhouses and seeds, and everyone was just learning to grow tomatoes and things like that at home.

Are we still seeing that?

Are we still riding that wave?

Yeah, in terms of like people interested in learning, I feel like it is still very high.

Like we are still having kind of record numbers in our online training programs, because people want to learn about the gardening, though, the connection for us then is getting those folks then to volunteer, kind of take that next step of actually taking it out to the community that still can be a challenge just because of life hours in the day, things like that.

So that's one thing we're the next 50 years continue to work on is different types of projects that folks can volunteer in, that are more flexible, that they can do from home, that type of thing, so that we can still make an awesome impact in the community, but make it fit better with kind of nowadays lifestyle.

And how important are projects and programs like this to a community?

You know, you might have folks that say, oh, it's, you know, I can garden, or I can do this, but how important are programs like Master Gardener?

I mean, I think they're essential to really maintain the community, benefit the community, connect folks together.

I think Master Gardeners play a large role in that, and whether it's at the local library or the community center or the local extension office like I think they're, they're amazing connectors of resources in communities, and that's, that's what they're really great at.

And education, of course.

Yeah, wonderful.

Okay, so if we have piqued someone's interest and they're thinking, all right, I'll give it a shot.

Look into it.

Yeah.

What is step one?

Regardless of where you are in Illinois, what is step one to get some information Absolutely.

So step one and simplest way would be to reach out to your local extension office.

So you can do that by just hopping on Google and typing in your county and extension office that will pop right up, or we have a become a master gardener web page as well.

So if you again put into Google Illinois Master Gardener, we should pop right up, and then you can be able to find out kind of when the next training is in your county, what's available in your county, and then start there into the process.

And even if that's not your cup of tea, there's so many like forestry, Oh, yeah.

And even if volunteering is not your your end goal, I mean, obviously we are a volunteer program that's kind of our, our driving force to the community.

But even if you just want to learn that gardening knowledge, that gardening content, you're welcome to do that as well.

You're going to learn a lot throughout the way too.

Your friends will be very impressed when they hear you say, stoma, so much for coming.

I look forward to it, and hopefully we can pop in on some of these events with you.

Yeah, and just help people get more interested in learn more about Master gardening and their extensions office.

Absolutely thanks for coming.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions for us, you can send them into yourgarden@gmail.com or search for us on social.

Just look for Mid-American gardener.

We'll See you next time.

Good night.