Super Recipe for Seed Starting

If you have a food processor, go ahead and dump in a cup each
of perlite, vermiculite, peatmoss, black topsoil and turn that baby
on. You can put in less of this mixture for your food processor to handle it.

It grinds up and shreds and fluffs up the mixture to where the most
microscopic seeds absolutely thrive in it.

Plop a seed into the cell and sprinkle a little of this "flour" over the
seed and bottom water. I have 100% germination this year, and
no bottom heat on at all. Wow!
sheri

IMO I think your mix sounds very good, but for a single exception. I would leave out the topsoil. It serves no function in the mix and, unless sterilized, will surely harbor various fungi & bacteria, substantially increasing the risk of damping off or other problems. The list of ingredients in "Jiffy's" mix for seed starting is very similar to yours, except for the topsoil.

Al

Also I would not grind up the perlite. Some of the advantages of perlite is there larger aggregate size and by pulverizing it in a blender you destroy the benefits. What about blending using your hands ?

You are right! and Al is right. thank you for your concerned comments. I do try
to maintain some size to the additives.

I process my own to a fine fluffiness with separate kernals of the
verm and perlite, and the peat seperates nicely into longish nice
threads. My perlite is huge. The perlite kernals are about 6mm and the
vermiculite is very coarse, about 1.5cm in diameter. I use them
straight for the garden soil to amend it with. But for my seeds and
such, I find that a little grinding has made all the difference for them
in the world.

Also, being a woman, I find that cooking anything, even, soil and
preparation fufills the need to nurture in me. LOLOL.

I just have never had enough money to buy bags of Jiffy ready made.
I go through about 4 bags each of the 4.0cu foot sizes of the perlite
and the vermiculite and the peat moss and then about 4 yards of
sterilized soil.
My DH didn't realize what he was getting into when he married me! LOLOL

I used to work at a hydroponics lab where we used gel medium. THAT
was weird! We grew carrots for gene studies. they are nice for that, easy.
and even prettier under microscopes! still orange!

I am lucky to be able to get vermiculite at all since he respiratory cancer
thing is attributed to it. I haven't found anything to replace the vermiculite
have you?

Thank you again for all your thoughts and ideas, without you there would not
be any conversation here on DG!

Regards,
sheri
WigglyPaw Farm(organic garlic and horse power)