Everything Takes SO LONG! | From SCRATCH Kombucha Scoby | Soil Block Planting

Fizz, uh for the most part, but it has a more similar FL flavor between a homemade

kombucha

and a store bought one, okay, so I'm going to leave this out, I actually just realized it's above the freezing point. although isn't it? It's way above freezing, now it's already 5° above freezing, so I'm actually going to throw this in the freezer. 30 minutes should be enough, so while it cools down, let's go to the grow room and I'll show you what I started there. In fact, I've been thinking about starting some tomatoes and maybe mentioned. this when we were outside, but we started some tomatoes and definitely some peppers now a little earlier than normal because it's so hot and I suspect we're going to have an early spring, it might have an advantage in the crop.

In some early tomatoes, I have found in recent years that starting early, especially if we have an unseasonably cold spring, which we have actually had in recent years, causes the plants to experience too much stress and actually slows their growth. and it defeats the purpose of starting them early because I end up with slow growth at the beginning of the season, so I've been delaying it a little more until spring when I start my tomatoes, but I'm definitely going to do that. Try some early starts, maybe we can plant some of those. Welcome to my grow room.

This is my happy place this time of year because it smells earthy in here and it's quite humid and there are things growing that make me very happy. I'm just going to show you some of the things I started, where should we start? Oh, these beauties, let's start with these beautiful little seedlings, here are Snap Dragons, so I have a full and a half tray of Snap Dragons here. and they look fantastic, very, very happy with the snapdragons. This is another of my favorites. These are the beautiful lemon balms, aren't they beautiful? They are one of my favorite herbs to grow at least early in the season, just because I.

I think they are so pretty they grow quite slowly so don't be discouraged if they don't take off, but once I get them into the greenhouse under some natural light they will grow very quickly. I tried some very old ones. lavender seed and I'm happy to say I have some little lavenders coming in here. I just sprinkled the seed on top quite generously, um, to hope that some of the seeds would sprout and they did. I'm starting to put some little true leaves on that little baby here, so once they're a little more developed, I'll separate them into separate cells, but I'm happy that our little celery has sprouted too and I've got a couple of new things. here I haven't grown before these guys need some water these little ones here are fenel and that's also news to me and then down here I have a lot of sweet alysum that started here these guys are so cute oh my gosh, look at those sweet thoughts, you see they are so cute, that's another new one.

I started a lot of things I hadn't done before, actually, some sage and parsley and I'm not sure if you can see these tiny little ones. babies there, they showed up this morning. This is oregano. I started my oregano at the end of this year so I'm hoping it works sometimes through the winter and we had such a mild winter this year I probably have some in the garden still and here's another new one I started this year the germination wasn't fantastic in these little babies, but I'm a little excited about that, we also have some little strawberry babies, so these are strawberries that were started from seeds and as you can, Look, the germination wasn't fantastic on this because these cells They didn't come up, so I'm just going to wait until they're a little bigger and then split them up.

I have some kabi back here. It looks great, these little baby dragons make me happy, they are so beautiful. Last year was the first time I made snapdragons and I am convinced that they are so lovely, so I know that conversations about potting

soil

have been something of a Hot Topic for the last few years here on YouTube and there is a reason why which there has been a dramatic change since 2021 in the quality of potting

soil

, so I have been using this stuff here Your Grow Professional Growing Mix for years with great success, I use this to make my soil that we will do with, such Maybe let's make some of those and start on our early tomatoes and early peppers today, but yeah, I use it to make the soil

block

s anyway.

I used it to start all my seeds and

everything

, no problems, this year has been quite interesting because the seedlings are doing very well, they are starting well, but I have tons. I'm going to put all of these out here because I'm. I've already removed the weeds. I have to weed my seeds here, but oh, I have some weed seeds growing in my potting soil this year, something that has never happened before, so that's interesting. Like I said, the potting soil is working well. As for the seedlings they are growing well and

everything

seems healthy, but I am getting some wheat seeds, which is interesting.

Oh, I'm so excited I can see some onion babies, let me see if I can get in here and show them to you. you see the little babies growing here, this one is called Kel, it's a really big onion, it's also a first for me as far as this variety of onions, but we have all kinds of babies popping out, that's very exciting, so just go. to give these fennels some water because they are the only ones that look a little dry this is what I use to water when my seedlings are very small it's just a sprayer um it's actually a chemical lawn and garden sprayer that I get from Princess Auto and I love this because when seedlings before they've germinated, especially for very small seeds, there's a sprayer.

I don't know where I put my spray nozzle because I have it off it's just a fine MTH sprayer which I love and then I use this one that has a little bit more flow once my seedlings grow like this once my grow room is full and we'll be at that point soon, eventually we'll get to the point where all my trays will be this way so I can put extra trays in here once all the tomatoes and the peppers and all the charcoal crops like the collards and kale, the broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, all of that gets here, this is going to be packed and at that point I usually switch to the bottom watering, that's where you usually pull out one of these and pour the water through the bottom and the bottom water of that manner.

I've always done it this way and it works for me, so with these they are just air pressed. One thing I need to get into here. In fact, you should go find one. It's a fan. I always have a fan in my grow room to help the plants deal with a little environmental challenge. Aid. the stems will be a little bit stronger if they have to fight the breeze a little bit and I think it actually makes a significant difference so everyone else looks well watered I really want to make sure all of these guys are because They are at In the early stages of growing I started about 800 onions or so, which is great, and several of you were asking questions about how our garlic, our onions, and our potatoes held up, things that are at The Root Cellar, and if we end up running out during the Pantry Challenge and we didn't, we still have a lot of onions, a lot of potatoes and carrots left at The Root Cellar, which is great and then we always get a lot of questions about toilet paper, paper towels and things like that.

So and we actually buy our toilet paper from a commercial supplier, a company that supplies hotels and things like that, because we can usually buy it in bulk that way and it's not significantly less expensive than buying it at the supermarket, it's just easier for us buying big boxes of that, um, and keeping it stored a little bit than having to buy the amount of toilet paper that we use all the time, so I just wanted to address that because it's come up a few times and I keep forgetting to mention it, so now, for fun , let's make a couple of

block

s of dirt and plant some tomatoes.

I'm really excited so I have a tray here and I find it really helpful to add one of these sturdier ones. The plastic trays underneath these more flexible ones just give it more support, especially for making dirt blocks where I'm going to push here. I'll show you in a second. I'm going to turn this up and give it a good wash. and wash it with a little bit of hot water and soap with a little bit of bleach just to sterilize it in case you have any fungal growth here or leftover spores from last year, that's always a really good idea and I'm going to do the same thing.

Something with my ground blocker, so let's go, this is what a ground blocker looks like. This one is very old. In fact, I'm missing one of the plugs that puts the little indentation in the block to plant the seed. I know. I can order that piece, I just haven't gotten it, so let's do that and then we're going to mix in some soil. All I'm using is my usual potting soil with a lot of water. I'll show you what we're looking for as far as how much water to add when it comes back down. I don't really have much workspace here in my Grove room, one of the things.

What we've talked about is putting a counter a

long

this back wall here, um, there's only about 4T, maybe yes, about 4T of space between the shelves and the wall itself and then having it so you can flip it against the wall . so I can move around here when I don't need to make seats, start making dirt blocks and make um here because this little, let me show you this little workspace that I have here, it's a challenge to work with, but let's make it work, so I have my clean tray here and my ground blocker. I think I'm going to use one of these lids to mix my soil and my water.

The potting soil has dried out quite a bit in this warm room, so I'm going to add a little water to this. I usually make all my dirt blocks on my kitchen table, so I've never tried making them here before and this just isn't going to work, so let's bring them all over. this up and I'll make some dirt blocks on the kitchen table. I'm going to let this soil sit for a few minutes because it was so dry and make sure all the water is actually absorbed in there. We will choose some seeds to start. hold on well kid hold on California Wonder red candy cane that's one I always plant it's beautiful Hungarian yellow wax king of the north is new to me jalapenos paprika peppers this is very exciting , I didn't have many of my papri peppers. they grew well last year and the year before that I grew them and then I smoked them and made my own smoked paprika and it was out of this world, so good, so I have some plans to grow peppers this year, because the first and second year that the I grew into my top 10 or maybe it was just the first year.

I don't remember. I had a really great year and then a couple of mediocre years, so I'm going to go back to what I did the first year. I grew my peppers, you would think that repeating what works is a good idea, but once we get to the point of

planting

them in the high tunnel, I will explain all this to you, but I hope to get a very good crop from these. so I can do that again and then I have a Bonus B, I don't know how to pronounce this one here, we're going to do that one too, but I think I'm going to start with some that I have.

There are a billion different types of tomatoes here, but I think I'll start with some that my friend Ash sent me. Let me show you that they are mostly new to me in Moonglow Gardens. If you are looking to buy tomato seeds, I highly recommend moow. Moong Glow Gardens are in Alberta and in the north she is in I think it is also a Zone 3. I am in a 3B. I think she's on a three, but anyway she grows amazing tomatoes in her region, so she sent me crushed ones. Heart Sleeping Lady oh that's oh it's a dwarf plant that's about 3 to 4 feet tall one of the most prolific varieties we've ever grown that's exciting Chupa Chups this is a fun variety to grow with great colors and flavor, deep golden space.

Tim's Taste of Paradise Kaleidoscope Jewel canary duck and Marina's praise so I think I'm going to try to start with a bunch of um or at least a couple of each of these varieties today, that's very exciting. Ash gave me a code for you guys for free shipping. and that's LMR 2024 and I'll also put a link to Moonglow Gardens in the pinned comment and show notes, but I'm excited about this, what else should we start? Arbon, which is a really good beef steak. Tomato is the one I grow every year. Steak tomatoes usually don't grow very well here just because we have cold nights and they need a lot of time to grow and grow, but this is one I grow every year so we might as well start some of those.

I have to be careful or I'll get carried away, which is what usually happens when I start sowing seeds. I usually start too many. I grow about 180 pepper plants and 180 tomato plants each year and last year was probably mybest year to restrict myself. I think I made 200 of each so I only had to give away or compost a few tomato plants which is awesome because I don't like to waste, well let's see where we are. With our soil here, give it a good mix. I think we're almost there. I talked about this in my seed starting course and it's something I didn't practice this time and that is rehydrating the soil the night before.

We're going to use it because it

takes

some time for all of that soil to become evenly moistened and there shouldn't be dry spots, so what we're looking for is to be able to squeeze out a little bit of water like that to be able to make these blocks of soil stay together, it's not necessary it should be absolutely saturated so water pours out when you squeeze it but definitely a little when I'm making dirt blocks this will probably be the smallest batch I've ever made we usually make hundreds of them at a time just because it's kind of messy, but today we're going to do a layup with them, so I'm going to bring them closer so you can see what I'm doing right, so what we're going to want to do now is take our ground blocker and move it forward. and back oh sorry the camera is moving move it back and forth like this move it do it again and you want to do it until it's packed tight in your ground blocker grab your tray hold it down and squeeze and squeeze and as you squeeze you want to push down and there you go so I'm going to fill this whole tray and then we'll plant them one thing I will say is if you have arthritic hands. or any type of hand problem, this is quite hard on the hands, so I usually get help from young people who don't have arthritis in their hands to help when I make large batches of these.

I have some labels here. trusty porcelain marker, I want to make some old German Manitoba Bush, one of my favorites, we'll save on that, make some first Sungolds, rosé brandy wine. I love rosé brandy wines, we'll start with the fancier ones, sorry for Moonglow, these are the Kaleidoscope Jewels, so what does she say about the Kaleidoscope Jewels? Lots of really pretty pink cutters. Ash seeds generally have excellent germination so I only use one seed per cell or in this case per block of soil, so those are crushed hearts that I have grown. before and I love Chupa Chups, this is a very good idea.

Ash, uh, has put a QR code on all of his packages so you can scan them and get more information about the seed. Plus, he has a very nice website. In fact, growing tomatoes is one of them. one of my favorite things deep space chocolate paste tomato that sounds intriguing golden canary yellow paste I love canning with a mix of tomato varieties it just makes the flavor of the sauce or whatever you are going to make so much richer tomato soup oh my goodness I just shared my tomato soup recipe on my blog, if you want to see it, anyone on my email list will have already received the link, but I love putting even cherry tomatoes in homemade tomato soup, like this that I am delicious. to leave starting with most of the tomatoes that I normally use for canning, so those are the Arbon, those are the Manitoba and the Amish pasta.

I'm going to wait a couple more weeks before starting, these are all experimental, so if I end up with Cold Spring and its growth is stunted or something, it would be a loss of course, but not so much if I lost all my main tomatoes, I want some of these to be dwarf tomatoes, so I could even put them in large pots on the terrace. Dwarf tomatoes are great options if you live in an apartment, that one is dwarf and his name is ducky and he's an orange slicer, it's a cute name and we have two more to make Tim's Taste. of paradise a sweet little cherry tomato, so for the cherry tomatoes I'm just going to plant Sungold and then these Tims Taste of Paradise we'll use two.

I'm going to plant some extras too because I always give them some. my mom and sometimes my mother-in-law, she didn't make her greenhouse last year, so I'll have to make another whole tray for the peppers because this one is now full of tomatoes. I finished these last eight with some Amish pasta to make, actually, you know, I didn't change my mind. I'm going to put in some old Germans, isn't that a lovely tomato? Oh my goodness, we'll make four of these guys, let's try to mow the tall grass. These are Mountain Vineyard F1 tomatoes and that's one I haven't tried before.

I got these seeds last year, so I'll double up and put a couple seeds per block of soil here. I also love the high cut seeds, they are great too I think. I actually have code for them, if I do I'll write it in the show notes. It's probably 10% off so I'm guessing H moing are great seeds and they're in the US okay so I just want to get this done quickly. I show you what I do here to get these blocks of soil pretty well saturated, so I'm just going to sprinkle some dry soil on top because it makes it easier instead of doing it when it's wet and then when I bring them down to In my grow room, I'll just spray them with my sprayer I have downstairs to moisten the top and then they'll be ready to go.

They will stay. They won't need to be watered for a while. I think my seedlings grow very well in blocks of soil like this and then obviously I'm going to have to plant them in pots. Some people call it potting. I call it potting in larger containers and we'll show you how we make them because we actually make them out of newspaper, the pots that we put them in once they usually have three to four sets of true leaves and we'll start potting them up and in We actually only pot them once because we put them in a nice big container, so there we go, ready to go down to the grow room, so what we're going to do here is remove our tea bags and we're going to add our rate

kombucha

to this.

All good, so off you go. want to take your jar and cover it with a cloth, so my son's older brother just showed up here and they're very excited, okay, so we're going to put a ring on it, so we're going to take this jar and we're going to place it somewhere for about a week and at that point you should see a scobby start to form. Give it two weeks for the scobby to get nice and big and I'll show you the next steps of what we're going to do. do it then, but I'll tell you just in case you miss that video, so we're going to double the size of this, so we're going to get a half gallon jar and we're going to add all of this. and we basically repeat the process we just did: another half cup of sugar, another couple of tea bags to make sweet tea, we add both and within about 4 weeks we will have a scobby and kombucha that we can actually drink so that in the next We'll go over the whole process of making flavored kombucha for a while, how we make it soda and all that kind of stuff, but for now we're just going to STI to make our own scobby and that will be For today's video, we're actually heading into town for a birthday lunch and I'm really looking forward to it.

I hope you enjoyed today's video and I hope to see you in the next one, bye.