Do you want to give your trans­plants the best start in life? Then say hello to the soil-block! Come learn why this simple, eco­nomic method pro­duces the health­i­est trans­plants around!

AdAgrA Conference 2024: Growing Better

<p>Do you want to give your trans­plants the best start in life? Then say hello to the soil-block! Come learn why this simple, eco­nomic method pro­duces the health­i­est trans­plants around!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Darlene Keith

Home Gardening

Plan It, Grow It, Eat It!

Paul Dysinger

Seed Starting Tricks: How to Start Seedlings That Thrive

Brianna Beckner

Super Simple, Savvy Soil Blocking

John Dysinger

Dying of Thirst? Making Sure Your Parched Plants are Suitably Satiated

Daniel Nicholls

Beating the Botanical Besiegement

Winter Harvest Secrets: How to Extend Your Growing Season

Seth Shaffer

Soil Health for the Home Gardener Part 1

Soil Health for the Home Gardener Part 2

The Perpetual Harvest Hack: How to Grow a Continual Harvest All Year Round

Save that Seed!

The Ultimate Pest Control Formula: How to Beat Bugs Organically


Hello, hello. Oh, now it's working. OK, welcome everybody. While we wait to get the slides up, let's see. How many of you here are familiar with soil blocks?

Raise your hand. OK, we got a few. And how many of you have no idea what a soil block is? Okay, good. Well I'm gonna share with you about them.

While we wait, I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I work on Bountiful Blessings Farm in central Tennessee and I've been there for a little while and I do most of the seeding in the greenhouse for the whole farm. So we use a lot of soil blocks. They are a lot of fun to make and super simple savvy soil blocking. Okay so here's side-by-side pictures of some soil blocks on the left here and a standard plug tray on the right.

The plug trays are what you commonly see in most nurseries And what we're going to do is kind of take a look at what is a soil block, and why are soil blocks so amazing, and then how do I make them? So what is a soil block? A soil block is made out of lightly compressed potting soil. It serves as both a container and the growing medium for the transplant seedling. Let's just continue on.

So why are they so amazing? So 1 thing you can see here in the picture is does that look very root bound at all? No. So yeah, when you see a normal plug, when you pull it out, sometimes you see it's all root-bound and the roots are twisted up because it just keeps circling around. So the cool thing with a soil block is that there's air in between each block and when the roots grow to the edge of the block, they hit the air and they stop and they wait before growing out.

Sometimes like these ones, you know, it's already starting to come out a little bit, but it still will have a much better head start. Soil blocks, So yes, it promotes healthy root growth. It gives more adequate space for it to grow. Sometimes in plug trays, the focus is to get as many plants as possible in the smallest amount of space. So sometimes plants don't get as much space to start out in as they really need.

So oftentimes soil blocks, you know, allows for more soil volume. And there's many different sizes of soil blocks. 1 big 1 is there's less plastic waste. So many times, I don't know if you guys have gotten plug trays from the store and you know they break pretty easily. You know if you're making a lot of them every year then you usually have to get new trays every year, and you're just throwing more trays out, and so what's really nice is you know you have 1 tray, and you can use it for years and years and years.

So it's really helpful. It's hardier when you transplant it out. So when you transplant a soil block out, since those roots have been sitting there at the edge waiting, you can plant it in the ground and they'll get a much quicker start. They won't be set back at all. They're also hardier for transplanting.

When we plant on the farm, we try to be efficient. So we'll have 1 person setting out plants, and sometimes we'll just walk and throw the soil blocks down on the ground. They don't break, they hold together very nicely, they're very sturdy and hardy. You don't have to be very ginger and careful with them, which is really helpful for planting quickly. Okay So I'm going to share a little bit on how do you make them?

So all you need is a soil blocker, some potting mix, a container for mixing it in, and trays to hold the blocker or the blocks. 1 really cool thing is you can use any tray. There's people who use cookie sheets, People use just pieces of like polycarbonate. People have made some wooden structures. You can put soil blocks on anything you have.

But 10 by 20 trays are really helpful. So here's 2 different sizes. These are the handheld soil blockers. 1 is 2 inches and the other is 1 and a half inches I believe. So the 1 on the left here can make 5 blocks at a time and the 1 on the right makes 4 blocks and you can just fill up a tray 4 at a time.

It's kind of like building sand castles and you fill a mold and then you tip it upside down and pull it off and you have your sand castle. But here it's a block of soil. It's kind of fun. So here's an example of what we do on the farm. We have a tote or bin for mixing all of our potting mix with the water.

And my favorite way to mix it up is with my feet. But you can use whatever you have on hand, a hoe or your hands, depending on how large of a quantity you're going to be making. Here you'll see what the soil blocks look like. On the left is the standard soil blocks. You'll also see a stack of trays, so it's nice that they stack all together.

On the right, you'll see the mini soil blocker. These are very helpful for getting a headstart on plants that are gonna be in a greenhouse for a long time. So I think Paul mentioned earlier that tomato is an example of 1 that you would pot on. And so you'll start in these little tiny blocks, they're about this big, and you'll pot it on to a bigger block about this big, and then pot it on to another pot so you can have it for a long time in the greenhouse and get a really early start on tomatoes. So for making them, you'll see here, this is the really big soil blockers.

That 1 can make 12 at a time there. You're just going to mix the potting mix and water at a ratio of 3 to 1. So you're going to do 3 buckets of potting mix to 1 bucket of water or whatever container measurement you use. Sometimes those 2 gallon buckets are a really nice size to work with. The idea is you're gonna spread the mix a little thicker than the depth of the blocker.

You're gonna press it in quickly into the mix, and you're going to look for water pressing out of the corners. Can you see a little bit of the shiny water in the corners there? So then that kind of shows you that it's filled accurately. And then you're going to twist and tilt the blocker at the same time as you lift up to break the suction. Sometimes it will suck out 1 of your blocks, and then you'll be 1 short when you press it out.

So that's a tip. And then I'll kind of show it to you, but basically you'll press it in, and then when you pick it up, you're gonna kind of both twist it sideways and tilt it up, and that kind of breaks the section. There we go. So you're gonna scrape off the excess potting mix, and you can do that on the side of your tote. Place the blocker in the tray, and you're just gonna raise both sides up to release the blocks.

And I'm gonna show you a video on how that's done. You just repeat it until the tray is full. So I actually need to switch. I wasn't able to get the videos on here. OK, here's just a video.

You can kind of see I scrape it off there, put it in, you can see you pull the handle up. I oftentimes will do it a second time just to make sure that it's well filled. Just keep watching the video for a little bit. 1 thing I will say is practice definitely makes perfect. So, you know, it's okay when you're going at it that, you know, each of the blocks are different sizes and you know that's okay that's normal.

But as you go the more you'll figure it out and you'll get you'll really get a feel for it. So, you know, I gave you the example, the principle is 3 to 1 for potting mix to water, but sometimes you'll realize like here, it's getting a little, it's a little on the wetter side. That's another good thing is if you're gonna err on the side of more wet or more dry, stick with more wet of a potting mix. A fun way to test, I haven't tried it yet. I just read about it, and I thought it was a cool idea.

And that is you can throw the potting mix against a wall. And if it drips down, it's too wet. If it just crumbles and falls off, it's too dry. And if it stays on right where you threw it, it should be just right. So then the other 2 things to be looking for, or the other ways to tell if it's too wet or too dry is when you're pressing it in and you lift it up, if the block just falls out, it just shows that it's too wet.

If you're really putting a lot of effort into making the soil blocks, and you're really pushing and no water's coming out, then you just know it's way too dry. So let me go back. There was 1 quote I wanted to share with you, and that was, let's see if I go back to the beginning, Elliot Coleman, who has really done a lot with soil blocks and has written a very, how would you put it? If you want to learn more about soil blocks, just go read articles by him about soil blocking. Anyway, so He said this, I am convinced that the pest problems I often see on other farms are a consequence of transplanting seedlings already stressed from having been grown in the confines of multiple cell plug trays.

And that's an interesting thing I've heard from many farmers that when they go around and look at other farms' transplants, that they just don't seem as healthy when they're in the soil blocks as they do when, I'm sorry, when they're in the plug trays as when they are in the soil blocks. And so you can do some experimenting yourself to see if that's true. Let's see what else. I guess we'll just have a little bit of question time now and the rest of the time we're going to focus on, we're going to do a demonstration outside. And there's about 13 of you, I believe, that have paid extra to be able to get to do the hands-on part yourself.

And you guys will get to take home a soil blocker for that. So Does anybody have any questions? Yes. Yeah, so the question was, do I use any specific potting mix? So in a previous class, Paul Dysinger gave a recipe for potting mix.

And I know he's used that for a long time. It works amazing for him. Currently at the farm we get giant bales of potting mix pre-mixed and it works well for us. I mean, I think you just gotta, you can just See what you can find locally that's available to you. You can try out different recipes.

I would suggest Paul's recipe. OK, so all of the slides and presentations have been recorded, and they will be on Audioverse. So you'll be able to look that up there. Okay, so these soil blockers have a little dibble in each of them and I forgot to mention this. So you just put the seed in there and you just kind of cover it very lightly with potting mix.

There are 2 different types of dibbles. There's a normal 1 and there's a block shaped dibble that will allow for the potting on of those really little mini blocks into the slightly larger ones. And that also is a bigger size to fit larger seeds. And are you selling the soil blockers here? I do have 2 extra and I believe that you can get them at the Agribooth.

And I think there should be some extra trays too. Otherwise you can get them on Amazon or from Johnny's. Yeah. Yes. So once you've bled your seed, how do you water it?

So for watering, that's a very good question. So we just use like a, I can actually show it to you out there. There's a watering wand, and it has like a shower head nozzle. And you just fairly quickly go over it. You don't want to hold the water over it, or it will kind of dilapidate the soil block, but once the seed grows into it, it holds the block together very well.

So you just do it lightly and kind of quickly until it's wet enough. Yes. So how long does it take? Yes. Now You can see directly into the soil blocks right after you make them.

Yes, and we've even tried it before where we made the soil blocks and we just kind of left them in the greenhouse and they dehydrated completely and then we kind of set it in a tray of water and they rehydrated and then we seeded it then and that seemed to work fine too if you wanted to make some ahead of time. Yes? So we generally do inches for the size of the seeding? Yeah, so the demo was a 2 inch blocker. Yeah.

Does this work for all kinds of crops? Yes, so Elliot Coleman goes into this more in depth. He gives a good list of what kinds of crops for what size block. We kind of do it depending on how long you're keeping it in the greenhouse or in your house, wherever you're keeping it. So like and also by the size of the seed.

So like for the biggest soil blocks are like 3 inches, we often do the squash and the cucumbers and watermelon and those. But for anything that's going to be in the greenhouse a short amount of time, we will use a smaller block for that. So, yeah. What kind of scale do you use? Let me see if I can show you a picture.

I'll just kind of show you a picture in our greenhouse of how, I don't really know how to exactly answer that question, but I could show you a picture of how many trays of soil blocks we often have in our farm. So here's just a section of the greenhouse. So it has 2 sides and there's also tables on either side. So these are all of our spring brassicas from this year. Yeah.

Okay, so for potting up, we only pot up tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and basil. Because those we do in fairly large quantities. We start them all on a heat mat with those little mini soil blockers and I'll show you that when we go outside. And so there you can start like you know 300 plants in a very small area and keep them at a warmer temperature than most other plants need And then they stay in the greenhouse the longest because we want to get them out as soon as possible. So if we can plant them like 3 months before they need planted, that's a long time to keep it in the greenhouse.

So you just have to keep potting it on. So a principle would be, If you see your plants have filled up the soil block and you still don't have time to plant them yet, and you know it's going to be a couple more weeks, then you would just pot it on then to a bigger pot. Basil. Oh, yes, Yeah, so what you just said is the same, it's true. So we actually do cilantro and dill.

It hasn't been a problem for us. Just, yeah, for watering, I think this gentleman had the same question just do it lightly and You just kind of do a quick pass over it. We use a kind of a showerhead Nozzle and sometimes if you have a mister, that's another 1 very fine mist also does well. Yeah, so you treat them the same as you would any plug tray, I guess you'd say. So it's the same principles as you've probably always done.

So the seeds, you just do, we usually do 1 seed per block unless we know the seed is old, then we'll do a second seed per block. And there are some, depending on the method of growing you do, like 1 is we plant corn. And we plant 4 corn seeds in 1 block. And then we plant it at a spacing that still gives you the same each corn stalk will have the same square foot around it, but Don't really know how to describe that but Anyway, so we do corn like that's 4 seeds we do Scallions or green onions We do like 12 seeds per block, you know, whatever seeds, you know, do well bunched up. Yeah.

Yeah, so with soil blocks they do have a tendency to dry out a little faster than it would in a plug tray because each side is open to air. So yeah, you would just assess it. I often will go through the greenhouse, and I'll lift up all the trays and just kind of check the weight of it. So you'll just, you know, mist it and it'll be nice and moist and then later on, you know, you'll like every day during the summer we do it every morning and sometimes in the afternoons during the summer. You just got to keep it moist.

Yeah. It's not like a, it totally depends on the day, because if it's a really cloudy day or a cold day, you know, it's not gonna, it may not need watering that day. So definitely do it kind of by feel. So you wouldn't want to do bottom watering probably in the very beginning, but once the plant has gotten a little more established and filled out the block, yeah you can definitely do bottom watering. Any other questions or should we...

You, you, bottom watering, yeah, but you can do it later on once the plant is established. And you can kind of also learn by trial and error. If you happen to do bottom watering and it's right in the beginning, it may kind of hold together. It may not. And you'll just remember, oh, I guess it doesn't work.

Yes. No, you would just probably have to re-seed. Let's see. What's the time? OK, we definitely need to do the hands-on part.

So, and we're all gonna just go out these front doors. There should be tables out there and maybe it'll take a little bit to get going, but yeah. Thank you guys. AudioVerse, or if you

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Series

Home Gardening

Super Simple, Savvy Soil Blocking

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Attachments

Other Teachings in Series

Plan It, Grow It, Eat It!

58m

Seed Starting Tricks: How to Start Seedlings That Thrive

58m

Super Simple, Savvy Soil Blocking

20m

Dying of Thirst? Making Sure Your Parched Plants are Suitably Satiated

1h 1m

Beating the Botanical Besiegement

1h 14m

Winter Harvest Secrets: How to Extend Your Growing Season

50m

Soil Health for the Home Gardener Part 1

55m

Soil Health for the Home Gardener Part 2

46m

The Perpetual Harvest Hack: How to Grow a Continual Harvest All Year Round

1h

Save that Seed!

1h 3m

The Ultimate Pest Control Formula: How to Beat Bugs Organically

56m

Sound Doctrine