Lesson 4: Prepare Your Trays

Video Transcription

The first thing you’ll want to do is gather all the materials you need: 

• A bale of soil. We recommend PRO-MIX HP or MP. The HP is the non-organic version, which is what we have here and then there’s also the organic version, which is PRO-MIX MP. 
• The next thing you’ll need is your fertilizer. We recommend Gaia Green All-Purpose fertilizer 4-4-4. 
• You want a large container to be able to mix your soil in and break up the bale
• A hose for water, 
• Your filling flats, 
• And a pre-measured container to fill your flats. 

So, the first step is you want to break open your bale of soil. Now, we’re going to get our hands a little messy. So, you want to break this up and put it in the bin. So, this is going to take a while. So, we often recommend, if you’re doing a lot of this as you scale to get the electric tiller that will actually break up with tines this soil and it’ll save you a ton of time. 

So, the next thing you’re going to want to do after breaking up the bale is add the fertilizer. And just so you guys know, I’m just breaking up enough for one trade but usually, it’s better and more efficient to break up a whole bale at a time. So, you want to have your Gaia Green Fertilizer pre-measured. So, you’re going to want to–and as you can see, it’s dusty but you’re going to want to measure 40 grams per gallon or 1700 grams per full bale. So, we’re going to add this in. 

Next step is to mix it up. So, you want that fertilizer nice and even. The more even it is, the better growth you’re going to get in your trays. At the same time as you’re mixing it in, you’ll want to add a little bit of moisture so that the trays will wet better. You want to add some moisture, mix it in. This is the messy part of farming, but sometimes the best part because you get to work with your hands and dirt and it’s very satisfying. 

Now that we added some moisture in, the next step is to take your flat and fill it up. But I’m just going to move this out of the way just to give us some space to work with. So, we got our flat here. This container is 4.8 liters. This is what I recommend. If you can find a container that’s this size then it’ll be perfect for filling this flat evenly. So, it’s very efficient if you can have one flat filled with one container because then you don’t have to do multiple dunks or re-measuring. This fits one flat. 

Once you pour the soil in, you want to even it out. And if it gets a little messy, don’t worry, that’s totally normal. We just want to get it as even as possible here. The last step is to flatten it with an empty tray. Now, you have a perfect tray of soil ready to be seeded for microgreens.