John Kempf shows how to apply Seed Flare, a mineral seed treatment, to small batches for home gardens. Use a syringe to measure 0.5 mL per 2 oz of seed. One gallon treats up to 4,000 pounds of seed.
Questions this video answers
1 milliliter per 4 ounces (≈100 grams) of seed; equivalently 1/100th milliliter per 1 gram of seed.
0.5 milliliter.
1/100th of a milliliter (0.01 mL).
1 to 4,000 pounds of seed.
2 quarts per ton of seed (label rate cited).
Chapters
Hey, it's John with aea. Today I'm going to show you how to use seed flare on really small amounts of seed, like you might do in a market garden or even a home garden. Seed flare is a mineral nutritional seed treatment. It's a liquid and it supplies the nutrients that are commonly missing in commercial seed. And it's one of the most cost effective ways to get your seedlings off to the best possible start. Here are three awesome things about seed flare. First of all, it's quite cheap. Second of all, use very small amounts, so it goes a long way. This gallon jug will cover 1 to 4,000 pounds of seed. And for a small gardener, it's great. It's shelf stable for a long time, so this could last you years and it's a really good investment. So if you're looking at the label rate for a seed flare and you're confused because it says 2 quarts per ton of seed and you can't do the math, don't worry, we'll do it here for you. It's actually really easy to use if you're a home gardener or a market gardener. Here's some supplies you're going to need. You're going to need a jar. If your seed packets don't display the weight of seed that's in them, you'll need some sort of kitchen scale or home measuring scale that will measure in grams. Most importantly, you're going to need some way to measure small volumes of liquid at the milliliter range. So I've got a few tools here. This is a little syringe that comes with baby medicine. You can get it at a pharmacy and it shows increments of half milliliters, one to five. You can also use teaspoons. Normal kitchen teaspoons come down to a quarter of a teaspoon, which is roughly 1 milliliter. This set goes down to 1 64, which is about like a 15th or 16th of a milliliter. Finally, a really useful measuring device for small volumes are these. These are called micro scoops. You can pick them up online for a couple of bucks. There's three different sizes here. This red one is 1/100th of a milliliter, which as we'll see in a moment, is going to be super useful. And of course, last but not least, you will need your seeds. Basically, it comes down to 1 milliliter of seed flare for 4 ounces of seed. 4 ounces is roughly 100 grams, so that means 1 milliliter per 100 grams of seed. Or 1/100th of a milliliter per 1 gram of seed. First up today is fava beans I'm going to be planting. This packet says it weighs 2 ounces. So if you remember our conversion rate, 1 milliliter per 4 ounces of seed. So for 2 ounces I'm going to need a half a milliliter, that's all. So first thing, I pour my seed into this jar. Always shape it. Every AEA product, shake it up. These are natural products. They're minerals. They settle. Now that it's shaken, I'm going to just measure out a half milliliter here on my syringe. That's all it takes, half milliliter and I just squirt it in here on the seed and then I'm just going to shake it up. You'll see that got evenly distributed and that's ready to go. But first thing, always going to add a little bio coat gold. On every seed that I plant, I'm gonna add the highly scientific measurement of a pinch and I'm gonna shake that up. That's ready to go. You can see how easy that was. This was 2 ounces of seed. Got a half a milliliter of seed flare. So let's say you're dealing with smaller quantities of seed. How are you gonna do it? With these micro dosing spoons. This red spoon is 1/100th of a milliliter, which is just the right amount of seed flare to put on one gram of seed. As it happens, I have this package of radish seeds that weighs one gram. So I'm going to do exactly the same thing, just with a teeny amount of seed flare. I'll put the seeds in the jar and then I just use this dosing spoon. 1 100. And I've already shaken this. I just scoop out that amount, 1100 and I plop it in the jar. The seeds in there, I'm just gonna shake it really well to make sure the seed flare gets evenly distributed on my radish seeds here. Of course, Bioco Gold, a pinch, shake it again and that's it. That's ready to go. You can see how easy this is to work into your seeding workflow. This whole thing took about a minute and it's really well worth it. So that's it for seed flare. Super easy. And this will last you many, many years and be one of the best investments you can make for improving the quality of your seedlings. Hope that helped. See you later.
