In this video I walk you through how I buy seed starting mix so I don’t waste money and I don’t sabotage germination before the seeds even sprout. I’ve been starting seeds indoors for well over 20 years, and I’ll tell you straight: a lot of bags are marketed like they’re “premium,” but when you open them up you find woody “forest product” that has no business in a real seed starting mix. I compare a peat-based Jiffy Mix (a mix I recommend) to a coco-coir based product that looks good on the label but is loaded with wood. I cover the peat moss vs coco coir debate, and my take is simple: both have tradeoffs, so choose what you want—but don’t get misled by packaging. Then I show you 5 quick tests you can do at home: the hand feel test, a visual scan for wood chunks, filling a seed cell to see structure and moisture holding, checking what’s “fresh out of the bag,” and the float-on-water test to expose how much wood is in the mix. My bottom line: for seed starting, stick to mixes built from peat and/or coir with vermiculite/perlite—no forest product—because wood competes for nitrogen and makes starting seeds harder than it needs to be.