The Start of Seed Starting

Last night I had visions of an eloquent blog post about seed starting with handy tricks for my loyal readers. Unfortunately, this is only my second attempt at starting seeds and I have no useful tips because last year I gave our seeds sun stroke about 3 weeks into the process meaning this is, in many ways, my first go of it.

Now that you're so enticed to keep reading you can barely stand it, let me begin by explaining what seed starting is and why you'd want to do it...

Basically, there are two ways to get vegetables plants into a garden: 1) put seeds directly into the ground, called direct sowing and 2) plant seeds in small containers of soil indoors and, when they're strong enough and the weather is warm enough, transplant them outside. This second is called "seed starting" because, as its name suggests, you are germinating and beginning to grow seeds before they go outdoors. (For anyone who's ever had a garden, starting seeds is what nursery's and farmers do to sell you "seedlings" in the early summer months).

For me, there are two main reasons to start seeds: First, you extend your growing season, letting you plants get a head start inside March-May so that from June-September when it's warm enough for them to be in the garden, they can dedicate all of their energy to producing harvestable fruits (instead of germinating and creating leaves). Second, from a lazy standpoint, a garden with seedlings is easier to care for than one with seeds. You know where the plants are and you can mulch around the plants to pre-empt the weed without having to worrying about covering up your unsprouted seeds.  

It's worth noting that some plants - peas, beets, carrots, and beans to name a few - don't need to be started indoors. Part of the reason is that they have a relatively short growing period and therefore, do not greatly advantage from the extra time. Another reason is that some of these have very sensitive roots that don't like to be transplanted or, in the case of carrots and beets, the root is actually what you want to eat and transplanting can lead to strange shapes and stunted root growth.

In case I've explained myself poorly, here's a short (4 minutes) video giving a good overview of seed starting.

In my next post, I'll propose a way of saving a significant amount of money on store bought seed starting systems by assembling your own.