Starting from seed

Germination is one of those everyday miracles. — kaibara87/Creative Commons

If there is a spring ritual more expressive of faith and hope than planting seeds, I can’t think what it might be.

Sure, you can wait until the garden centers are overflowing with flats of annuals, and just take your pick. But the choices are generally limited to the commonest flowers, and you don’t have the experience of watching a speck of a seed spring into life. It’s one of the world’s quite ordinary miracles, freshly amazing every single time.

It’s nearly time to start tender seeds indoors on a sunny windowsill or under grow lights. This head start is almost mandatory for plants that take a long time to reach maturity and bloom — or bear fruit.

I learned an important lesson the year my moonflower vines, directly sown in the garden in May, didn’t start blooming until September. The tense little question on my mind had to do with how many flowers I would actually enjoy before first frost stopped the whole plant dead in its tracks.

Now’s the time to prepare, but don’t jump the gun. Tender plants can’t go out in the garden until the weather has settled. That’s mid to late May for most of New Jersey. Gather your seeds and gear but don’t start sowing until early April. You want vigorous seedlings to plant out, not weaklings that have grown stringy and pot-bound.

When it comes to germination, not all seeds are created equal. Some plants are so persnickety and slow-growing that you have to be a bit of a masochist to grow them from seed. I always buy seedling petunias, snapdragons, pansies and annual salvia for just this reason.

These are all susceptible to the major plague of seeds grown indoors, a fungal disease known as damping-off. This malady causes seedlings to keel over and die almost as soon as they have emerged from the soil. There is no cure.

Don’t forget to label seeds as you plant. — BlueRidgeKitties/CC

You can prevent damping-off by using a sterile seed-starting mix, by cleaning your flats or seed trays with a solution of four parts water to one part bleach and by providing good air circulation and light. Another trick is to cover the surface of the soil with a thin layer of fine gravel, which helps wick excess moisture away from plant stems.

Thinning your seedlings once they sprout is also a preventive. You can’t be too softhearted here, or you will jeopardize the whole operation and wind up with weak, spindly seedlings with root systems so entangled that transplanting damage becomes inevitable. Thin as directed on the seed packet — snipping the culls at soil level with a small pair of scissors often is easier than trying to pull them out without doing harm to the little guys you plan to grow on.

Many seeds benefit from extra warmth in the soil, which boosts germination rates. The easiest way to supply it is with a heating mat sold by most outfits offering seed-starting equipment. Some professional growers claim it can make all the difference to have that consistent warmth from below. (Burpee Seeds is one source.)

There are seeds that are best sown directly in the garden, no matter how late you get to it, because they resent transplanting so extremely. Morning glories, nasturtium, zinnias and hollyhocks are examples. And there are other plants so easy to grow by direct sowing that purchasing seedlings is really a waste of money — marigolds, for instance, as well as corn, beans and squash.

Yet another group can and should go in the ground as soon as it thaws. These plants need cool soil to germinate and cool weather to come to maturity. You can count on them crapping out at the peak of summer heat, but meanwhile will enjoy a bounty of late spring and early summer flowers. This bunch includes sweet peas, larkspur, annual poppies and annual phlox.

In most cases, you will find all the information you need to successfully raise seeds right on the back of the seed pack. Should you plan to do much seed starting, you will find it helpful to have a guide offering specific tips for annual and perennial flowers, vegetables and herbs. One such is “Seed Sowing and Saving” by Carole Turner (Storey Communication).

If you’ve never started plants from seeds, give it a try. We could all right now use the “upliftment,” a word coined by Jesse Jackson that I think might be his finest contribution to modern American discourse.