Seed sowing tips
Seed sowing tips
One of the best ways to start a large garden of almost any kind, for very little or sometimes no cost at all, is to start your plants and flowers from seeds. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of plants which can be started from seeds. Technically all plants start from seeds, but not all plants are easy to start from a seed, so those are started from cuttings and other forms of propogation instead.
For the purposes of this article though, we’ll focus on starting plants and flowers from seeds instead of other forms of propogation.
Growing plants and flowers from a seed is not just fun and inexpensive, it’s a learning process too. In fact, if you have children this is a great project for the two of you to do together. It’s exciting for plant and garden lovers too though, particularly when you see the first tiny little sprouts popping up out of the dirt.
Now, different types of seeds require different preparation methods to make them sprout properly. Some seeds can just be placed into the ground anywhere, and they’ll automatically start sprouting up within just a week or two. Other seeds however, must be soaked for several hours in water before they’ll start sprouting. Still others will need to be scratched or scraped first, and others will need to be scratched plus soaked in water. Then there are some seeds which need to be placed in a cool location for several months, and the refridgerator often works well for this.
Doing these various things to plant seeds before they’ll sprout is just humans trying to emulate nature. In the wild, seeds will drop to the ground at the end of a plant’s growing season. In most cases this is during the fall months. Those seeds end up being covered by soil naturally from the wind and other weather elements, plus the ground tends to be moist during these months too. So the seed is kept cold and moist for several months. And this process is softening the outer shell of the seed, so that the sprout can actually break through next spring.
This natural process takes several months to complete of course, so when we soak our seeds in water or scratch them up a bit before planting, we’re simply trying to speed up what Mother Nature does by default.
Seeds which have shells that aren’t too thick and tough can usually be soaked in water for about 5 hours before planting them outside or in a container. Sometimes these seeds will start showing a sprout uncurling from the shell before you even get them planted, but usually they’ll just swell up to about twice their previous size.
Other plant seeds however, have very hard, thick shells which can be difficult to get started. It’s this type of seed that needs to be scratched up or nicked with a knife, and this process is called scarifying the seed. It often helps to soak the seed in water after having scratched it too, because the scratches or nicks will allow the water to soak in, which makes it even easier for the seed to sprout.
Once you’ve prepared your seeds for sprouting, you can them put them directly into the ground, or put them into small starter seedling pots instead so that you can keep a close eye on them during their first few weeks of growth.
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