Every seed is a gardening miracle, a small, dried out husk that a few months after planting bursts into flower and brings new life to the garden.
The first rule of successful sowing is to read the packet! It should tell you all you need to know. For instance, do your seeds need soaking before you plant them? This can soften the outer husks or remove chemicals that prevent them from germinating. Are they suitable for sowing in trays or pots, or should you sow them directly into the ground?
While the professionals use all kinds of weird and wonderful ‘growing’ mediums such as rock-wool, a good quality seed compost is probably best for the amateur. Try to get one that contains sterilised loam and a peat substitute, which will be finer and more moisture retentive than either a general purpose compost or home grown humus, which will be too rich for the seeds.
As a rule of thumb, the larger the seed the easier it is to grow. Big seeds like lupins and sweet peas are best sown individually in pots, which means they can develop a good strong root system before you disturb them and plant them out. Or better still in this environmentally conscious age, why not use a biodegradable pot. Used for larger seeds, you can miss out the pricking out stage and just plant the whole thing, pot and all, into the ground.
As they develop, your seeds will need differing levels of light, warmth, air and moisture and, once that shoot appears, nutrients as well. Read up on what you have to do so that you aren’t caught on the hop.
As a general rule, the trick is to make sure the compost is damp but not waterlogged; the atmosphere is humid but not dripping. A watering can with a fine rose will help and you can improve the overall drainage by part filling the bottom of the pots with gravel.
Next you need to prick them out by gently prising out each seedling by its leaves (not the stalk) using a dibber, and move it on to a pot of its own, before growing them on, hardening them off, and planting them out. Then you can enjoy them. Nobody said it was going to be easy!
