Starting from seed: Germinating your own plants strengthens your connection to nature and brings a healthy variety to both garden and table

Natural Health, March, 2005 by Kaitlin Quistgaard

Even if you plan to sow seeds directly in the soil later, it pays to start an extra six-pack indoors. "That way you know what the plant looks like when it comes up in the garden," says Anni Jensen, propagator at Annie's Annuals, a nursery supplier of rare varieties in Richmond, Calif. And if there should be an unexpected frost or devastating slug attack, you've got extra plants.

Experts will tell you that good results when gardening depend on starting with fresh, quality seeds. But I must confess that once, while living in a city that offered not a sprig of cilantro, I threw a handful of organic coriander seeds intended as cooking spices into the window box outside my fifth-floor walk-up. A couple of weeks later, I snipped a few cilantro leaves for dinner, and thrilled not only to a taste I'd been missing, but also in the beauty and wonder of the scented greens dancing in the breeze above the traffic rushing below.

If you sow with a sense of adventure, you'll be delighted--whatever the outcome. You don't have to be a professional to grow plants from seed, says Leshinsky, who has been gardening for 35 years: "You just have to remember to water them."

RELATED ARTICLE: How to start seedlings indoors.

In her work as an estate gardener and as proprietor of the nursery Oldies & Goodies in Sebastopol, Calif., Lena Hahn-Schuman has raised thousands of plants from seed. Here are her tips for getting a good start:

Make sure your seeds are fresh. They should be dated for this growing season, and suitable for your region. Most seeds have a life of two to three years.

Always plant in a container. You can use peat pots, or recycle six-packs from the nursery. Make an exception for carrots, which don't like to be transplanted and should be sown directly in your garden bed.

Use a seed-starting mix instead of dirt from your garden, which can be laden with diseases that kill young seedlings. Fill six-packs or small containers three-quarters of the way. Place one or two seeds in the middle of a cell, then cover them with an additional 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch of mix. Later, if two seeds sprout, remove one so there is a single seedling per cell.

Keep the soil moist but not soggy, and place seed containers in a warm, light-filled spot, such as atop the refrigerator. Higher is usually better, since heat rises. Windowsills are a favorite for light, but make sure they don't get too cold at night.

Watch for good-size seedlings bearing four true leaves. At this point, ease them gently out of their cells and transfer them to 4-inch pots containing regular potting soil. lf you're growing tomatoes, place the plants deep enough in the soil to bury the first set of leaves (gently remove those leaves first); this generates more roots.

Start six to eight weeks before you expect the last frost. Be sure to plant peppers and eggplant two weeks before tomatoes. Peppers and eggplant also do much better with bottom heat-provided by a heating pad, for example.

Introduce the plants gradually to the great outdoors. When the danger of frost has passed--and when the plants seem as sturdy as you'd buy them at a nursery--it's time to transplant them in the garden. Place them in the garage with the door open or on the porch--somewhere they won't be overly exposed to sun and wind right away. Each day, increase the amount of time they spend outside, but be sure to bring them in at night. After a week or so, they should be ready to transplant.