THE NEW SEED-STARTERS Handbook

BY NANCY BUBEL

Illustrations by Frank Fretz Photographs by Alison Miksch & Rodale Press Photography Staff

Contents
Introduction
Section One Starting Seeds Indoors 1. Why Start Your Own? 2. First the Seeds 3. Choose Your Medium 4. Containers 5. Sowing Seeds Early Indoors 6. Germination 7. What Seedlings Need 8. Transplanting into New containers 9. Growing On 10. Light 11. Problems Section Two Moving Plants Outdoors 12. Soil Preparation 13. Mapping Out the Garden 14. Hardening Off 15. The Art of Planting Out 16. Cold Frames, Hotbeds, and Cloches 17. Care of Young Transplant 18. Direct Seeding 19. Treating Plants with Seaweed Extract 20. The Fall Garden 21. Insect and Animal Pests 22. The young Seed-Planter Section Three Special Techniques and Situations 23. Starting Seeds in the Greenhouse 24. Growing Vegetables in the Greenhouse 25. Starting Wildflowers from Seed 26. Starting Trees and Shrubs from Seed Section Four Saving Seeds and Making Further Plants 27. Why Save Seeds?

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

How Seeds are Formed Choosing Seeds to Save Collecting and Preparing Seeds Storing Seeds Viability of Seeds Seed-Saving Tips for Specific Plants Further Challenges The Garden Diary Seed Catalogs Seed Exchanges Seed Banks

Encyclopedia of Plants to Grow from Seed Growing Garden Vegetables and Fruits from Seed Growing Herbs from Seed Growing Garden Flowers from Seed Growing Wildflowers from Seed Growing Trees and Shrubs from Seed List of Seed Suppliers Sources for Garden Supplies Glossary Bibliography Recommended Reading Index

Introduction
Since 1957, when we tried (are failed!) to grow radishes in a window box outside our thirdfloor apartment in Philadelphia, my husband, Mike, and I have been learning about growing vegetables. We got off to slow start. I had only vague memories of the Victory Garden my parents grew for a few years in our New England backyard, and an insistent yearning to begin a garden of my own. Mike had grown up on home-raised vegetablesa surprisingly limited variety of them, though, mostly grown from seed his mother had carefully saved from one harvest to the next: cabbage, potatoes, beans, carrots, beets dill, cucumbers, and sunflowers. Later, during a stay in Germany, he had taken a course in gardening at a free university of sorts. Mike wanted a garden, too. When we moved into our first house, we bought digging forks and shovels almost before the ink was dry on the deed. We started that first years with tomatoes and beans and many flowers. It took us several years to progress to planting a garden that we could eat from all summer, but by 1970 our vegetable garden was carrying us year round. Today we hardly ever buy vegetable. Our year-round supply of vegetables is due in large part to starting seeds early indoors and making continuous outdoor plantings of varieties of food chosen for quality and ease of storage. Along the way, weve learned a lot about how and when to start different vegetables. Trial and error has helped. Older relatives and neighbors have been generous with advice and lore, and we never start a new gardening year without thinking fondly of our different mentors and how much they have given us over the years. Reading about gardens and gardening, seeds, plants, soil, and insects has given us a framework that often supports relationships between what weve observed and what weve been told. Mostly, though, weve muddled along, taking longer than it now seems we should have to see and use the full potential of a piece of ground and a packet of seeds. Thats why I decided to write the first edition of The Seed-Starters Handbookto help other gardeners make that jump from dabbling on self-sufficiency sooner and more easily than we did. At the same time, I hoped that experienced gardeners would find in it some insight into possibilities never considered, into alternatives and experiments in areas of gardening where the final word had yet to be written.

You know how it is when you put the phone down. You then remember all the otherthings you had intended to say. So it has been with this book. From the time the first edition was published, Ive wished that I had included more about growing other garden flowers and wild plants from seed. In the ten years since I sent off that first manuscript, Ive visited many gardens, asked a lot of questions, talked to numerous researchers, tried growing many new kinds of seeds, and read thousands of pages of gardening research, lore, and advice. Some of my learning grew out of my failures with stubbornly dormant linden tree seeds, light-seeking scarlet sage seeds, and wildflower seeds that wouldnt germinate without prechilling. The result is The New Seed-Starters Handbook, which contains new sections that detail the principles and techniques for starting garden flowers, wildflowers, herbs, trees, and shrubs from seed. This material has been combined with the chapter from the first edition on growing vegetables and garden fruits from seed to create to handy encyclopedia section. No book of this size can include every possible plant in each of these categories, but Ive tried to give you a selection of the best. Although this is a handbook, not a textbook, Ive included Latin names for the plants under discussion, just so were all sure were talking about the same plant, and for your convenience in ordering seeds. Common names are charming but often vary locally. Latin names are accurate worldwide. Apart from the encyclopedia section and several additional chapters, the other new material in the book has been inserted into the existing text via new words, paragraphs, page, and sections. These additions and revisions represent an eight-month distilling process during which I evaluated and interpreted a whole file of new material accumulated since the day The Seed-Starters Handbook was established. Not a chapter remains untouched. To be honest, gardening friends, rechecking all the facts, summarizing old material, adding newly discovered findings, and writing new chapters has been more difficult than writing the original manuscript. Im hugely relieved that it is done, but also delighted to have had the chance to improve my original work. Consider this book a manual of procedures, giving you the step-by -step how and when of various planting techniques. Look, too, in every chapter, for the principles on which these techniques are based, and count on finding at least a few open-ended questions that might challenge old suppositions or suggest new growing frontiers. Theres no one right way to do most of these things, you know. A good many workable options are open to you in planting seeds. Ive tried to suggest the range of possibilities. The choice is up to you. Let this book be smudged. Let it be marked. Its meant to be used. I hope it will make a difference in your garden, and ultimately, on your table. Once again, I wish you joy in planting seeds. The seed-starter works, always, at the edge of a mystery. Though we may take it for granted, we are part of that mystery, along with the fragility, the resilience, the dependability of the green world. Happy planting!