“Plants want to grow, seeds want to germinate. Nature will always do its thing.”
Truth be told, while seeds certainly ‘want’ to germinate, they still need the right conditions to do so. It’s a bit unfair to tell a novice gardener to simply throw a few seeds in a pot and to wait for abundance to sprout forth. Sometimes, no matter how much care is taken, nature decides not to play ball.
When I first started gardening, I bought seedlings from the garden centre and if I’m honest, occasionally I still do. The reasons are many, mainly a lack of space -and light – to start all my plants off from seed in early spring and also, admittedly, a lack of patience. Nevertheless, I expanded my repertoire over the years starting with ‘easy’ crops like tomatoes and courgettes, then upping the ante to include lettuces, peas and all sorts of beans, until finally I felt confident enough to try my hand at the crazy stuff: flowers and herbs.
So here’s what I have learnt.
Many seeds do not strictly require light to germinate and this includes pretty much all of the commonly known vegetables. As a rule of thumb, large seeds (peas, beans, courgettes and such) want to be planted twice as deep as they are long and covered completely, while small seeds (leafy greens of all sorts, tomatoes etc) are best placed on the surface and covered with a thin layer of fine compost or vermiculite to exclude most of the light. If seeds require light for germination it will say so on the package, in which case just scatter them on the surface. And if seeds need to germinate in the dark, cover the tray with cardboard until germination has occurred.
Never ever let your seeds and seedlings dry out but also, never ever drown them. Once they’ve dried out, they die. And if they’re too wet they’re at risk of ‘dampening off’ which means they also die. At first, I tried to water my seed trays from above but quickly realised that it’s better to place the trays on a capillary mat so they get moisture from below without flooding. A bit of cling film on top, because seeds like humidity, hey presto, germination.
I don’t have a greenhouse so my seedlings are mostly started off on a window sill. Until the end of February that means that they hardly get enough light and become rather long and leggy. So now, the interesting bit: until plants develop ‘real’ leaves – meaning the ones that appear after the first set of round tipped leaves all seedlings have in common – roots can still grow from the stems. The trick with leggy seedlings is to pot them on before they mature too much and re-pot them nice and deep, almost up to the first set of leaves. This works particularly well for tomatoes and kale, but beware that this doesn’t suit curcubits (melons, pumpkins, cucumbers) and beans, who don’t like wet feet and are better planted slightly higher than the original soil level whenever they are potted on or planted out.
I also learned the hard way that it’s important to choose the right size of seed trays. After spending way too much time pricking out seedlings because of trays that were too small, I now sow lettuces and tomatoes individually in 24-cell seed plug trays and transfer them to 9-cell modules when they are big enough to handle. There they stay until they’re big enough to plant out (lettuces) or to pot on (tomatoes). Any plants that don’t like root disturbance (kale, zinnias) I sow directly into 9-cell modules. Herbs are sown into 9cm pots so I can easily plant them out in clumps when they’re ready. Beans and sweet peas I sow in 7cm square pots so they have plenty of room to develop deep roots. And then there’s the curcubits: as these require warmth to germinate I now sow them in deep seed trays, place them on a radiator for a few days, and as soon as they have germinated I transfer them to 7cm square pots. It’s an eccentric method but I just didn’t have much success starting them in bigger pots, they usually rotted before they could germinate.
Some crops are better sown directly into the garden once the soil has warmed up. Carrots. Beetroot. Fiddly greens like Mizuna and Mustard. Soft herbs like coriander, dill and parsley. It always tests my patience to wait until after the last frosts but it’s worth it. Just keep an eye on the slugs.
Ultimately it’s all trial and error and that’s the nice thing about gardening; it’s not about the end result per se, more than anything it’s about the process.
