Start your vegetable garden from seeds
Well what are seeds, they are package of dna from a parent plant that can produce another plant identical or a variant of it’s parent plant it maybe a small plant or a huge tree. These packages can be very small like poppy seeds you get on top of loafs of bread, or larger like a coconut for example. When in South west France on holiday, surrounded by pine forests, you could hear the large pine cones drop to the floor with a loud thud, this is how these trees propagated themselves, when the cone rotted down the hard seeds inside would be left on the ground and would start to grow into a small copy of it’s parent.
Plants have managed to do this for thousands of years before we where around and they use various ways to disperse their seeds sometimes many miles away from the parent plant. Some use the wind, the seeds being in a shape that when caught in the wind will blow large distances. Some use animals and birds being partially eaten and then left on the ground in animal dropping, so they actually get a good start growing in ready made fertilizer. Some would have a sticky coating to attach themselves to animals as they traveled past, when the seed then dropped off it could start it’s life many miles away from it’s origin possibly in more favourable conditions. You must remember during the summer months as a child you walk through the countryside wafts of seeds floating through the air on their way to a new place to land and start growing. Perhaps you did not know what they where or their purpose at the time as you waved your arms about to send them of in a different direction to who knows where to start a new colony of plants in some odd place.
What do seeds need, not a great deal really, as long as they start of in some type of soil, they get water and sunshine that is enough for most of them. You must have seen plants in very odd places like on the roofs and growing out of chimney pots on old buildings. Or even growing out of brickwork. You now know how they got there, they need very little encouragement to start growing, and if the conditions are not right they have the ability to stay dormant for years and years until the conditions improve.
Some seeds need to be either be warmed to a certain temperature or be submitted to temperature below freezing to germinate, some alpine plant seeds fall into the latter category. Now that we know these thing it becomes easy to propagate almost any plants we desire using a few items to help us. This is a very cost effective way to grow plants in large numbers for a garden. Also once you have a plants many of them can have cutting taken from them, (a subject for later on) and of course many of your plants will produce seeds that you can collect and the cycle begins again.
What are seeds and what do we do with them, We now know what they are so now what we need to do with them. The main item to start is obviously seeds of the variety you intend growing these can be bought at your garden center or by mail or from friends even. They are very cheap for what is received in return. The seeds you buy are usually the best they will have been checked and be a true copy of the plant you want an they will have been sterilized so no harmful bacteria is there.
To begin you should read instructions on the seed packet, there are slight variants on how each seed has slightly different needs, depth of planting, temperature needed to germinate the plant etc. Get a good potting compost,(this tends to be very fine) and just follow the instruction on the packet, planting the seeds in pots trays or whatever is to hand bowls plastic food containers margarine tubs . Once planted and covered over to the correct depth water in and leave in the light at the recommended temperature. Soon you will have young shoots growing and will find this the most rewarding part of gardening producing your own plants just from a little packet that just wants to grow.I hope this answers what are seeds and what do you do with them.
Do enjoy starting your garden using seeds it is cheap enjoyable and fun. M.J.
