Tips to Grow Your Own Plants from Seed

By gardener | Apr 15, 2009

One of the most rewarding parts of gardening is to start something beautiful completely from scratch. And while you can do this by purchasing a starter seedling plant, it’s actually quite easy to grow many plants and flowers from seeds too.

Many popular flowers and plants grow easily from seeds, and once you have at least one growing you can often collect the seeds each year and start new plants from them as often as you’d like. There are various ways to grow plants from seeds, and here we’ll look at some of the most common.

Keep in mind that you can buy seeds from a store if you don’t have any plants to harvest them from to start with.

The plastic bag method: If you have very small seeds, you can often start them growing with a simple plastic sandwich bag and a paper towel. Just get the paper towel moist, and sprinkle the seeds on it. Then fold it up and put it in the plastic bag. Seal the bag and put it in an area which gets indirect sunlight. You might also want to mark the bag with a date so you’ll be able to tell when the seeds may start sprouting.

The seed pot method: Get yourself some small peat pots or nursery flats, and some good quality potting mix or vermiculite. Fill the pots with your soil and then plant your seeds in rows. Use the eraser end of a pencil to push the seeds into the soil about one quarter of an inch. Once planted, then you simply keep the pots moist until sprouts appear and they’re large enough to be transplanted into regular pots or the ground outside.

If you don’t have peat pots, you can use an egg carton instead. Simply put some soil into each egg section, and push one seed into it. If you use a cardboard egg carton, then you can simply cut it apart once the seeds have sprouted, and plant the entire thing into your new pot or garden bed when it’s time.

Some seeds can be sprouted by simply soaking them in water for several hours though, and this is a favorite method because it’s so quick and easy. Some seeds will automatically sprout just by soaking them in water, but others will need to be scratched – or scarified – before soaking them. By nicking or scratching the seed shell, the water is able to penetrate and start germination properly. If the shell is quite hard or thick and isn’t scratched or nicked first, then the water will not be able to penetrate and thus the seedling will not start.

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