If you’ve never grown your own vegetables, you won’t have experienced the joy and pride of digging fresh carrots out of the ground with dirt clinging to them, or cutting up crisp, flavorful lettuce for your salad. And if you’ve gardened, have you ever grown your plants from garden seed?
Your ancestors would no doubt have answered the question with a resounding “yes,” but today retailers carry a bewildering array of seedlings to tempt the aspiring gardener. In this article I am trying to show you that sowing seeds is a valuable and even exciting way to grow your garden.
the fascination
As a child, did you have your own garden or did you work in the school garden? In the science lab, have you ever anxiously eyed beans or corn, fixed to absorb paper, to send out roots and stalks? If so, can you remember how excitedly you waited for the first sign of growth?
Growing seeds in your garden can have that same element of anticipation. I have been growing plants from seed for some forty years, but I have never quite lost my childish wonder at the miracle of growth that shows itself so profoundly when the seeds germinate and the seedlings appear: the dull, dry-looking contents of the package becomes an abundance of live plants.
something extra
You probably bought your first seeds at a local retailer. Did you have difficulty deciding which variety to buy? The range, in fact, would have been very limited, consisting of a mix of some old favorites and some new releases.
What you may not know is that there are a huge number of seed varieties available if you just know where to look. The Internet is a great place to start. Lots of sites sell traditional seeds, and that’s where you’ll be offered a delicious variety of vegetables: varieties your ancestors grew, seeds that were grown fifty, a hundred, maybe two hundred years ago.
Seeds come in an incredible variety of shapes, sizes, colors (orange, red, yellow, purple, and white carrots, for example), and best of all, the true flavor of the vegetable. Today some vegetables, especially tomatoes, have been bred to last longer on the store shelf and the flavor has been lost along the way.
I couldn’t wait to find and list all the producers of these wonderful seeds. Also, it’s fun to go to your favorite search engine and type ‘vegetable seeds’ or, if I’ve convinced you, ‘heirloom vegetable seeds’. If a site offers to send you a catalog, pamper yourself and ask for one.
Growing vegetables from seed is exciting and the yields are bountiful. In some ways, plants are more personal than those grown from purchased seedlings. Make it even more interesting by trying at least one new variety each year to compare it with your favorites.