Starting Seeds: How to Grow Healthy, Productive Vegetables, Herbs, and Flowers from Seed. A Storey BASICS® Title

by Barbara W. Ellis

Overview

Get a jump on the gardening season! In this Storey BASICS® guide, Barbara Ellis provides the basic information that you need to start a variety of vegetables, herbs, and flowers from seed. Ellis shares simple, proven techniques for sowing seeds, managing indoor plants, and creating proper growing conditions so your seedlings can thrive. Packed with expert advice suitable for both beginners and experienced gardeners, Starting Seeds will inspire you to plant a seed and watch it grow. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603428507
Publisher:	Storey Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	01/16/2013
Series:	Storey Basics
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Barbara W. Ellis is a freelance writer, editor, and lifelong gardener. She is the author of many gardening books, including The Veggie Gardener’s Answer Book, Deckscaping, Shady Retreats, and Covering Ground. She holds a B.S. in horticulture from the Ohio State University, Columbus, and a B.A. from Kenyon College. She has worked as managing editor at Rodale Press and as publications director for the American Horticultural Society and is affiliated with the Hardy Plant Society Mid-Atlantic Group, the Garden Writers Association, and the Perennial Plant Association. She lives and gardens in Maryland, where she and her husband live in a renovated “green” home with an assortment of rescued dogs, cats, and parrots. Her garden, which is managed organically and designed to be wildlife-friendly, features a wide range of ornamentals, herbs, and edibles for both sun and shade.

Table of Contents

The Magic of Seeds

Part 1: Getting Started

What Do You Want to Grow?

Get to Know Your Garden

Seed Savvy

How Many Packets?

Germination 101

Set Up a Sowing Schedule

Seed-Grower's Problem Solver

Saving and Storing Secrets

 

Part 2: Starting Seeds Indoors

Gather Your Gear

Sowing Your Seed

Special-Needs Seeds

From Seeds to Seedlings

Potting On

Perennials from Seed

Moving Plants to Your Garden

Care after Planting

 

Part 3: Sowing Seeds Outdoors

Getting Your Garden Ready for Seeds

Spacing: Beds, Rows, or Broadcasting?

Sowing in the Flower Garden

Caring for Seeds and Seedlings

 

Resources and Links

Index

Editorial Reviews

Consider the seed. A single seed, no matter the size, carries all the needed building blocks to become, say, a towering beech tree. The trick is helping it along. Ellis (The Veggie Gardener’s Answer Book) takes the project in hand and with meticulous, sometimes excruciating, detail, leads the reader step-by-step through ways to place the seed in the dirt and then coax it into reaching its potential as full-fledged food and/or astonishing garden beauty. From tending to those fussy “special-needs seeds” by means of a helpful lesson on the necessity for stratification, to calculating the optimal watering strategy (soaker hoses are the vegetable gardener’s best friend), Ellis enables even the hopeful beginner to plan the garden, implement it from seed, and then behold the glory: seeing the magic unfold when, with proper care and the work of one’s own hands, the little speck of DNA-packed life rises from the ground in beauty, vitality, and wonder. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Starting Seeds walks you through everything you need to start in the endeavor of starting plants from seed in your front room, basement, greenhouse, cold frame, or kitchen window.

Starting Seeds is a basic guide to growing plants from seed, whether they're started indoors or out.

—Portland Book Review

Starting Seeds is a basic guide to growing plants from seed, whether they’re started indoors or out.

—Portland Book Review

A great how-to resource for self-reliance.

—Tulsa Book Review

This book, part of the Storey Basics series, contains a treasure trove of information about starting plants from seeds in a book that is small enough to fit in a pocket.

 

 

—Charlotte Observer

A fantastic resource for starting plants from seeds.

A step-by-step guide with simple but descriptive drawings, Starting Seeds should help the gardener from the moment the seed envelope is ripped open to setting out the young plants.

From the Publisher

A great how-to resource for self-reliance.

Tulsa Book Review

Starting Seeds is a basic guide to growing plants from seed, whether they're started indoors or out.

Portland Book Review

This book, part of the Storey Basics series, contains a treasure trove of information about starting plants from seeds in a book that is small enough to fit in a pocket.

 

 

Charlotte Observer

Starting Seeds is a basic guide to growing plants from seed, whether they're started indoors or out.

Akron Beacon Journal - Mary Beth Breckenridge

Agreat how-to resource for self-reliance.

San Francisco Book Review

Starting Seeds is a basic guide to growing plants from seed, whether they’re started indoors or out.

Akron Beacon Journal

This book, part of the Storey Basics series, contains a treasure trove of information about starting plants from seeds in a book that is small enough to fit in a pocket.

Charlotte Observer