Since 1957, when we tried (arc failed!) to grow radishes in a window box outside our third-floor apartment in Philadelphia, my husband, Mike, and 1 have been learning about growing vegetables. We got off to slow' start. I had only vague memories of the Victory Garden my parents grew for a few years in our New England backyard, and an insistent yearning to begin a garden of my own. Mike had grown up on home-raised vegetables—a surprisingly limited variety of them, though, mostly grown from seed his mother had carefully saved from one harvest to the next: cabbage, potatoes, beans, carrots, beets dill, cucumbers, and sunflowers. Later, during a stay in Germany, he had taken a course in gardening at a free university of sorts. Mike wanted a garden, too.
When we moved into our first house. wre bought digging forks and shovels almost before the ink was dry on the deed. We started that first years with tomatoes and beans and many flowers. It took us several years to progress to planting a garden that we could cat from all summer, but by 1970 our vegetable garden was carrying US year round. Today wc hardly ever buy vegetable. Our year-round supplv of vegetables is due in large part to starting seeds early indoors and making continuous outdoor plantings of varieties of food chosen for quality and ease of storage.
Along the way, we've learned a lot about how' and when to start different vegetables. Trial and error has helped. Older relatives and neighbors have been generous with advice and lore, and we never start a new gardening year without thinking fondly of our different mentors and how much they have given US over the years. Reading about gardens and gardening, seeds, plants, soil, and insects has given US a framework that often supports relationships between what we’ve observed and what we’ve been told. Mostly, though, we’ve muddled along, taking longer than it now seems we should have to see and use the full potential of a piece of ground and a packet of seeds.
That’s whv I decided to write the first edition of The Seed-Starter’s Handbook—to help other gardeners make that jump from dabbling on self-sufficiency sooner and more easily than we did. At the same time, I hoped that experienced gardeners would find in it some insight into possibilities never considered, into alternatives and experiments in areas of gardening where the final word had yet to be written.
You know how it is when you put the phone down. You then remember all the otherthings you had intended to say. So it has been with this book. From the time the first edition was published, I’ve wished that I had included more about growing other garden flowers and wild plants from seed. In the ten years since I sent off that first manuscript, I’ve visited many gardens, asked a lot of questions, talked to numerous researchers, tried growing many new kinds of seeds, and read thousands of pages of gardening research, lore, and advice. Some of my learning grew out of my failures— with stubbornly dormant linden tree seeds, light-seeking scarlet sage seeds, and wildflower seeds that wouldn't germinate without prechilling.
The result is The New Seed-Starters Handbook, which contains new sections that detail the principles and techniques for starting garden flowers, wildflowcrs, herbs, trees, and shrubs from seed. This material has been combined with the chapter from the first edition on growing vegetables and garden fruits from seed to create to handy encyclopedia section. No book of this size can include every possible plant in each of these categories, but I’ve tried to give you a selection of the best. Although this is a handbook, not a textbook, I’ve included Latin names for the plants under discussion, just so we're all sure we're talking about the same plant, and for your convenience in ordering seeds. Common names are charming but often varv locally. Latin names are accurate worldwide.
Apart from the encyclopedia section and several additional chapters, the other new material in the book has been inserted into the existing text via new words, paragraphs, page, and sections. These additions and revisions represent an eight-month distilling process during which I evaluated and interpreted a whole flic of new material accumulated since the day The Seed-Starter’s Handbook was established. Not a chapter remains untouched. To be honest, gardening friends, rechecking all the facts, summarizing old material, adding newly discovered findings, and writing new chapters has been more difficult than writing the original manuscript. I’m hugely relieved that it is done, but also delighted to have had the chance to improve my original work.
Consider this book a manual of procedures, giving you the step-by -step how and when of various planting techniques. Look, too, in every chapter, for the principles on which these techniques are based, and count on finding at least a few open-ended questions that might challenge old suppositions or suggest new growing frontiers.
There's no one right way to do most of these things, you know. A good many workable options are open to you in planting seeds. I've tried to suggest the range of possibilities. The choice is up to you.
Let this book be smudged. Let it be marked. It’s meant to be used. I hope it will make a difference in your garden, and ultimately, on your table.
Once again, I wish you joy in planting seeds. The seed-starter works, always, at the edge of a mystery. Though we may take it for granted, we are part of that mystery, along with the fragility, the resilience, the dependability of the green world. Happy planting!
[EBOOK] THE NEW SEED-STARTERS Handbook, BY NANCY BLIBEL, Illustrations by Frank Fretz, Photographs by Alison Miksch & Rodale Press Photography Staff
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