GERMINATION

It’s the miracle of life itself: those little dry brown specks of matter swell and split and send forth a tiny stem, which then pushes its way to the surface, there to grow into the petunia plant—or tomato vine, or leek—of your dreams.

Unfortunately, not every seed germinates without help. Some need to be soaked or nicked or frozen or cooked or otherwise abused, to coax them into life. Some are simply duds, as lifeless as they look.
And then there are the slow ones; they can take weeks to sprout, and during this time, the pots must be kept moist, warm and protected.

It’s an anxious time for the gardener: sneaking peeks under the plastic blanket on an hourly basis; moving the tray from room to room in search of the ideal temperature; worrying if the flat is too wet/not wet enough, if the seeds were planted too deep/not deep enough.

Nowhere in all the flood of verbiage in the catalogs is there information on how much time a given seed might take to germinate. (Although the package always gives a germination rate, something like “70% avg germ,” a number of very little usefulness.)

It would be nice to know, for instance, that if my petunias haven’t cracked the surface after ten days I should write them off and replant. You’re left staring at an expanse of unbroken dirt, with not a clue as to what is or is not happening underground.
Sometimes—and this is almost worse than having no seeds come up—a feu) come up.

There you are with four leeks out of the three hundred you planted. The ones that sprouted need sunlight to grow, and for their sake you must remove that plastic cover; however, the laggards (assuming they’re viable) still need darkness and moisture.