Seed Starting

Seed starting tray with heating pad and grow light

Though it may be a bit early in the season, today I decided to start my herb seeds in hopes of having healthy plants ready to put out when warm weather finally arrives.

Seed Starting

is not as easy as one might think. Last year I learned a lot when I started herb seeds indoors for the first time. I discovered that some seeds (oregano especially) need heat to start. When I simply planted them and placed the pots under the grow lights most of my seeds didn’t start.

So instead of buying a special seed starting mat, I pulled out my electric heating pad and placed it under the seed starting tray. Since the heating pad automatically turns itself off after a period of time, I stop by periodically throughout the day to restart it. Last year it worked great for those stubborn oregano seeds and it also helped the other seeds I started grow into healthier plants.

Today I planted three little seed starters with parsley seeds, three with basil seeds, and two with oregano seeds. I love using fresh parsley and basil in many dishes. And last year I harvested and dried both basil and oregano for use this winter. They’re great plants for my container gardens.

Consider seeds for a moment. The oregano seeds were as tiny as a grain of dust. How are they such perfect containers of life? Kept dry and cool in a small packet in my refrigerator they are inert and seemingly dead. But add, water, soil, and light and they spring to life. It makes me smile to simply imagine all of the seeds in the world simply waiting for the right conditions to grow.

A seed knows how to wait. Most seeds wait for at least a year before starting to grow; a cherry seed can wait for a hundred years with no problem. What exactly each seed is waiting for is known only to that seed. Some unique trigger-combination of temperature-moisture-light and many other things is required to convince a seed to jump off the deep end and take its chance—to take its one and only chance to grow.

Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.

    — Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

Practicing Creativity is Like Seed Starting

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

   — August Sanders

Sometimes we are planting seeds and we don’t even realize it. Each time we practice our craft or our art, we are planting seeds. And when we play around just for the joy of playing around we are planting seeds. We only notice that something is happening when the seeds begin growing. Being in the dark with no answers is difficult. Yet, like seeds, when the time is right our actions may lead to creations we never could have imagined.

In my hands, I will see the holy seeds
and a sweetness will rise up from these petal-bundles
so heavy I must close my eyes to take it in

   — Mary Oliver

Wishing your creative practice plants seeds that grow into beautiful creations.

May you walk in beauty.

Playing around with combining flower photo with bare trees photo