Plant seeds and keep them alive

Sow at the right depth and time, keep weeds out and water in, and guard young plants from hungry animals.

takes patience⏳ a seasontradition — not yet hand-tested

A seed is a plant folded up with a packed lunch. Your job: put it where it can wake up, and keep it alive through its helpless weeks. Most garden failures happen in those first weeks — seeds sown too deep, seedlings dried out once, a rabbit finishing a row in one night. All of it is preventable.

This is a season of small daily visits. Ten minutes a day beats three hours once a week — every garden problem is easy on the day it starts.

You need

• Prepared beds — dug, loose, and settled, from "Choose ground and dig garden beds".
• Seeds — kept dry and cool until now. Big seeds (beans, squash) are forgiving; dust-fine ones need a gentle touch.
• Water and something to pour it gently — a pot with small holes. A hard splash washes seeds right out of the bed.
• A pointed stick — for seed holes and rows.
• Mulch — a covering for the soil: straw, dry leaves, or dry grass. It holds water in and keeps weeds down.
• Sticks, thorny branches, or woven fencing — to keep animals off. Assume they are coming.

Steps

1. Wait for the right time. Tender plants die in frost. Sow them outdoors only after your last spring frost — and check the soil: ground that feels cold as stone to your palm is not ready. Warm-enough soil feels merely cool, and weeds will already be sprouting in it. Hardy crops (peas, onions, many greens) can go in a few weeks earlier.
2. Sow at the right depth: about 2–3 times as deep as the seed is wide.
   • A bean the size of your fingernail goes down 3–4 cm.
   • A dust-fine seed is barely covered — press it onto the surface and sift a whisper of soil over it.
3. Sow in marked rows, with space to grow. Draw a straight furrow with your stick, drop seeds along it, cover, and press down gently so seed touches soil. Mark each row — you will not remember. Space by full-grown size: sprawlers (squash) a stride apart, root crops a hand-span, greens a few fingers. Sow a little thick; you will thin later.
4. Water like slow rain until they're up. The top of the soil must stay damp — never soggy — every day until seedlings appear (a few days to three weeks). One missed hot day at this stage kills a whole sowing.
5. Once plants are up, water deep and less often. Soak the bed well every 2–3 rainless days rather than sprinkling daily. Deep water pulls roots down where the ground stays moist. Test before watering: push a finger in — damp below the surface means wait.
6. Thin without mercy. When seedlings have a few true leaves, pull the extras so the rest stand at proper spacing. Snip or pinch crowded ones at soil level instead of pulling, so you don't tear the keeper's roots. Many thinnings are themselves food.
7. Weed every visit, while weeds are small. A weed is any plant stealing your crop's light and water. Pulled at finger height, they come out in seconds, roots and all — easiest when the soil is damp. Never let a weed flower and set seed in your beds.
8. Mulch once plants are a hand tall. Lay 5 cm of straw or dry leaves over the soil between plants, keeping it a finger's width clear of each stem. Mulch halves your watering and most of your weeding.
9. Guard against animals from day one. Fence with woven sticks or thorny branches; check for digging every morning. Birds pull sprouting seeds — crossed sticks and fluttering strips over new rows scare them off. If something eats leaves at night, look with a light: slugs and snails hand-pick easily after dark.

Watch out

• Sowing too deep — the most common failure; the seedling starves before reaching light. When in doubt, shallower.
• Drowning with kindness. Yellowing plants in wet soil are drowning, not thirsty. Roots need air. Finger test first.
• Skipping thinning because pulling healthy seedlings feels wrong. A crowded row makes leaves and no food. Thin anyway.
• A late frost after a warm spell kills tender seedlings. If frost threatens, cover plants with baskets, pots, or thick leaves in the evening — uncover in the morning.
• Watering leaves at dusk leaves plants wet all night, and wet leaves breed mould and rot. Morning, at the roots.
• Mulch piled against stems rots them like a wet bandage. Always leave that finger of space.
• Guarding too late. One unfenced night can erase a month. Fence when you sow, not after.

How it works

A seed carries only enough stored food for a journey of a few times its own size — that is why depth is life or death. Once that lunch runs out the plant lives on light, so anything shading it — weeds, crowded neighbours — slowly strangles it.