How to plant seeds directly into your garden and have them germinate quickly.

I usually start a lot of my seeds indoors because they need a longer growing season than we have in the northeast, this would include heirloom tomatoes, peppers, melons, and eggplant. I also start very small seeds indoors because they are difficult to handle and plant directly in the garden, this would be a lot of the varieties lettuce.

The rest of the larger seeds like cucumbers, beans, squash, swiss chard, zucchini, and the larger flower seeds like sunflowers, I plant directly into the garden. The biggest problem with planting directly in the garden is the variable and sometimes long germination times. Germination times can be much longer than what is listed as the average. The reason is that enough moisture has to soak thru the hard dry seed at the right temperature range to signal the seed to begin growth.

Soaking seeds before planting is an old time gardeners trick that many new gardeners are not aware of. By soaking seeds you can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes for a seed to germinate in your garden. The best way to do this is to take a bowl and fill it with hot tap water, most seeds could take temperatures up to boiling so don’t worry about the water being to hot. You place the seeds in the water and let them stay as the water cools. I usually let them soak about 24 hours, don’t let the seeds soak more than 48 hours or they could drown. Then drain the water and plant your seeds, and of course keep the ground moist after planting. You will see that germination times are greatly reduced by using this method. I hope this helps and have a great gardening season this year!