It all begins with a seed…

Large enough to hear when one hits the floor. Others so tiny that if you sneeze, you’ll kiss $10 goodbye. Still more are so microscopic that they are coated with disolvable shell, making them visable to the naked eye and therefore easier to place onto the soil. Seeds come in all sizes, colors and shapes but they all mark the beginning. The beginning of a hope, a dream, rows full of blooms, buckets full of cut flowers, bouquets bursting with texture, color, scents. Seed starting season puts a spring in every flower farmer’s step. We gather the trays, the growing medium, the amendments, our reading glasses, our growing guides, our toothpicks and our boxes and envelopes of seeds, some purchased, someheld over from last year and some harvestest from dried blooms hanging in hopefully critter-proof basements, attics and barns. We study growing guides - how many days until the last frost, what seeds like to be covered, which ones like to lay ever so gently pressed onto the surface, which ones like to sit on a heat mat until germination, which ones TAKE FOREVER to bloom - it’s giant puzzle of full of variables- some known, others unknown. There are great successes in seed starting and heart breaking (and expensive) failures. And all of this even before your seeds ever make it outside to the garden rows. It’s thrilling way to spend the darkest and coldest days in New England and surely the best way to look ahead to the beauty that is contained in all of those tiny seeds.