Читать книгу Your Herb Garden - Barbara Segall - Страница 59

Growing plants from seed is a magical and rewarding task. The transformation of powdery or oddly shaped seeds into plants is something that nature can do without the gardener’s help, but once involved in sowing your own herb plants you will find yourself hooked to an enjoyable and seasonal cycle.

Growing from seed is an inexpensive way of providing a large stock of plants. If your herb garden is small and you only need one or two plants of each herb, then you should buy these direct from herb nurseries.

Indoor sowing gives you strong seedlings to plant out as soon as the weather permits. It gives you a longer growing season, and therefore more material to use and preserve. Once the soil is warm, sow seeds outdoors into the growing site and in succession, to ensure a steady supply of good leafy material. You can sow annuals and biennials indoors, but chervil, parsley, cumin, coriander and dill don’t always transplant well. These plants suffer setbacks in growth when their roots are disturbed, and this speeds them into flowering and setting seed, instead of producing foliage. If you do start them off indoors, handle very gently when transplanting and water well to get the plants established.

Alternatively, sow a few seeds into trays of formed soil blocks. When you transplant them, the block is easier to handle than a small seedling and can be placed straight into the planting hole.