Seed Starting at home – Seedy Beginnings

A giant invasive plant known as “Millennium Madness” sprouted worldwide last year. It was particularly bad in the United States and positively egregious in the New York metropolitan area. And, as if Millennium Madness was not bad enough all by itself, there were rumors that it was infested on a grand scale with the dreaded Y2K Bug. While professionals in a host of countries spent months trying to think of ways to eradicate the Y2K Bug, ordinary people were rumored to be aiding the rapid growth and spread of Millennium Madness by watering local specimens with vast quantities of bottled water that they had stored in their basements.

Fortunately, Millennium Madness proved to be a tender plant, and from Fiji to Brooklyn, it began to wither on the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999. Most of the Y2K Bugs died without producing offspring—mutant or otherwise. All the people with leftover bottled water will have to save it for
next summer’s drought.

Now that we no longer have to worry about the spread of Millennium Madness, we gardeners can focus on the beginning of the new gardening year. The catalogs have been arriving since before Christmas, and it is high time to think about seed starting. Orders should be going in now for plants that need to be started indoors. If you want early pansies, start them as soon as possible. For other flowering plants, vegetables, and herbs, it’s still a good idea to order now and then sort out the planting dates when the seed packets arrive.

I love seed starting because it forces me to get organized. I am not lucky enough to have a greenhouse, so all my seed starts under lights in the cellar or on top of my microwave oven in the pantry. And since the cellar is the least well-kept part of my house,