Seed Starting for Beginners

You don't need a greenhouse. You need a table, a timer, and a shop light.

Every February the seed rack makes you feel behind. Packets say "start indoors X weeks before last frost" - and somehow that still leaves you guessing when to sow, when to harden off, and which crops never belonged in a tray in the first place.

This book is the small-space version of seed starting: count back from your frost date (or from the right outdoor plant-out date), grow stocky seedlings under ordinary shop lights, harden them off on a stoop or balcony, and put them into the pots you actually have.

Clara Bennett grows vegetables, herbs, and the occasional ambitious tomato on a small balcony in the Pacific Northwest. She started on a fire escape, killed more basil than she'd like to admit, and writes the beginner guides she wished she'd had - plain-spoken, packet-first, and honest about what fails in a tight space.

Inside you'll find:

• Your frost-date worksheet - the count-back method, with worked examples you can swap your city into.
• A kit that fits on a table - trays, mix, labels, bottom-watering, and a braced shop-light stand.
• Sow, thin, pot up - the first weeks without damping-off panic.
• Hardening off without a yard - seven to fourteen days on a railing or fire escape.
• Indoor-start vs direct-sow - a twelve-crop map plus grouped cards that name the clock, the weeks, and what stays on the rack.

This book is for you if:

• You rent and your "garden" is a balcony, a patio, containers, or one small bed.
• You've bought seed packets and still don't know when to start them.
• You're tired of seed-starting books that assume a spare room, a cold frame, and a yard.

This book is not: a greenhouse catalog. A homestead encyclopedia. A yield-guarantee system. A book that tells you to ignore the packet.

Grab a tray. There's a frost date that wants to become a calendar.