Seed Starting-The First Step to Gardening: The First Steps in Gardening, #1

By Gary Emmett

Growing a garden isn't difficult if you take it step by step. The first step starts with a seed. In this easy to follow guide, Gary Emmett, expert gardener, shares how simple it is to take that first step to growing a beautiful garden. Come and get growing with Gary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Forget Me Not Publications
• Release date: Feb 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781502262653

Gary Emmett

Gary Emmett learned the love of gardening as a child from his grandmother.  She patiently worked at his side teaching him how to beautify his surroundings. Gary earned a degree in horticulture from Ricks College, now known as BYU-Idaho, with an emphasis on retail management and landscape construction.  He then went to work for a large garden center in Southeast Idaho for 11 years, and managed each of their 2 stores and locations during that time. During those 11 years, he also was the star of a local news gardening segment on television.  He has also had experience in radio call-in shows in which callers could call him and ask their gardening questions. Gary then went on to work for a national lawn and garden chemical/fertilizer company.  He was the regional sales manager and his territory covered five western states.   He spent much of his work time training garden centers and their employees about the products his company sold so they could assist their customers. Gary currently works for his town as the Parks Director.  He loves to play with and care for over 500 roses.  He also teaches classes to the public on gardening and answers their questions on how to solve their gardening problems. When Gary is not playing with the roses and parks in town, he enjoys spending his free time designing and planting the “empty canvas” that he and Brenda currently have as a yard.  This is a definite work in progress and might actually be finished someday. Gary’s favorite annuals are Osteospermums, diascia, and calibrachoa.  His favorite perennials are heuchera and roses. Gary has this bit of advice for all gardeners:  “Gardening is an adventure filled with many twists and turns.   Remember to have fun in the journey and you will be successful.”

Book preview

A bit of Thanks

I want and need to thank my wonderful wife and editor, Brenda, who knew when to push me and realized when I didn't want to be pushed. The encouragement after all of these years of letting me do the things I do in our garden. Honey, I will get your black thumb green eventually. And to my other gardening friends and associates that I have met and mingled with over the years, and especially to those who have helped with some chapter edits: Marilyn, Steva, and Bernie thank you.

Introduction

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the Seeds that you plant.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

It usually seems that when the Holidays are over at the end of a year and the lights and decorations are all taken down, one’s mind turns to the next season: Spring. Not only do we start thinking ahead, but we often have seed catalogs in the mail reminding us of the oncoming change in the season and that spring could only be a page away.

I enjoy looking at as many seed catalogs as I can. I start thinking of what I would enjoy growing. At first I look at the pictures, seeing many new and exciting varieties. Tried and true varieties jump out, as if saying Hello Friend, it’s been awhile. I will get lost in their pages for what seems like hours. My wife even laughs at me, for more than once she has found me asleep with the catalog resting on my chest.

For some, those seed catalogs are a nuisance, to others they are a dream of days to come sometime soon. But to most, they just might seem to be a bit intimidating. Looking at all of the possibilities on the pages of those catalogs, but yet not knowing if it is at all possible to get anything to grow. Those catalogs usually end up being a path not taken.

Let's go down that path together...

Chapter 1: Planning Your Garden

He who fails to plan is planning to fail. ~Winston Churchill

Write it down.

Before I get carried away with too much daydreaming of what I want to order from the seed catalogs, I get out my designated notebook or gardening journal, as I like to call it. This journal has my garden history in it. Now I know after several years of planting