I’m Amy Stewart with Project Wellness. And in this section, I’m going to talk to you about sprouting your own herbs from seed.

And in this particular case, we’re actually going to do a lavender which is a little different from the herbs we’re putting on our container garden but it doesn’t matter because spawning seeds is pretty much all the same.

The first thing that you’re going to want to do is of course choose your seeds. I buy this from an online resource so you can get seeds—these days, you can even get them in a grocery store. If you are really firmly about having organic or even heirloom seeds, which means that they have never been hybridized or genetically modified, there are resources you can use for that as well and just know that they are available to you. And in this case, we’re just going to be using a regular lavender seed from a conventional growing. But we’ll of course grow it organically.

So in order to do this, we’re going to need a couple of different things, then I’m going to show you two different ways that you can go about growing your seeds. In our case, we have two different things that we can do. As you can see, this is one way which is the Styrofoam cut method also known as the preschool sprout, and we’re going to use that today. There are also these nice peat pots which can be bought at the home center at the farm supple very inexpensively. And then this is a seed starting tray which is a little bit more kind of commercially but it can be kind of helpful for a beginning gardener. And so, we’re going to actually start with that. The way this comes is that it already kind of comes preloaded with the potting mix and with the lid and you do kind of need to hang on to the lid because when you put this on the sun, it’s going to help get these all nice and warm like a greenhouse, so it’s like your own little miniature greenhouse. And then, we’ll add the seeds with some water and we’ll be good to go.

So, let’s do it all at the same time and I’m going to go ahead and fill my little peat pots with some of our homemade potting mix. We’re going to grab some water and we’ll go ahead and get started with our seed starter tray as well. It’s real simple to do this. You just read the back of the packet, there are a hundred seeds in here so you really can’t mess up. Basically, what you’re going to want to do is dig them in about a quarter of an inch deep, a couple per pot, water them, and forget about it until you need to water them again which should be tomorrow. So all I’m doing is kind of digging in a little bit with my finger just to make sure that the seeds get in a quarter of an inch. Don’t worry if you can’t see them anymore, they’re there. This is also a fun thing to do with children. So if you have them, they love to do this and they have tiny little fingers which are real helpful.

So when we get done, we’re going to have a dozen lavender plants. What could be nicer than that? Okay. So what we’ll do—so, I’m going to put this one in a bowl while I water it. You do have to be a little careful. You can even water the soil beforehand if that’s more comfortable for you just to make sure that your seeds don’t flow away. Pop your lid back on your starting tray. And by the way, you can get these starting trays as big as this table. We’re just going with the real small one because again, we just want to make sure that we are starting small, building big. You’re going to find a sunny location of this. And two days from now, you’ll have spots. And that is how you start seeds and make them into spots.