Successful seed starting requires a fine soil mix kept moist but not wet, bottom heat and light management. Sanitation is the key. On the commercial side there are greenhouses that specialize in starting plants and others who grow the starter plants to market size.

Commercially there are soil mixes designed just for starting seeds. You may be able to find such a mix but the readily available Pro-mix will work fine. Avoid using garden soil as any part of your mix. It will be laced with disease organisms and will stay too wet.

Like most greenhouses, we will buy starter plants if we can. When we can't, or the minimum numbers are too great, we start them. Since most seeds like a little light to germinate, my wife generally puts the seeds on the top of a slightly firmed seedbed and covers them with a light layer of vermiculite.

Moisture is critical. The seed tray must not dry out but must not be too wet either. Commercially, regular automatic misting or an arrangement where the bottom of the flats are flooded in an ebb and flow pattern does this. You can get the same results by placing the seed trays in a plastic bag and misting them when necessary.

Seeds germinate best with uniform heat. This is best accomplished with bottom heating. You can use a heating mat. Commercially, in the ebb and flood setups the floor is heated. On a smaller scale the seed trays are set on a series of small tubes which circulate hot water.

We use the latter. Regardless, providing bottom heat is expensive. We devote less than two per cent of our space to seed starting but devote almost twenty per cent of our fuel dollars to that space. In other words we find it cheaper to buy started plants than to grow our own.

This specialization in the greenhouse business provides better and cheaper plants but also spawns an occasional disaster. This year a popular series of geraniums will not be available because of disease.

Those cuttings started out in Guatemala and went to rooting stations in Michigan and New Hampshire. About 90 greenhouses in Pennsylvania got infected plants before the problem was discovered.

We were lucky because our plant order had not been delivered. We just had to scurry, generally successfully, to find 3,000 replacement plants from a different breeder.

Light, as I said, encourages germination in many seeds, but is critical to grow a stocky garden ready plant after they have emerged. Grow lights work. A greenhouse works. A bright sunny window works if you turn the plants and watch the moisture.

For the home gardener, seed starting is more an act of love and self achievement than economics. With the above information and a careful reading of the seed packs success can easily be had.