Soil temperature, not the calendar, decides when a seed wakes up. How to measure it, and which crops want cool ground or warm.

A practical, beginner-friendly walkthrough of saving seed at home: picking the right plants, dodging cross-pollination, harvesting at the right moment, drying, cleaning and storing seed properly.

Open-pollinated and hybrid seeds differ in uniformity, seed saving and long-term cost. Here is how each type works, and how to plan a garden that uses both well.

A paper-towel germination test tells you which old seed packets are worth sowing and how thickly to sow them, without wasting garden space.