Thank you Hazel. I too have dill cilantro basil thyme sprouting. Waiting on sage cumin and parsley. I have lights but I think what they missing is heat. I keep fans in the seed area so I am going to move the ones that haven't germinated to a warmer area with a spotlight

I used some of those containers like a little greenhouse. I stood them on the end and put a 4" pot inside and put in a sunny warm window and the dill seeds sprouted in 2 days. The dill I had in flats took a little longer.

I am either going to have to get agreenhouse or another room the way this seed starting is going! I may be addicted.

Each year I use an old heating pad underneath my seed starting flat. I usually have sprouts in a couple of days with the warmer soil.

Lavender can take weeks to come up and is best in the moist paper towel and bag situation. Most suggest it is better to buy lavender plants, unless you're really patient. Lavender doesn't always ring true to its parent, they say. I still try. One variety is usually true. I forget which one. I have 3 diff varieties seeded, now. I like to do a bit of cold strat before attempting germination on some difficult seeds. I read that most of the time packaged seeds are already cold stratified but one never knows and many of mine are from trades. It would be my luck to have a rare pure strain of lavender on hand but refuse to grow it because of lack of patience. ha

I have a lot of seed so I placed the cups in fitted trays and in the bathroom over night where the space heater is located. I can adjust the temperature. The space heater also produces a warm breeze. It's the old coil type. Uses up a lot of electricity, tho. Different seedlings like different temperatures. I move them around to bright and dark spaces because I am unsure which require light. Some come up in response to this. I should have taken notes.

Everything has sprouted with last night being the finale, but Lavender, Rosemary and Peppers have not germinated, yet. Thanks for bringing up the topic. Nightmare for newbies.

Kim, Everything we plant will germinate best at certain temperatures and certain light levels and it is our job as gardeners to give them what they need if we expect them to grow. Beyond that, some seeds need cold stratification, or alternating cold/warm stratification, some wet, some dry, etc., so I just do my research and try to give each type of seed exactly what it needs. Some seeds (often the very tiny ones but plenty of others as well) won't germinate if covered with soil, so I just surface sow them and just barely press them into the growing medium without covering them with soil. Then, I water them with a mist from a spray bottle so that a heavier stream of water doesn't wash them down below the soil surface. With larger seeds that is not normally an issue, but it doesn't take much moisture to move tiny seeds.

Lavender is just really slow but the seeds will sprout if surface sown and kept a little bit moist but not wet.

Marigolds are as easy as can be and can be started indoors under lights if you want a head-start or can be direct seeded into the garden. They'll sprout quickly if surface sown or barely pushed into the growing medium, and if germinated at a temperature of about 74 degrees.

Want to know the particular needs of a given variety? Refer to Tom Clothier's Annual/Perennial Database, which is a part of his website----the same place we often go to when we need to discuss the relationship between soil temperature/germination rates and times for veggies seeds. I'll link it below.

It is easy to blame the seeds when they don't sprout, or to blame the seed company (which generally is extremely unfair to them) when the seeds don't sprout, but usually it is our fault----because we decide to sow the seeds when we think or when we want or how we want, instead of first studying them to figure out exactly what they need. I think all gardeners, including me, tend to think more about what we want and when we want it instead of asking ourselves what the seeds want/need. When you give seeds exactly what they need, they almost always sprout----or at least a certain percentage of them will. With all seeds, there are Federal Germination Standards they have to meet for a germination percentage, so if you purchase seeds, you should expect that if you give them the conditions they need, then at least that percentage of the seeds will sprout. If you sow them too early or too late, buried too deeply in soil, too wet or too dry, then you may not get that sort of germination that the federal standards tell you to expect....or any germination at all. When I started paying more attention to what the seeds want/need in order to germinate, my success with germinating almost anything went sky-high.

I have a heating mat but haven't even used it in three or four years. One year I couldn't find it, so started seeds without it and, with a couple of exceptions, everything sprouted just fine. With the things that didn't sprout well without the heat, I just moved their flat to the top of my upright deep freeze, and they germinated quickly up there. Then I moved them to the light shelf, figuring the amount of light between the top of the deep freeze and the ceiling was too low for growing seedlings. Not only have I not used the seed heating mat lately, but the last time I saw it, I put it up somewhere....and haven't seen it since. I'm sure I'll come across it one day while cleaning out a closet or shed or something.

Now, here's the Tom Clothier website. To find the germination notes for each item, just use the index to go to its scientific name.....tagetes, for example, for marigolds. His notes on each are brief, but tell you what you need to know.

Tom Clothier's Remarkably Helpful Website

Thanks yall. I will try lavender again next year. And I figured marigolds couldn't be too hard since they volunteer everywhere in my backyard so well. And last year I wintersowed them and they did great. Well somewhere was operator failure and next time I wont sow my whole pack in one flat. I was planning about 10 huge tires full of marigolds and 1 was going to solid yellow. Maybe I will do 1 daisies. Thanks for the link I am going to go check it out.

kim