BC Home + Garden Show: Carissa Kasper wants you to plant some seeds

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Gardening can be intimidating for the uninitiated or those who’ve had little success for their efforts. At the BC Home + Garden Show, Vancouver-based kitchen garden expert Carissa Kasper of Seed & Nourish will share her advice to overcome those stumbling blocks. She believes that growing your own food connects with nature in a way that nurtures mind and body, and insists that beginners can easily create a kitchen garden from seed with some basic principles.

First, trust the seed—it knows what it’s doing. “A seed has everything it needs inside of it,” she explains. “It contains a root, its first leaves and food to enable its growth once it is placed in the right conditions.”
Keep it simple by selecting plants with seeds that can be sown outdoors. Note their growing season. Kasper advises starting with peas, beans, carrots, radishes, beets, zucchini and pumpkins. “Let nature guide the process,” she says.
Kasper also recommends starting seeds indoors, especially tomatoes, which “grow like weeds.” Grow lights and seedling heat mats foster growth, but “a simple southern-facing windowsill” will do.

Carissa Kasper appears on the Vancouver Sun Gardeners’ School Stage at 12 p.m. on Saturday, March 12, and Sunday, March 13.