Mendel’s Gardens

Mendel’s Gardens

You have a packet of seed. This tells you what to do to it, and on what date to start.

Germination instructions for anything that isn't a vegetable are published in about five incompatible notations, most of them abbreviations — and none of them tell you a date. A protocol that reads 70L(90% in 10-14 d) is exact, useful and unreadable, and it still doesn't say whether you have already missed this year.

This site stores each protocol as ordered steps with durations and temperatures, then walks them backwards from your last frost date to say when to begin. Some species need starting ten months ahead, and the ones that take two seasons are the ones every other tool gets wrong.

Every protocol shows the sentence it was built from, in the source's own words, one click away. Where two sources disagree, both are shown — nothing here is averaged. Where a record hasn't been checked by a person, no protocol is published at all.

3 species have a reviewed protocol so far. Browse them all, or plan a sowing calendar from your zip code.