TThey say every gardener should keep a detailed record book. I don’t. If I did and anyone looked into it for the month of February and March, I’m afraid they’d title it, “The Confessions of a Serial Seedling Killer.”

I imagine the courtroom where I’d be put on trial, the jury a double six-pack of certified Master Gardeners, the prosecutor the author of Gardening for the Utterly Perfect.

“Isn’t it true,” Sir Perfect sneers, “that you killed an entire tray of broccoli seedlings by overfertilizing them?”

“At least I was trying to feed them,” I plea.

“Didn’t you permanently stunt over two-dozen foxgloves by starting them in brick-hard garden soil instead of using professionally aerated planting mix?”

“Just once,” I say.

“That you actually roasted a flat of lettuce starts by leaving them in a closed cold frame on a sunny day? That your strawflowers got lean for lack of light? That you didn’t base-heat your basil? That, in all, you neglected to follow the seed-starter’s credo: L.S.M.F.T.?”

“Uh, Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco?”

“Leafy Starts Make Fine Tomatoes!”

“Tobacco, tomatoes—at least they’re in the same family.”

“Silence, you horticultural hoodlum!”

I silence this fantasy—before sentencing can be passed. “All right,” I assuage myself, “it’s true, I’ve knocked off some seedlings in my day. But who hasn’t? I mean, let’s be honest here, indoor seed-starting is not easy. Still, I’m getting better at it. I’m learning that L.S.M.F.T. really means Light, Soil, Moisture, Fertilization, and Temperature, and that I have to pay close attention to all five if I want my seedlings to thrive.

But I’ll tell you something else: turning your breakfast table into a miniature hospital nursery where you sow packets of tiny brown seeds, where you spray and warm and fertilize and light, you do your best to turn little question-mark-shaped sprouts into green exclamation points of life. Even flubbing up sometimes and having to put some of your offspring under the ground instead of in it.

That’s called caring, plain and simple. And that’s what it really takes to make a garden, and a gardener, grow. ❖