Ever want to start a seed to sprouting?  Here's how: Click on an image to zoom in.   You'll need a few things to get started such as some seeds, some paper towel, some plastic wrap or a big ziplock bag, and some water-proof plates (these ones are made of plastic).  You'll also need some water, and if you want to take this experiment one step further, you'll need a non-paper cup and some soil.  For our experiment we chose radish and green bean seeds, because they grow well in Michigan and are quick to sprout.   Take a piece or two of paper towel and lay it out flat on a surface you don't mind getting wet.   Fold the paper towel in half.   Then fold it in half again, so that it's a quarter its original size.   Place the paper towels on the plates and pour some water on them.  You should wet the towels enough that the paper is soaked through, but there shouldn't be a puddle of water standing on the plates.  If there is, pour the extra off.   Open the last fold in the towels back up, so that it's half-sized again.   Arrange your seeds on half of the exposed wet paper towel leaving space between each seed.  If you don't leave enough space, the roots that sprout from the seeds may become entangled, making them difficult to plant.  Here on the left you can see the green bean seeds arranged for sprouting.   Here you can see the radish seeds ready to sprout.  We arranged the radish seeds close to each other so that you could see how the sprouts sometimes become tangled together.   (Here you can see how small radish seeds really are.  Yes, that's a pencil lead pointing at them!)   Once  you've arranged the seeds, fold the paper towel back over so that the seeds are surrounded by wet paper towel.  Push the towel down carefully around the seeds to ensure that the seeds are touching the wet surface of the towel.   Fold in the corners of the paper towel to make sure they aren't sticking out past the edges of the plate and take your plastic wrap and tightly wrap the plates.  You may have to use more than one layer of plastic wrap to make sure you have a good seal.  Alternatively, you could use a ziplock bag.  If you don't have either, you can do without, but you have to make sure the paper towel remains damp to the touch.   Seeds need to be kept within a certain range of temperatures, or else they won't sprout.  Room temperature such as maintained in most homes will do fine.  We noticed that the window sill we chose to sprout our seeds on got a little chilly at night, so we put a couple pieces of ordinary cardboard under the plates to act as insulation against the cold.   After just three days we opened our plastic wrap up, unfolded the paper towel, and, guess what, we had sprouts, and a lot of them!!!  Could anything be easier than that?  Here you can see the green bean sprouts, with lots of space still between each one.   Here you can see a close up of the radish seeds--they really took off in just three days time!  Notice that the roots on the radish seeds are all tangled together.  In order to plant these someone will have to carefully untangle them all!   Here's a close-up of one of the green bean sprouts.  The sprout part is actually a root, and the part that will become the plant is forming inside the seed still.   And here's a radish seed sprout.  You can see that the radish seed developed much more quickly than the green bean.  The radish seed is about ready to shuck its outer seed casing and spread its first pair of leaves to start collecting sunshine.   If you would like to actually see the sprout become a small plant, you'll need some cups such as the one on the left.  You'll also need some soil to go in them.   We used some seed-starting soil such as can be found at any hardware or home-improvement store.   Damp the soil in the cup with some water and poke a small hole in the center of the soil with your finger.  Don't go any deeper than a half an inch, and don't over water.  Just like the seeds, most plants don't like standing water.   Carefully take one of your seeds and place it in the hole, sprout down.  Cover the top lightly with soil.  Don't pack the soil down, as loose, airy soil is best for most plants.   In a few more days you should see something like this!  These are the radish seeds, or more correctly, these are the radish plants!   You can see that after the same amount of time the green beans are really lagging behind, but that's ok, too, they just take a little longer, is all.   And just look at this!  After yet one more day the beans have started to really shoot up into the air!  While the radishes are still doing great, they are a little skinny and look like a good wind would push them over.  The green beans, on the other hand, have produced these fantastic, thick stalks that are truly rigid and more than strong enough to support their weight.  Of course, there really is no basis for comparison here--it's sort of like comparing apples to oranges, only we're comparing radishes to green beans!   Here they are, side by side.  Both sets of plants are thriving--just look at the healthy root networks being developed within the cups!  Soon they will be ready for transplant to larger containers.  Of course, these groups of plants we are showing here aren't really intended for transplant--by putting them all together we've once again caused their roots to tangle around each other, making separation difficult, if not impossible without killing the seedlings.  If you intend to transplant your seedlings so that you may watch them grow through the course of their life-cycle, your best bet is to plant each seedling in its own cup.

And that's all there is to it!  In seven days we took some seeds from a hardware store and turned them into full-fledged plants--truly a wonder of nature.