When starting plants from seed, you will want to find a place that gets a lot of light each day -- and I mean a lot (at least four hours). I'm lucky in that my kitchen window gets that much sun so I've been able to start a number of plants from seeds there.

The other important thing is a good soil mix. Here is the mix used (and suggested) by the folks running the farm and garden at Esalen:

1.5 parts sifted compost
1.5 parts vermiculite
1 part coco peat
.5 parts earth worm castings
.25 kelp meal

Not having any coco peat or worm casting around, I start seedlings using an organic potting mix plus the vermiculite, compost and kelp emulsion.

If anybody has any soil recipes they'd like to share, feel free to send them along or post them in the comments section of this article.