The New Seed Starter's Handbook by Mike & Nancy Bubel (1988, Hardcover)

This is a nice guide to gardenin from seed. It covers several different ways to get your seeds started. Many styles of growing are covered.

If you are going to start seeds, you must own this classic book from Rodale Press, the Organic Gardening Magazine folks. It provides specific details on how to start a large number of common garden seeds. Specifically, how much light, if any (some seeds only sprout in darkness & some won't sprout unless exposed to light), and the temperature needed to sprout the seeds (some want it from hot, to warm, to cool). If you don't know, and I never seen a seed packet that told you, you are just guessing. You will save enough money on seeds themselves, to pay for this book. Following the books advise, you will plant the seeds in the proper seed starting mix, at the right time, and you will get a much higher germanation rate. When seeds were 5 cents a packet you could just buy lots of packs and scatter them out in the garden. Those days are over. Check the price of seeds today and how small the packages have become.
The section on how many years seeds will remain viable, and how to properly store them, is again worth the value of the entire book. I have a neighbor who always threw out his remaining seeds after planting every year. He could not believe that many of the seeds he threw out every year would be viable for years if he just stored them correctly.
There is a section on starting herb seeds - pricey little plants to buy at the nursery. If you don't know how to start them, they probabley will NOT grow as many have many specific germanation requirements.
If you want to know how to grow a specific seed, just go to the section of specific plants where you will find 1/3 to 1/2 a page dedicated to that specific plant.
I could ramble on forever about how great this book is for the back yard gardner. Don't let the 1988 publishing date scare you. Nothing much has changed. About the only thing I noticed was under the plant lighting section, not all of our modern lights were listed. Other than that, it is a current today as when published 20 years ago. Respectfully submitted for your consideration, Gardner Jim in So. Calif.