Seed-to-Harvest Lab · by Grow Through Time
See every stage of your plant's life — under the soil and above it — day by day.
Most gardening advice tells you what to do. We show you what growth actually looks like while it is happening: the root before the shoot, the tuber forming in the dark, the flower that buries itself. Every guide here is built on a Grow Through Time time-lapse and checked against university extension sources, so you can recognise healthy growth — and trouble — before it happens.
Our three signature formats
🌱 Germination Stages
Seed starting broken into its real stages — imbibition, radicle, root hairs, shoot, true leaves — so you always know which stage your seed is in and what it needs next.
🔍 Underground Views
Cross-section views nobody else publishes: potatoes forming on stolons, peanut pegs diving into the soil, bean roots racing the shoot. The hidden half of gardening, made visible.
📅 Day-Count Journeys
One crop, one timeline. Follow a tomato, a chili or a giant pumpkin from Day 1 to harvest with a stage table for every phase — and the exact seed variety linked for each journey.
A note on our visuals: every growth visual on this site is an AI-generated time-lapse simulation, labelled on each page. They are teaching illustrations, not documented experiments — the growing facts in our guides come from cited extension and botanical sources. Read our AI Transparency page for exactly what that means.
Germination & stage guides
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The explainer
How Seed Germination Works — The 5 Stages
What happens inside a seed, stage by stage, seen from inside the soil.
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Day 1–25
Bean Germination Stages, Day by Day
Roots vs shoots: the underground race, mapped day by day.
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Troubleshooting
Why Your Seeds Didn't Germinate
A stage-by-stage diagnosis: find the exact stage where your seeds stalled.
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Day 1–90
How Potatoes Grow Underground
Tubers grow on stolons, not roots — the full underground story.
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Day 1–120
The Flower That Buries Itself — How Peanuts Grow
After flowering, the peanut plant sends pegs into the soil to grow its pods in the dark.
Day-count journeys
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Seed → harvest
Tomato From Seed to Harvest
Start with the 40-second seed-to-plant film, then walk the full timeline stage by stage.
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Day 1–72
Eggplant Growth Stages
A warmth-loving crop with a long fuse — every stage from seed to glossy fruit.
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Day 1–158
Chili: The 158-Day Journey
Slow to start, generous at the end — the pepper timeline, honestly told.
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Day 1–84
Sunflower in 84 Days
The fastest tall story in the garden: seed to giant bloom in one season.
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Day 1–150
Growing a Giant Pumpkin
One seed, one vine, one fruit — the giant-grower's prune-to-one strategy, day by day.
Prefer to watch?
Every guide on this site began as a 40-second time-lapse on the Grow Through Time YouTube channel. Watch the films there, then come back here for the stage tables, the science, and the troubleshooting the videos don't have room for.
