Growing Seeds - Water for growth

When you look at some flower seeds, it's often hard to imagine that they can grow into the lovely flowers in the picture on the packet. Seeds look as if they have no life in them at all.
However, seeds have all the food they need to start growing. So why don't they grow inside their packet? Seeds need three other things to begin growing. They need oxygen, warmth and water. If they have these three things, the seeds start growing. They use the nutrients stored inside them, the water they absorb from the soil, and the oxygen they take from the air. Some seeds stay dormant up to 50 years before they start growing, and then only if the conditions for growth are right.
There is only a small amount of nutrients inside each seed. When this is all used up, plants must make their own food.

Plants get their food from the soil. They soak up water from the soil, through their roots. This water has nutrients dissolved in it. Not all soil contains the nutrients that plants need. Sometimes a farmer or gardener has to add these nutrients to the soil in the form of fertilizers. These are washed into the soil by the rain, and the fertilizers are picked up by the plant's roots in the same way as if they were natural nutrients.
Farmers spread fertilizer on their land to put more nutrients into the soil. Then they can grow healthier crops.