Once your pots are seeded with spores, you'll need to keep them in a closed humidity chamber of some kind. I use plastic trays with clear domed tops; fish tanks, bell jars or terrariums would also be fine. Sterilize your container with a bleach solution. Water from below, preferably with distilled water or boiled rain water to prevent the buildup of salts. Place your mini-greenhouse where it gets good light (mine are in a window that gets direct sun in the morning, but only diffuse light the rest of the day. You can also use fluorescent lights, with the tubes as close to the pots as possible.) Then get ready to wait...

It will probably be three months before you see any sign of growth, though with warm, well-lit conditions germination can begin in less than one month. Then, you'll start noticing minute, flat, dark green leafy things appearing on the soil surface -- these are the gametophytes, the gamete-producing stage of the fern life cycle. Start fertilizing the plants at this point, by misting lightly every week or two with dilute (ca. 1/4 strength) balanced, water soluble fertilizer. By this time it is almost certain that your container will have become contaminated with algae. This is not really a problem, since if all goes well the ferns should have a decent head start. If the algae start to get out of control, cut back on the fertilizer, or try flushing the soil of some nutrients by (very gently!) top-watering with distilled water.

After the gametophytes reach maturity (this takes at least another four months), they will fertilize each other, and light-green leaves will start to grow out from under them. The light-green leaves are the juvenile sporophytes -- the familiar spore-producing part of the life cycle. Fertilization requires sperm cells to swim through a film of water to reach the eggs, so try misting the gametophytes if you are having trouble getting sporophytes to grow.

After the young sporlings have produced a few leaves, carefully pick them out and transplant them to individual pots (you can use the same soil that you used for sowing the spores). Acclimate them very gradually to lower humidity, and, if possible, get them into a nice, bright, tropical greenhouse. Continue to fertilize them regularly, and within a year or two you should have more lovely young staghorn ferns than you'll know what to do with.

Your original pots of gametophytes will continue to survive for quite a while. They will keep generating new plants for many years, in fact, if you remember to remove the young sporophytes from time to time (if you leave the sporelings in place, they'll eventually smother the gametophytes with their leaves). Kept in an enclosed container, and given minimal fertilizer, the gametophytes will live and grow very slowly for an indefinite period, providing a steady supply of new sporelings.