Starting Seeds

Growing plants from seeds offers significant advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness and variety. For the price of a single plant, you can potentially buy 100 seeds, significantly reducing your gardening expenses.

While local nurseries typically have a limited plant selection, ordering seeds opens up an endless array of varieties to choose from. Starting from seeds also allows you to carefully time and control the growth process, ensuring your plants reach the ideal size at precisely the right moment.

A few suggestions

Should I start seeds indoors or outdoors?

I generally recommend starting seeds indoors for the best results. The small spaces and controlled environment mean good germination rates and easier work. You'll use less water to get things going and only thriving starts get planted out, leaving fewer empty gaps in the outdoor beds. With good timing, the seedlings are just the right size to succeed when planted outside.

What if I don't have room or want to start them outside?

Sometimes starting seeds outside works fine. I start all my cover crops in ground, and some select plants that seem to do very well when planted outside. I do take extra steps to keep them consistently moist, which is more challenging outside. I soak or even presprout some seeds like peas and beets before planting them. I also may use newspaper or burlap as a moisture preserving cover, and of course I monitor them and water freqently when starting out.

What containers are best for seed starting?

It all depends on how many seeds you want to start and what you have on hand. When you're starting out, yogurt containers or reused pots are fine. Water seedlings by setting them in a tray with water until they soak it up from the bottome. This keeps the water from washing away the dirt when top watering. I start many seeds at once so multi-cell trays work best for me, but there are a lot of options.

Strengthen Your Gardening Skills

Getting ready for Seed Starting

Selecting Seeds

Wherever you are, pick seeds and varieties that are going to thrive in your conditions. How long is your growing season? What are daily conditions like in the summer? What is your elevation? If the garden seeds you pick aren't adapted, they'll need more attention and water while producing poorly. Do yourself a favor, be selective.

Ultimately, saving seeds from your favorite veggies will save money. Use open-pollinated seeds to get started and then save some seeds from the most successful plants. This way you'll build a seed stock that has adapted to your conditions.

Techniques for starting seeds

Seeds & Sprouting

Viable seeds are basically seeds with a living baby inside them. Not all seeds are viable or easy to start. Some seeds have hard coats or anti-sprout chemicals that break down over time. Special conditions may even be needed, like a long cold spell.

Most common garden seeds sprout easily, so long as they have soil and water, with light and any nutrients they need as they grow. Buy from reputable seed companies and only what you can use before they get old. If the seeds have low germination rates, you can just start more seeds to account for it.

Viability testing may be helpful. For testing, place 10 seeds on a moist paper towel, roll the paper towel up and place inside a plastic bag. Leave the bag in a warm spot and check every day for sprouting. If 7 of the seeds sprout, that is about 70% viability. If no seeds sprout, look at the seeds after 7-10 days. Do they look swollen or alive?

If you want to sprout specialty plants and perennials, you are more likely to encounter seeds that are harder to start. For tough seed coats, nicking or sanding holes in the coat can improve sprouting. Plants that make sprout suppressing chemicals (parsley seeds for example), will sprout much quicker after 2-3 days of soaking with several changes of water. Others may need a prolonged period of cold before sprouting, either stored outside or in a refrigerator.

I will generally read recommendations for starting a plant and then adapt my methods based on my failures and successes. I frequently pre-sprout or at least soak seeds ahead of time if I'm planting directly in the garden. I pre-sprout beets, peas and beans. Cucurbits like cucumber, squash and melon do fine with being sprouted to 1 set of true leaves in a small pot or cell before being planted out.

Transplanting

Because I start many seeds indoors, successful transplanting in an important part of my garden system. The plants should be healthy and not rootbound as planting time grows near. I start putting them out in a shady spot to acclimate to outdoors and the sun intensity. I'll need to keep them from drying out while I watch for a cloudy or rainy day. I may have to go ahead & transplant, but I'll use the rain when I can.

If my pre-planning was good, I'll have transplant size starts ready when they are most likely to thrive outside and produce a crop. Planning takes knowing my first and last frost dates, crop days to harvest, and best transplant dates. I also need to know how quickly seeds sprout and reach good transplant size.

My favorite way to use transplants though, is to have extra plants of all types to stick in an unexpected spot I find. Herbs, salad greens can get tucked under other plants or in shady spots. Having backups is always helpful for when the plants already in beds die.