Seeds vs. Plants

I had a great gardening consultation this afternoon.  The weather was gorgeous and I had a blast doing what I love to do - sharing information about gardening to help people feel more confident in the garden.  As I was leaving my client smiled and said, "I feel excited about gardening again!" Music to my ears.

One of the things we talked about today during the consult was growing things from seed vs. buying plants from the store.  Often people feel intimidated by starting plants by seed.  I encourage people to start small and pick one plant from their usual repertoire and try to grow it from seed and see how it goes.  Once you have success and your confidence builds you can slowly shift over to starting most things by seed.

It's much cheaper to buy a seed packet than it is to buy plants from the store.  Plus you can get more variety from seed catalogues if you go that route.

The nice thing about seed packets is that you are highly unlikely to use the whole seed packet in one season, so you can save the seeds for next year. The seed germination rates will decrease slightly so you'll have to plant a few more to plan accordingly.  Store the seeds in a dry, cool place over the winter.

This picture is from one of my earlier years of starting plants by seed.  

I start my seeds in a basic organic seed starting mixture.  I make my pots out of newspaper.  I purchased a small heating mat to warm the pots until they germinate.  In total, it's really a much smaller investment if you consider the cost of buying plants at the store.

I look forward to when the seed catalogues start arriving in the mail so I can pore over the latest things available and start dreaming of what my garden will look like this year.  I don't expect that everyone will share the same enthusiasm that I do for starting seeds but if you try it you might find it's not as scary or as hard as you originally thought.  Give it a try!

Some impatiens flowers growing in a container from seed.