When to Choose Seeds (Instead of Buying the Plant)

When it comes to your kitchen garden, you can buy plants at the nursery or start from seed. Deciding between the two might feel like a random choice, but there’s actually a method to the madness. Let’s break down three options you have for starting plants in the kitchen garden, and discuss when to choose seeds.

Direct Sow Outdoors

Direct sowing is planting your seeds straight into your garden soil instead of starting them indoors then transplanting them outside. Plants that grow quickly and have good germination rates (like arugula, bush beans, and spinach) are great candidates for direct sowing. These fast-growing plants are usually small and would require a lot of plants to fill up a square foot. It’s not economical to buy 16 spinach plants for every square foot you want to fill, when a pack of seeds costs less than $4 and yields dozens of plants that are ready to harvest 45 to 50 days after seeding.

Root vegetables should also be planted right into the garden by seed. Since you are growing beets, carrots, and radishes for their root, you don’t want to risk damaging the root (your harvest!) by transplanting it.

Finally, members of the Cucurbitaceae family like cucumbers, squash, and melons do best with direct sowing. Cucurbit seedlings are easily damaged, have shallow root systems, and don’t transplant well. Not to mention, they germinate well and are fast-growing, so direct sowing seeds is the most economical option.

Start from Seed Indoors

When would you chose to start from seed indoors? Usually it’s to save money or to gain the experience of growing from seed. It could also be because you want to grow a specific variety that the nursery might not carry (think: heirloom tomatoes). As a rule of thumb, you should choose to start seeds indoors if the plant has a longer growing period than your outdoor season allows.

For example, broccoli takes around 100 days to mature from seed to harvest. In Maryland, we can plant broccoli into the garden as early as February, but it wouldn’t be ready to harvest until early June! With our temperatures, the plant would likely send up flower shoots and bolt before we got a lovely head of broccoli.

Start that broccoli from seed indoors in January and that plant has 30 extra days to grow (inside). It transplants out to the garden in February and is ready to harvest in early May, before temps start spiking.

Starting seeds indoors requires space and equipment, but it’s not as hard as you may think and it’s very rewarding to see your garden growing long before the temperatures have warmed outside.

Buy as Plant or Propogate

Sometimes it’s just better to save your time and efforts by buying a plant from the nursery. This is particularly true for slow-growing plants that have low germination rates and specific requirements for germination. For example, rosemary is finicky to start from seed, takes a long time to grow, and is much more easily propagated than grown from seed. You also may opt to buy plants from the nursery when you missed the window to start a slow-growing plant such as broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes or peppers.

You may know our frost dates, but did you know we have three growing seasons in the DMV?

Download this guide to our local growing seasons so you can save time and money by planting the right plants at the right time.