Seeds or Seedlings?

When shopping for seeds and seedlings, one can get overwhelmed at a garden center.  The shelves of seedlings - fresh young plants available in 4-,6-,or 9-packs and sometimes in singles - are just begging you to take them home and put them in your garden.  You'll see as many as twenty different types of tomatoes; a wide variety of mild, sweet, and hot peppers; several different versions of pickling, burpless, long, and seedless cucumbers; and by the time you get to the squash you won't even care anymore whether it has a crook in it's neck!  And then as you start to add up that $3.50 or so per single plant or per pack, you'll feel compelled to wander over to the seed displays, thinking you may fare better over there.

It is helpful to do some homework before you go.  First, get in your head which vegetables you really want in your summer garden this year, and think about how many of each you might like.  Remember that you'll likely get more produce from a few plants that are well-cared for than many plants that you can't keep up with.  Prioritize, and make up your mind ahead of time what is most important to you.  If you want to grow tomatoes, do you want full-sized fruits, or plum tomatoes, or cherry tomatoes?  It's also helpful for you to measure and sketch out your garden space, thinking through how much space you really have.  Four square feet of garden space are great for 2 full-sized tomato plants, 4 pepper plants, 4 eggplant, 3 cucumber plants, and 2 squash or zucchini plants.  Go ahead and make a shopping list, complete with the numbers of each type you intend to buy. 

You can feel confident that when it comes to seedlings, the ones you see in your local garden center are appropriate for your garden.  Unless something is labeled "new," generally the varieties sold in most garden centers are tried-and-true.  Look carefully at your labels though - to make sure that the banana pepper you might be buying is a sweet and not a hot variety, or to understand ahead of time that a particular tomato might be completely ripe and ready to eat when it's still yellow!

When it comes to tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, I do recommend that a beginner or novice gardener go ahead and start with seedlings.  Seedlings will get off to a great start if planted correctly and watered, and you'll soon be that much closer to a harvest.  Seed selections are often very similar to the seedling varieties available, but there will likely be a few more unique types to choose from.  Seeds will obviously take longer to get started - usually 1-2 weeks before germination (sprouting) and then another 2 weeks to reach the size of the seedlings you see at your garden center.  There's also a lot that can happen to those sprouts along the way.  They will be much more susceptible to drying out, being attacked by pests, or even catching some sort of fungus.  Even if you want to experiment with a few seeds, go ahead and get a good start with a couple of ready-to-go plants, just so you won't get completely discouraged if things don't work out as well as you might hope. 

On the other hand cucumber, squash, and melons grow strong quickly straight from seeds; so well in fact, that it can be a waste of money buying seedlings.  An old-time rule of thumb for these crops is to plant the seeds straight into your garden soil on May 1.  These days you're completely able to do so earlier - certainly by April 15.  Maybe it's global warming... I don't know.  You'll still need to make sure the soil where you plant the seeds and the appearing sprouts stay damp, and this may require daily watering.  Bright sunny days can dry soil out quickly, but so can wind - so keep your eye on both when you're debating whether to water.  Water only to keep the soil damp and not sopping; too much water can encourage growth of fungi.  Pests to look out for early on are slugs and cutworms - they love to chew through the base of these type of sprouts at night.  In general, it's a little early for these pests, but if you find a felled sprout or two one morning, generously sprinkle some cayenne pepper around the remaining ones. 

Row crops such as okra, green beans, lima beans, field peas, or corn are almost always directly seeded into the soil, though I did happen to see some corn seedlings at Lowe's a couple of weeks ago.  These crops are also better seeded a little later in the season when it's consistently warm at night, and so I'll save them for a later post.