Starting your plants from seeds instead of seedlings can be a lot of work, but there are some awesome benefits as well!
Read on to learn why starting your own seeds can be worth the time and energy.
I love growing the plants for my kitchen garden from seed!
While there's nothing wrong with buying transplants (I enjoy that too!) there are some benefits to starting your plants from seeds.
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Seeds are Less Expensive than Seedlings
If you've ever outfitted your garden with seedlings from your local nursery, you know that can get expensive very quickly!
Starting your plants from seeds can be very cost-effective in comparison. Seeds are generally inexpensive, allowing you to buy more plants with a smaller budget.
For example, instead of spending $5.99 on a single Sweet Million tomato plant at Home Depot, you could buy a package of 25 Sweet Million tomato seeds for the same price (approximately).
The reason why seedlings cost so much more is because someone else has done the work of germinating the seeds and (hopefully) hardening off the plant for you.
By committing to doing that work yourself, you can potentially get more plants for less money than you’d pay for a single plant at the garden centre.
You Can Start Gardening Sooner
If you look forward to gardening as soon as spring hits, then growing from seed might be for you!
Getting a jump start on your garden isn’t just fun, it’s practical too.
There are many seeds that benefit from being started indoors well before it’s warm enough to plant anything outside. Depending on your planting zone, you may be able to start your seeds as early as February!
Here in zone 6 (Canada) I usually begin to start my seeds indoors around mid-March. I like to start plants that grow very slowly (like bell peppers) super early so that I can get a longer harvest later in the year.
You Can Grow Interesting Varieties
I think my love for growing things from seed started when I realized that I could get access to so many varieties of plants that garden centres never carry.
There is a world of unique beautiful seeds out there that is absolutely worth exploring. From heirloom vegetable seeds to beautiful rare flowers, you're bound to find something interesting to grow in your garden.
I had never seen seedlings for the popular Brad’s Atomic tomatoes in nurseries or garden centres, but I was able to buy them online from a Canadian seed company. They are delicious and so beautiful, and if I had never looked into growing my plants from seeds, I would have missed out on them.
It’s Deeply Satisfying
There is something so fulfilling about watching a plant grow from a tiny seed into something beautiful.
We give our energy to this little growing thing and nurture it into its full potential, which ultimately rewards us with something pretty or tasty or maybe just a nice treat for the bees.
I think most gardeners enjoy the process of planting a seed, caring for it, watching the leaves unfurl day after day… it’s an exercise in patience, but also in hope.
As Audrey Hepburn once said, “to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”
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