Each person has to decide at what point their garden is ready for certain types of herb and vegetable plants. Creating a planting calendar will help you plan correctly from seed to harvest. Perennial herbs can be planted just about anytime it starts o get warm, but annual herbs such as basil and dill need to wait until all danger of frost is gone. Tomatoes and other warm-season vegetables are also frost tender and will be damaged by even a light frost, even at 36-38 degrees. Cool-season vegetables like lettuce and broccoli like a bit of frost but a hard freeze can cause damage.
Seeds or starter plants?
Half the fun of starting a vegetable garden comes at this time of year, where you can look at all the new seed varieties and decide which ones to plant. Then comes: Do you start indoors under lights, or sow outside immediately? It all depends on preference.
Many simply buy our starter plants, where we offer the choice of many varieties, with different maturities. What’s the difference between seeds and starter plants? Cost is one. An entire packet of seeds will often cost less than one starter plant or pack. And if you don’t plant all of them in one season, many seeds remain viable for years. And even though we carry so many plants, there’s still much more variety to be had with seeds, and you can share seeds easily.
But there’s more risk with seeds; some may not germinate, or plants you’ve started indoors might not be hardened off enough to endure our outdoor weather. An indoor growing environment requires bright sunlight, along with planting materials and the space to do it, so there’s time, effort, and expense involved.
Starter plants are ready to be planted, and it’s so easy to do, and they’re ready to take off when planted, saving time until you can begin harvesting. All this starter plants a very attractive option for many gardeners, particularly those who haven’t had much luck with growing from seed.
If you decide to start seeds indoors for the first time, you may find yourself tempted to want to try some of everything. It’s probably best to start out slow your first season with a few varieties and see how it goes. Then again, you can start a lot of seeds, and if some don’t work out you can always buy plants!
Either way, both methods are incredibly satisfying, and once you start to pick fresh veggies and fruits, it doesn’t really matter how you got there.