4 Reasons Why You Need to Start your Garden from Seed

Who doesn't get excited when the seed catalogs start arriving in the mail or when you browse the web looking at the many different things you can grow from seed? I know I do. So you can imagine how anxious I get as a seed retailer, with thousands of vegetable seeds staring at me, when vegetable gardening season is so close at hand.

Like you, I am ready to get my tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and basil all going, even if the weather tells me otherwise, and in 2013, the weather has been saying all kinds of crazy things. One day it's 80 degrees, the next 50. Those types of temperature swings make it tough to pinpoint when you can move your young seedlings outdoors. I will save that for a future article.

Today, I wanted to concentrate of why you need to start your vegetable, fruits and herbs from seed. Specifically, let's talk about four benefits.

Control
I won't say that I am a control freak, but when it comes to my garden, I sort of am. When planting from seeds, you are in complete control from beginning to end of that plant and your garden. You know where your seeds come from, what is in your soil to make your vegetable seeds grow and so on.

Cost
Buying seeds is much cheaper than buying the equivalent number in plants. So, for example, in a typical tomato seed packet, you will receive a couple hundred seeds. If you were to buy that number of plants, one, you probably would not have enough room for all of them, and two, that cost would be astronomical.

Time
When stored properly, your vegetable seeds can last you for many years. Proper storage simply means a cool, dry location. I have onion seeds that are 9 years old and I am still getting those onion seeds to germinate. This means you won't have to plant all of your seeds from your packet. You can plant the seeds that you need and save the rest of your seeds for subsequent years.

Space Saver
I like to start a bunch of seeds of the same variety in a single planting pot, then thin the seeds out as the seeds germinate and get bigger. This comes in handy when indoor space is limited, such as is the case for what I have available on my window sill. I can have 7 different varieties going at once on one window sill, and when the time comes, I will thin the seedlings out.

I am sure if I were to post the question on our Facebook page, "What are your benefits for starting your veggies, fruits and herbs from seed?", I would get hundreds of different reasons. These are 4 that I believe are good reasons to start your garden from seeds.

How to Grow Garlic at Home

If you have ever cooked with garlic then you already know the wonderful aroma garlic emits.  Whether you are frying garlic up to mix with some onions for a steak or adding garlic to a sauce, garlic is the epitome of recipe versatility.

So it makes you wonder why garlic is not grown more at home.  Garlic is easy to grow, as you will see, all you need to do is get the space ready in your garden, set up your soil and choose a variety.

Let’s start with the space your garlic will need.  This will depend on how much garlic you want to grow, but when planning, account for 6 inches of space between each garlic clove planted.  In a four foot by four foot raised bed, that accounts for ninety-six garlic cloves planted (if my math serves me correctly).  If that amount is too much, and really, can you plant too much garlic? Just be sure to down size accordingly.

Now that you know your space, you need to set up the soil your garlic is going to grow in.  Garlic loves soil that is rich in organic matter and drains very well.  If you are planting your garlic in a raised bed that will help with the drainage.  As for the soil itself, mixing in some peat or coir with finished compost or even well seasoned manure along with some perlite or vermiculite will go a long way.  As a side note, try to keep your soil’s pH above 5.8 but less than 7.

When planting the garlic clove, the pointed end should be facing up.   If you plant the clove upside down your garlic will develop a curved shoot and that will lead to misshapen bulbs.

Garlic comes in two basic varieties, hard neck and soft neck.  They are then broken down into a larger number of types.  Your local garden center or co-op can tell you which types grow best in your area. 

While you can plant the cloves from the garlic available at your local supermarket, it is not recommended.  You will not be sure which variety of garlic you are getting or whether or not that garlic can even grow in your area.  Purchase plantable garlic cloves from your local garden center, organic if possible.

Once you have your garlic cloves planted, be sure to cover with 3 inches of mulch to help protect them from potential frost.  Straw or hay works great.  This helps protect your cloves as well as keep weeds to a minimum.   It also helps conserve moisture in the soil.

The soil for your garlic needs to be moist.  Water regularly, however, do not overwater.  You don’t want to saturate the soil.

The best rule of thumb when it comes to harvesting your garlic is, when half your leaves are brown and the other half are green, your garlic is ready to be pulled.  This may vary based on variety and your location, but it’s a good rule to get you going. 

How to Start Your Vegetable Seeds

You have begun receiving your vegetable seed catalogs or you have been receiving vegetable seeds every month with your Vegetable Seeds of the Month Club subscription. Thoughts of bountiful harvests from all of those vegetable seeds are dancing through your head, but before you get ahead of yourself, you want to ensure that the vegetable seeds you already own or the vegetable seeds you are about to buy, will germinate and thrive.

Here are some tips to help start your vegetable seeds.

Read, understand and follow the planting instructions on the back of your vegetable seed packets. These vegetable seed instructions pertain to the vegetable seeds within that packet and will help increase the chances of success. On the back of your vegetable seed packets you will see everything from planting depths to distances and when you can expect your vegetable seed to fully mature into fruits that you can actually harvest.

Many, if not most of your vegetable seeds will be started indoors. This gives you a jump start on your vegetable garden while the temperatures outdoors might be too cold. The items you will need to start your vegetable seeds indoors, are of course, your vegetable seeds, vegetable seed starting soil (homemade or purchased), something to put your seed starting soil in, and an area that receives adequate sunlight throughout the day such as a window sill.

Once your pots (or other vegetable seed starting container) are set up with your vegetable seed starting soil, place your vegetable seeds in the pot as per the directions on your vegetable seed packet. You will thin them out later into their own pots. Make sure you label your vegetable seed pots. You may think you will remember where you planted your vegetable seeds, but over the course of a few weeks, you may forget.

Water your pots that contain your vegetable seeds, but do not saturate.

The best environment for starting vegetable seeds is a humidity dome and/or a green house. Obviously a greenhouse takes up a lot of room and can be costly; a humidity dome on the other hand can cost just a couple of dollars and takes up very little space. Consider one of these options when starting your vegetable seeds. You will also have to water less with a humidity dome.

Once your vegetable seeds have germinated and become seedlings, you will need to thin them out into their own pots. So be sure to plan ahead if you are limited on room. Once you start thinning your vegetable seedlings, room is a factor.

 As your vegetable seedlings turn into larger plants, be sure to transplant into larger planting containers with new vegetable seed starting soil. This will make sure you are not restricting their root’s growth.

On a final note. Before you can transplant your vegetable plants from the indoors to the outdoors, you have to harden them off. That means acclimating your vegetable plants to the outdoors. This is simply done, by taking them outdoors during the day, and bringing them in at night when the temperatures to begin to drop. Once the temperatures are where they should be for the variety of vegetable seed you have planted, you can leave them outdoors overnight or transplant them into their permanent location in your vegetable garden.

Growing Basil

I love to grow basil.  The Italian Large Leaf variety of basil to be exact.  This variety of basil has such a nice aroma to it, you can almost smell the mozzarella cheese, home grown tomatoes and olive oil you can add to your basil for a nice summer dish.

Just as good as the smell of fresh basil, is how easy basil is to grow at home.  Basil is one of those plants that can be grown in your backyard vegetable garden or in pots, if limited space is an issue.  Either way, your basil will grow fine.  The downfall of basil (as if basil really had any), is that basil loves heat.  Even the slightest cooler temperatures (under 50 degrees Fahrenheit), may make your basil fall over and begin to wilt.

The upside of your basil, because basil loves heat, your basil will do very well in the summertime.  With your basil’s quick to maturity growing capabilities, you can be enjoying fresh basil in just a few weeks.

Basil seeds are fairly small and while you can plant your basil seeds up to a quarter of an inch deep, all you really need to do is lightly cover your basil seeds with some soil.  

If you are going to start your basil seeds indoors, just make sure your basil seeds, when planted, are placed in a warm location and receive at least 5 hours of sunlight daily.  If you decide to sow your basil seeds directly outdoors, you want to make sure that temperatures remain above 50 degrees, or otherwise cover your basil with a cloche, row cover etc.

The Italian Large Leaf variety basil, when given the room, will grow very large.  So make sure you space out your basil at least eight inches.  Your basil will use up that space.

Regardless of which variety of basil you decide to go with (there are plenty to choose from), most varieties of basil love full sun and require a light, but even watering.  As a side note, basil is a great companion plant for tomatoes.

A lot of people like to “warm” up their garden beds for their basil.  This can easily be accomplished by laying a clear .6 mil. thick plastic tarp over top of your garden beds and letting the sun do the work for you.  This process will create a nice warm area for your basil.

Expect your basil seeds to germinate in as little as 5 days, although 10 days is more likely.  

One of the beauties of basil is that you do not need to harvest the entire plant.  You can simply snip off basil leaves with a pair of scissors and use it when you need it, leaving the basil in the ground to continually grow.

The real hard part is finding recipes for all that home grown basil you are about to grow.

Grow Carrots from Seeds

Every time I cut up a carrot, especially the carrots that I harvest from my home vegetable garden and have grown directly from carrot seeds, brings back memories of my childhood when my grandmother would pull some carrots from her home vegetable garden and use them in her homemade chicken noodle soup.

I remember the image vividly of those long bright orange carrots coming out of the dark rich soil in her home vegetable garden directly behind her Trenton, NJ house.  I remember her cutting those carrots up with a knife, using such precision that the sight of the evenly cut carrot slices would make an electric powered carrot slicer or food processor jealous.

She would then add the carrot slices to her homemade chicken soup broth to soften, and then finish the recipe.  While I have never been able to duplicate her chicken noodle soup recipe, no matter how hard I have tried, duplicating the process of growing carrots from seeds at home in my own vegetable garden has become almost second nature to me these days. 

Growing carrots from seeds, while challenging, is not impossible.  A couple of challenges you will find when growing carrots from seeds in your own home vegetable garden, include, the size of the carrot seed, spacing those seeds out, and, making sure the soil you are growing your carrots in is friable.   That is … the soil for your carrots should be very loose or able to crumble into small pieces.

Let’s first talk about the size of your carrot seeds.  Carrot seeds are very small.  Not as small as celery seeds (celery is another ingredient in grand mom’s chicken noodle soup), but hard to handle on an individual basis nonetheless.  If you plant carrot seeds too close to one another, the growth of your carrots will be inhibited and then you will end up with either small and fat carrots or your carrots will not grow at all.

A good friend of mine online, Gardening Jones, writes a wonderful blog.  On her vegetable gardening blog, she writes a step by step process on how to make your own seed tape and she uses carrot seeds for her example.  I have linked to that blog post here: http://gardeningjones.com/blog/2012/05/01/planting-seeds-made-easier/

A seed tape is nothing more than as out it sounds.  You take your carrot seeds, place them on a long piece of tape, usually a masking tape variety, spacing your carrot seeds out as per the instructions on your carrot seed packet, and then plant the tape (with the carrot seeds on it of course) at the depth that is written on your carrot seed packet.  Moisture and weather conditions will remove the carrot seed tape’s adhesive.  This allows your carrot seeds to be planted as normal except your carrot seeds are nicely and evenly spaced out for optimal growth.

As for the carrot seed tape, or in the case of Gardening Jones’ carrot seed tape tutorial, tissue paper, that will simply erode away and become compost in your soil.  So you do not need to worry about taking the carrot seed tape out once planted.

For the soil your carrots will grow in, it needs to be loose, friable and crumbly.  If you have soil that is heavy in clay, the quickest way to accomplish what your carrots need is to add plenty of perlite, compost and peat.  This will loosen your soil up for your carrots, very quickly.    While perlite and peat are available at any home center, you will more than likely need to make your own compost.  These ingredients also add other useful things to your soil for your carrots; however I will save soil enrichment for another time.

Proper spacing and loose soil will ensure that when you grow your carrots from seed, great results will happen, every growing season.

About the Author 
Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us. Be sure to join Mike`s vegetable seeds mailing list. 

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

Grow Tomatoes from Seed

Tomato Seeds Marglobe variety

Tomatoes are the number one item grown in the home vegetable garden.  And while many people will still and always refer to the tomato as a vegetable the tomato is botanically a fruit. 

Tomatoes are also one of the easiest fruits to grow in the home vegetable garden.  With the wide range of tomato varieties to choose from, you are sure to find the right tomato plant for your specific climate.

How you specifically use your tomato for consumption may also steer you into the direction of which tomato variety you will grow.  For instance, I find using home grown Roma tomatoes are the most ideal to make tomato based sauces and tomato based salsas.  The main reason being, besides the great taste Roma tomatoes have, is the fact that it is easier to remove the seeds from Roma tomatoes.

Now that is not to say that other varieties of tomatoes such as cherry, pear or beefsteak tomatoes would not serve the same purpose for a recipe.  From my own experience, removing tomato seeds can be time consuming in varieties not named Roma.  I will save the beefsteak tomatoes for my summer lunchtime sandwich with mayo and cherry tomatoes for salads.

Regardless of which tomato variety you choose, I believe that you will not find anything more rewarding in your garden, especially for your tomato crop, than growing all of those tasty tomatoes from seeds.  Something about the challenge of growing tomatoes directly from the seed, starting your tomato plants indoors before you can even move the tomato plants to the outdoors, strikes me (and maybe you) as one of those tasks where you say, “Yeah, I did it, I grew those tomatoes from seeds”.

Here is what I do, to maximize the success of my tomato plants, and of course yield nice juicy tomatoes for all of those tomato recipe items I mentioned earlier.

As with other seeds, you won’t have much luck in the germination process with your tomato seeds if you start with a terrible starter soil.  Here is where you have plenty of options to start your tomato seeds in.  You have the expandable peat pellets.  These are small hard and compressed starter pellets that you add hot water to and they expand.  I use these quite often to start my tomato seeds and do very well with them.  Using the peat pellets, I easily get about 95% to 97% germination rates of my tomato seeds. Of course I also use them in conjunction with a propagation dome. 

Along with peat pellets, you can start your tomato seeds in a pre-packaged starter soil that you can purchase at any home or garden center.  These starter soils are especially formulated for seed starting.  They now even make starter soils for tomato seeds.  Tomato seed starting soil includes specific nutrients that not only increase germination rates, but help build strong roots of the young tomato plants, when the tomato plants need it the most.

You can also make your own tomato seed starting soil with many recipes found by doing a quick Google search.  Tomato seed starting soil recipes are plenty in abundance online.  You are sure to find a tomato seed starting soil that meets your climate and zone requirements.

Under optimal growing conditions, and that means, your tomato seed starters are getting at least 6 hours of sunlight per day, are in a propagation dome (or something similar), and the soil is moist but not saturated, you can expect your tomato seeds to germinate in as little as 6 days.  If you do not see any activity out of your tomato seeds after day 10, something has gone wrong, and you may have to start over.

Tomatoes love to grow in climates that are hot and humid, which explains why we here in New Jersey do so well with growing tomatoes.  Even in the worse of years with drought, our tomatoes in New Jersey seem to produce above average.  With that said, do not transplant your tomato starters too soon.  If the threat of frost is still at a medium to high level in your area, keep your tomato seed starters indoors until fear of frost passes by.  A single night’s worth of frost will decimate your tomato seed starters.  You can always cover them at night with a cloche or a 6 mil thick clear plastic tarp, but I like to leave my tomato seed starters indoors until the time comes to move them.

I won’t get into too much detail regarding hardening off your tomato plants in this article and podcast series.  As a quick overview, hardening off your tomato plants simply means to get them used to the outdoors so as not to shock your tomato plants when you do make the move.

When planting your tomato starters outdoors, choose a location that receives a full day’s worth of sun and try not to plant your tomato plants in an area where you previously planted potatoes, peppers or eggplants. 

When it comes to spacing out your tomato plants, I have read a thousand different sizes that will work for hundreds of different tomato varieties.  For me, I like to prop up my tomato plants with tomato cages.  They cost a couple of bucks a piece from the local home center and are virtually maintenance free.  Getting back to tomato spacing, I use the measurement of the diameter of the tomato cage top and add 6 inches.  It is this measurement that I use to space out my tomato plants.  This method has worked out well for me for the better part of 30 years.

Some people like to use tomato stakes and other methods to support their tomato plants and all I am sure they are all fine.  In fact my dad used me and my brother’s old hockey sticks when we were kids to use as stakes for his tomato plants.  You are only limited by your imagination.  However, when in doubt, space out your tomato plants no less than fifteen inches, and even at that spacing, that will be tight.

As a side note, yes those Topsy Turvey™ upside down tomato planters really do work and produce a lot of tomatoes.  So if you are limited on space, it may be a good way for you to go.  You can also make your own upside down tomato growers out of some 5 gallon buckets, but I will save that for a future discussion.

Now that you have your tomatoes started, transplanted and supported, let’s talk about simple care.  While your tomato plants are growing give them a good watering making sure the soil your tomatoes are planted in remains moist but not saturated.  Once you begin to harvest your tomatoes you can reduce your watering, unless of course conditions are very dry.

Tomatoes required high amounts of nutrients, especially Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorous.  Be sure to add these as the season goes on.  Again there are plenty of choices for your tomato plants, from organic, to Miracle Gro™ and tomato specific formulas.   Me personally, I create loads of compost and will continually add this to the base of my tomato plants throughout the course of my gardening season. 

Good luck with your tomato crop for many seasons to come!

About the Author 
 Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us. Be sure to join Mike`s vegetable seeds mailing list.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club: