Even though it’s only February, this is the perfect time to start thinking about your garden and what you would like to grow. You can certainly buy seedlings from a nursery but starting from seed indoors can offer gardeners a much broader selection and it’s my favorite way to beat those late-winter blues.
Before we dive into the how of starting you seeds indoors you will need to figure out the what and the when.
What should you grow?
Simply put, you should grow what you actually plan on using. If you don’t like tomatoes you might not want to devote time and resources to growing them. The same goes for herbs or even flowers. It is also important to assess how much space you have for the fully grown plant.
Where to get seeds?
As soon as the first seed catalogs start arriving in December, I know it is time to start dreaming about the garden. Here are some of my favorite sources for purchasing seed:
- Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
- High Mowing Organic Seeds
- Johnny’s Selected Seeds
- Prairie Moon Nursery
- Farmacie Isolde
- Experimental Farm Network
It is also worth checking the selection at your local garden center. They might not have the variety found online and in catalogs but it can be a good starting place if you are a beginner.
When to Start Your Seeds
Determining the right time to start seeds can be a little tricky when you are just getting started. The first thing you need to do is determine your last anticipate frost day for your area. There are several calculators out there to help determine that information but I like the one from Almanac.com which uses data from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to calculate the most likely last frost date for your zip code.
Once you have that date, which for me in Cleveland, Ohio is around April 29th, take a look at your seed packet.
Most seed packets, like this one for the Tunisian Baklouti Pepper, will say how many weeks you will need to start them before the last frost date. For this one it’s 8 to 12 weeks. So find your last frost date (April 29th in my case) and count backwards. That would have me starting my pepper seeds sometime between February 11th and March 4th.
If you’re not into counting backwards, Almanac.com also has a handy planting calculator that you could use as well.
Should all seeds be started indoors?
Not everything needs to be started indoors. In fact, there are lots of vegetables (and some herbs and flowers) that do much better being direct-sown which means you plant the seeds exactly where you would like them to grow. For me direct sown vegetables include things like beets, carrots, and lettuce.
Most packaging will tell you if the seed needs to be started indoors or can be direct sown but you’ll find that the seeds that require an indoor start, like tomatoes and peppers, also require a longer growing season ( sometimes written as “days to maturity”).
What’s Next?
Now that you have figured out what to grow and when to start, click on to Part 2, where we’ll look at the supplies you’ll need to get started.
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