Buying seeds for the vegetable garden in the big box stores like Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, and Rural King is fine to do. It’s where I usually bought my seeds in my early gardening years. Walmart carries Burpee; Lowes carries Ferry-Mores; Rural King carries Livingston. But in recent seasons, I’ve been ordering seeds through catalogs and online websites.
Some of the varieties are the same seed from the in-store version as the online/catalog version, but I find that in the seed packets from online, there is more seeds at a lower cost. I love buying a variety of seeds for the vegetable garden from Baker Creek, MIGardener, and Johnny’s Select Seeds for all various reasons.
Create a Budget
How much money can you plan for this month to invest into seeds? Just because a company offers free shipping after spending $50, $125, or $200 does not mean that is what you need to spend on seeds.
Some may be needing to save some funds to buy transplants at a greenhouse or garden center later on, so keep that in mind. Others may be needing to save some money to purchase a grow light and other seed starting tools. A budget for seeds for the vegetable garden is part the whole garden budget.
It is okay to have a small budget for $20 for a small garden and more for a larger garden. The goal is to make sure that it is something that you can afford with the money that you have earned.
Choose What to Plant in the Garden
If this is your first year planting a garden, I suggest starting with buying transplants at a local greenhouse. Figure out what you like to grow first. Other plants like beans, peas, and pumpkins, start for seeds outdoors directly into the soil.
Pick varieties that you have liked planting before, or new varieties to try out. Browse through catalogs and websites to create a list of seeds you would like to buy.
Keep within your budget. If something can’t be afforded this year, there is always next year as well. Seeds can be stored for a few years, depending on the plant. If you buy a packet of yellow tomatoes this year and only use 6 seeds out of 50, you will have those yellow tomato seeds for a few years and can budget for purple tomato seeds the next season.
In order to start seeds indoors, you need a little know how to help you succeed with healthy, beautiful plants for your garden. What supplies do you need to successfully start seeds? Check out my post on “Basic Seed Starting Supplies.” How do you start seeds? Get all the steps through this post, “Seed Starting: How to Start Seeds Indoors.”
Ordering Seeds from Baker Creek
All seeds from Baker Creek are organic and heirloom. Heirloom seeds are great for saving seeds from and reproducing the same variety the following the season.
If you have never requested one of their seed catalogs before, this is a must. Their photography is absolutely gorgeous throughout their website and their catalogs. They offer a free catalog, as well as their whole seed catalog that offers every type of seed they have available as well as the history of the seeds.
Online, they offer all their seed packets and it is quick to add items to a cart to checkout. Their website is rareseeds.com. Shipping is quick too.
After ordering a few packets of seeds, they throw in a few free packets. This may not be game changer when deciding where to buy seeds from, but it surely is loads of fun. It introduces one to different varieties that one may not have wanted to try.
This has happened to me. Some of the free varieties I’ve tried are Merlot Lettuce, St. Valery Carrot, and Tomesol White Tomato. Merlot Lettuce does great in the summer sun and heat with its darker leaf color. St. Valery Carrot is absolutely delicious. Tomesol White Tomato has led me to wanting to grow a variety of all sorts of different colors of tomatoes.
Ordering Seeds from MIGardener
MIGardener’s one focus is to pass on the savings to their customers. I love this. It has some of the lowest cost seeds, even compared to seed packets in doors. Every packet though still comes with loads of seeds. Cabbage packets have about 300 seeds in most varieties available from MIGardener.
When I ordered from them this year, some items were out of stock. That’s okay though! Ordering early is the best, but I waited until after Christmas and then after I ordered flower seeds to finally order some of my vegetable seeds. When they are out of stock, I resource the seeds that I want from Baker Creek or from local stores. Neither MIGardener or Baker Creek had simple yellow pepper seeds, so my goal is to buy those from Rural King this year.
MIGardener has free shipping for orders over $12. Majority of seed packets cost $2, so it only takes ordering 6 packets of seeds. This is great if keeping to a monthly budget and needing to split up the cost of seed orders. Instead of spending $80 in one month, spend $40 across two months. The small company does send emails for when they ship their items, which is nice because it takes a few days for it to arrive.
Ordering Seeds from Johnny’s Select Seeds
Johnny’s has both hybrid and organic varieties. Shipping costs are not necessarily free, but shipping is free after $200. Outside of a farm operation that is a lot of seeds to buy! But, Johnny’s has other products available such as berries, seed starting equipment, and landscape fabric. Buying these products with seeds can make that free shipping attainable.
What I love the most about Johnny’s seeds is their new and improved varieties. Last growing season, I tried Monty F1 broccoli, a hybrid variety of broccoli that is more heat resistant. The heirloom varieties I was using in previous years were bolting every summer. I was planting my broccoli in my summer garden, which I’ve done before with broccoli plants from a greenhouse. That broccoli thrived. In the next few years, the ones I started from seed could not handle the heat. Coming across this broccoli heat resistant variety from Johnny’s was awesome.
Last growing season, my problem was waiting and waiting for my summer tomatoes. My mom bought tomato transplants, and she had tomatoes early. The difference wasn’t in her buying from a greenhouse and me starting my own from seeds. Instead, the difference was in the variety. She had Early Girl tomatoes. I didn’t. I actually didn’t have any early ones! This year, I discovered a new variety descended from the Early Girl variety from Johnny’s, New Girl tomato.
Storing Seeds
For the longest time, I kept my seed packets in a shoe box, closed the lid, and would use them again next year. If I could spend whatever on gardening, I would buy a plastic clear container with smaller clear containers that are used to store photographs. Other gardeners use these organization totes for their seeds. I love it. But . . . I can never get myself to budget for one when what I do works for me.
I have a small clear tote that I’ve used for other things before. To keep seeds organized within the tote, I’ll place similar seeds within the same quart size baggie. Lettuce, spinach, and endive go in the same baggie while I have a separate storage bag for all my varieties of pepper seeds and another separate storage bag for all my tomato seeds. And it works.
My one advice for this is to not place only one variety of seed in one storage bag. I currently have this going on with some of my flower seeds. It took a long time to label and individually pack each baggie, but the worse part is the long term effects. When I need those seeds, I’m searching through countless baggies with barely anything in them to find the specific seed packet. For seeds that only have one variety, I plan to regroup them into categories, like spring flowers or summer flowers, or in the case of vegetables, spring crops and summer crops.
Wait Until Next Growing Season
If something is not in stock, or it was out of what you can afford, it is all good. There is always next year! The garden grows every year, but the gardener grows after every season. In the fall and winter, reflect to see what varieties that you enjoyed, what varieties did not work for you, and what varieties you still wish to try.
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