Seed and Plant Selection

Somewhere in the middle of winter, the bug hits us. We start roving around the house looking out the windows, pining for fresh, warm air—and the joy of gardening. It’s then we break out the seed catalogs, daydreaming in wonder at what the next year might bring.

The Basics

The basics of seed and plant selection are easy. We gardening-minded optimists peruse seed catalogs or greenhouse shelves, carefully deciphering dreamy descriptions—having thoughts such as, “Ooo, that one; that’s it!” or “Does ‘good keeper’ with no mention of taste really mean ‘bland’ the same way ‘quaint’ in realtor-speak means ‘small’?—doing our best to procure the best varieties for our idiosyncratic desires, until our virtual or actual cart is full or our partner is giving gentle or not-so-gentle hints, such as, “Where is all of this going to go?’ And, “Will we even eat all of this?”

It’s a beautiful yearly ritual that brings color and wonder into our dreary winter days. In fact, many an overfilled garden can look to especially bleak January days for its genesis.

In its basics, it’s the same process for all of us, but there are a few green thumb gardening secrets that will make your seeds and seedlings more likely to live up to your hopes and desires.

The Secrets

Ask Gardening Friends

Our most important allies in this venture are our fellow gardeners. For every species, all gardeners have varieties they’ve come to love for myriads of idiosyncratic reasons, and the heart of a gardener is one that loves to share that which is most precious. Ask gardening friends in your area, and they’ll likely be more than happy to share their collected nuggets of wisdom on plant varieties that are best for your area. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a gardener reticent enough not to bubble effusively about their favorites if given the chance. In my own gardening journey, the best variety-selection advice I’ve ever gotten has been from dear gardening friends and family. While I regularly try others, these stalwarts still populate most of my garden today and remind me of the years of trial and error these gifts of advice saved me.

When asking, the more detail your fellow local gardeners know about your unique situation or desires, within reason,—e.g. windy site, desire for especially sweet taste—the more helpful they’ll be.

Just be sure to thank them. They’re handing you years of their experience, experiments, efforts, and care in a neatly gift-wrapped package. To them, it’s as if they’re handing you a bar of gold. Respond in kind.

Make a Plan

Plan out your garden as realistically as possible. What do you want to grow? How much of it do you want? How much room do you actually have for each species and variety?

Listing this out and then drawing a plan out on paper helps. Remember, you don’t have to be perfect; just get a general idea of what and how much you want to grow before you turn to the seed catalogs or go to the store. It’s like making a menu and grocery list before you go to the market: It keeps the process from becoming overwhelming—and you from ending up with purchases you don’t really want or need—and while you’ll probably end up with some impulse buys that weren’t on the list, at least you’ll be able to focus during the process and end up with everything you need.

Still, there’s no substitute for experience. No matter how detailed your plans are in the first year, the reality in your garden will not match it. It’s normal; don’t beat yourself up over it. Each year you get a little better at knowing how much you really want and how much space everything needs. Eventually, you need to plan less and less and may even do most of it in your head.

Seed Catalogs and Seed Shelves

Whether reading the back of seed packets at the local store or the silvery-sounding descriptions in the seed catalogs, we’re all looking for the same thing: the best fit for our needs. When narrowing down the varieties you’d like to grow, try to glean as much information as possible within and beyond the flowery descriptions. For instance, if it says the variety is a good keeper but nothing about taste, it’s probably not the tastiest variety. Similarly, what is the time to maturity, and does it match your growing season? Just as important, what disease resistance or cold or heat tolerance is listed? Often some of this vital information is in very abbreviated form. For example, whether a variety is susceptible or resistant to a particular disease; organically grown; true-to-seed, an heirloom, or a hybrid; or cold-hardy is often signified by a letter or two. The meaning behind these letters, however, often has a much greater effect on whether your garden ends up meeting your desires than the honeyed descriptions on the packets. Tomatoes, for example, that fail to mature because the vine succumbs to fusarium or verticillium wilt or cucumbers that expire due to mosaic virus will have a hard time living up to their dulcet descriptions if the plants become dead, shriveled vines.

Not all packets and not all seed catalogs have all of this information listed, even in abbreviated form, but glean everything you can from the description and look up all the codes to make sure you know what they mean. There’s usually a key at the bottom of the page, at the beginning of that species section, or in the first few pages of the catalog. And give preferences to catalogs that give you more information than others.

Seed catalogs also offer a plethora of other useful information. Most good catalogs offer sowing and growing advice about each species and many have deeper explanations about what will work best in your climate.

Healthy Seedlings

Grown Your Own

Not everyone has the time or comfort level to grow their own seedlings, but if you’d like to try, the blog post below tells you how. If you grow your own, hopefully, they’re thriving at optimal health when it’s time to plant. If not, you can always buy some. You might not be able to get your favorite varieties, but at least you’ll have something.

Starting Your Own Seedlings

Where to Buy Them

It may seem like you don’t have many options, but you may have more than you think.

Your best option for quality seedlings is to find people near you who grow them themselves. Call and ask around; you’ll be surprised who’s growing seedlings for sale near you (The same can be said for procuring bulk mulch and compost.). You’ll likely find growers who have seedlings for sale at their own greenhouses and farmers market stands. You can also often find those who grow mostly for own their landscaping services and private market gardens but who might be willing to sell some on the side.

Buying from someone who grows their own has two major benefits: 1) You’ll be supporting someone in your local economy, and 2) you’ll likely end up with MUCH better plants. These folks tend to take great pride in the quality of their seedlings. Plus, someone whose livelihood depends, even just partially, on growing quality seedlings has a much greater incentive to produce quality plants and foster positive relationships with their customers.

Your next best bets are local hardware and feed stores. They will most likely have bought theirs, too, but you usually get better quality and better cared for plants, especially while in their care.

Your final option is a big box store. If you do end up at a big box garden center, find the healthiest seedlings you can. Because you won’t likely be able to find perfect ones, find the ones with the strongest, thickest, straightest, most-erect stems and the darkest-green, most-vibrant-looking, most-damage-free leaves.

Which Ones to Buy

If buy your seedlings, you need to know what to look for when you venture to your local garden center.

Buy the healthiest seedlings you can find but not necessarily the biggest. Healthy seedlings have strong, thick, straight, erect stems; dark-green, vibrant-looking, damage-free leaves; and aren’t so big as to be root-bound.

While it’s a little hard to tell at first which plants are root-bound until you gain a little experience seeing them as you plant them out, before you know, if you see a plant that looks too big for its available root space in its provided pot, it very likely is. Choose smaller ones. In general, smaller is better—to a degree. A smaller, but healthy, plant will experience less root shock when being transplanted and grow faster—quickly outgrowing those previously larger seedlings. Conversely, seedlings that are too big for their pots and have started to have roots that wrap around the inside of the pot experience more root shock during transplanting and have to slow their growth for a while to compensate, losing precious growing time and typically ending up behind their previously smaller counterparts.

Take It in Stride

If a particular species or variety doesn’t grow well for you, take some time to consider the reasons before deciding whether to grow it again.

Notwithstanding your best efforts, some varieties do well, while others fail. Sometimes, it’s just the year—perhaps particularly wet or dry. Other times, it’s a variety that just doesn’t grow well in your area. If a variety fails, consider whether it was a typical year. If not, maybe give it another try. If so, there are tons of other varieties waiting to be tried. And remember to ask around. Gardeners give good advice, and your local fellow gardeners are your best resource for ideas about varieties that work in your area.

Also, remember that every part of this experience is normal. All gardeners live through ecstatic successes and heart-rending failures. You’re just building up that well of experience about your particular area that you’ll pass on to someone else someday. Enjoy the journey.

Keeping Unused Seeds Viable

Every now and then, I see someone with seeds that have been sitting in a kitchen drawer for the last five years. Sometimes this person even plants them and then wonders why the seed is no longer viable when nothing comes up.

What conditions do seeds need to stay viable?

Two words: cool and dry. Warm, moist air can cause seeds to germinate, mold, or otherwise lose viability.

While the freezer is an option for long-term storage, the refrigerator is usually the best place for most gardeners. Its desiccating, cold environment is great for prolonging the viability of seeds. They won’t keep forever. After a few years, they’ll start decreasing a little in viability each year, but they’ll keep for much longer than they would in the changing temperature and humidity outside the frig.

We see great viability for years from our “frig-kept” seeds and then only a slow decrease over time. To keep them somewhat organized and safe from spills and drips, we put them in a box on the top shelf. Being in a box also makes them easier to keep organized and quick to grab.