Starting Your Own Seedlings — Part 1: Why Do It Yourself

Access to Tastes, Disease Resistance, Productivity, and Planting Times

Starting our own seedlings is a game-changer for most gardeners—giving access to a whole new palate of tastes and a wider array of disease and pest resistance, productivity, and planting times. For most of us, our favorite garden vegetables and fruits—whether because we find them to be the tastiest, hardiest, or most productive—are only available as seeds, causing us to have to start our seedlings ourselves if we want access to the ones we’ve come to love. Growing our own also allows us to get some plants in the soil in the spring before most garden centers have them available and to add seedlings to our gardens in the fall long after most garden centers have put theirs away.

Boosts Our Spirits

There are other benefits as well. For many of us, watching our seedlings grow in late winter boosts our spirits. For those of us who, by January or February, find ourselves longing for the verdurous days of spring and summer, the smell of wet earth and our lush green seedlings peeking out from black soil give us a needed taste of days to come. It’s the same way a single frozen raspberry, bursting in our mouths with flavor and redolence like captured sunshine distilled into delight, can transport us through the short days of late winter to warm days of summer when freshly picked berries found their way straight to our mouths. Both of these enliven our hearts and elevate our souls once again.

Can Be Easy

Starting our own seedlings can, however, seem daunting at first. It doesn’t have to be. At its simplest, it’s easy: Put some good soil in a small pot; plant the seeds to the depth specified on the packet (e.g. ¼”); water them; and put them in a location in which they’ll get plenty of light. Keep them watered with plenty of light. Add heat for those who need it. They’ll be fine. 

Support is Readily Available

But it’s not always that simple. In the second and third posts in this series, I give details on each other part of starting your own seedlings. In the second one, I explain which soil and containers are best to use and why. In the third one, I explore options for obtaining the ideal planting depth, thoughts on thinning seedlings, some finer points on watering, options for sources of light, and how to add heat to seedlings that need it.