Use these tips to make wise choices from seed catalogs and garden stores, and you'll soon harvest a lot of vegetables.The following content also has some reference value for raised garden beds.
A bag of fresh seeds makes people feel full of the possibility of the coming growing season. There are so many exciting vegetables, herbs, and even edible flower varieties to try. Reading the seed catalog will make you feel like a child in a candy story. However, it is easy to go too far and end up with more seeds than you really need, or those that will not actually grow well in your garden. You can avoid these pitfalls by keeping in mind some considerations about which seeds are best suited to your needs and when to get them, so that you can start using them at the right time.
1、 Winter is the best time to buy seeds
Many garden plants can start with seeds when it is still cold and snowy outside. Of course, the trick is to plant them indoors, and then transplant them to your garden when the soil warms again in spring. Cool climate plants such as cabbage and broccoli especially benefit from the quick start indoors, so they have the opportunity to bloom and bear fruit before the summer heat shuts down. Warm season crops, such as tomatoes and sweet peppers, can also be planted under the growth light and moved to the garden after the frost free date in your area, so they will bring you earlier and longer harvest. The plant growth lamp can be as simple as a fluorescent shop lamp hanging a few inches above the seed tray.
2. Consider your space
When deciding which seeds to buy, figuring out how much space you have to grow them will help you narrow your choices. If you have a small garden, you may want to avoid space occupying vegetables, such as sweet corn, pumpkins or pumpkins. Instead, focus on vegetables with higher yield and more compact structure, such as salad vegetables, radishes, bush beans and peppers. Some vegetables have space saving varieties (for example, decisive tomatoes and uncertain tomatoes), which can help you make the most of every inch of growing space.
3. Pay attention to the varieties you like
When choosing vegetable seeds for planting, think about your family's favorite agricultural products. If you like spicy food, try growing some pepper plants instead of just sweet pepper. If you are an eggplant enthusiast, you can try unusual varieties, such as the small green "Apple green" and the more standard purple varieties.
The maturity time of vegetable varieties varies, so you also need to make the most suitable choice for the local climate. First, check the "harvest days" information on the seed package, and calculate whether your growing season is long enough to grow the crops you want to grow. If you live in the northern climate with a short growing season, please focus on garden seed varieties that mature faster to ensure harvest before frost. In the south, you can easily plant okra and other plants that need hot weather in a longer season.
4. Consider pollinators
If you do not add some flower seeds to the mixture, the garden will not be complete! They not only add popular colors, but also help attract pollinators, thereby increasing the yield of many crops, such as pumpkins. Many annual flowers, such as zinnia, African marigold, eupatorium and sunflower, can easily grow quickly if the seeds are directly sown in the garden after the last frost.
5. Keep away from diseases
When buying vegetable seeds, look for disease resistant varieties, especially if you have had problems in the garden before. For example, when purchasing tomato seeds, look for varieties marked with VFN after the name. This means that the variety can resist the damage caused by verticillium wilt and fusarium wilt, which usually afflict tomatoes, and soil nematodes.
