Tips for Choosing Garden Seed

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Choosing your garden seed and what you plant will have a big part in determining the success of your garden.

It is always exciting when those seed catalogs start filling up the mailbox. It gives you a little hope that spring really is on the way!  The fun begins when you start flipping through the pages to decide what you want to plant and what you may want to experiment planting.

What seeds should you choose?  Hopefully, you will get a few good tips to help you decide what to plant.  Let’s face it if your seeds are not top quality, well your garden cant be either.  If you are going to try to save money growing your garden, the seeds are not where you should try to be thrifty.

How to choose garden seeds

Now, what do I want to plant this year? Which seeds should I choose? Which brand is the best to buy? Do I want organic, heirloom or just conventional seeds?  After all, I am putting a lot of work into my garden. I want my garden to be a huge success!

I like to order my seeds from True Leaf Market. I have had good luck with this company.  Their seeds have a high germination rate and grow well in my garden. But before ordering seeds, there are a few things I take into consideration.  Because let’s face it not all growing seasons are alike.

The first thing to look at is the growing season itself. Each area of the United States is divided into sections or zones. Not sure what zone you are in?  You can look at this USDA Zone Chart.

Which zone are you in?

Each zone is a little different. We are about a zone 3 and sometimes I think a zone 2, although on some charts it shows a zone 4.  We can freeze any month of the year. Yes, even frost in July! Most of the trees that we have planted are a zone 2 or 3 just for this reason.  When buying seeds for our vegetable garden, we take all things into consideration.

Since we can freeze any month of the year we look for seeds that have the shortest maturing time possible.  This is especially true for our corn, squash, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and any other vegetable that may be tender to a frost.

How many days of growing

For the vegetables that can take a frost, we still look for the shortest growing season possible.  Even though they can take the colder weather, they still need to mature before we have a killing frost.  We try for vegetables that will mature in 58 days or less.  But sometimes the vegetable just doesn’t fit the criteria.  So we settle for the shortest growing season we can get.

You also need to consider vegetables that can be grown in your area.  Unless you are lucky enough to have a greenhouse, you just can’t grow some plants in some areas.

Also look at your soil.  For the most part, the vegetables that I want to plant will grow well in my soil, but this is a consideration.  We happen to have a sandy loam in the garden area, although in some areas on our farm we have clay.  If this is the case you just need to work on building your soil into what you need it to be by composting.

What are you going to grow?

Now you know what to look for in your seeds, it is time to make your list of what you would like to grow this year in your garden.  Some seeds I start indoors, but remember, even though you are looking forward to spring don’t start them too early or you will have a jungle growing.  This is one of my biggest weaknesses.  I get too excited too and plant things too early in the house and I end up with a jungle. I never claimed to have a lot of patients.

Get your seeds ordered and look forward to preparing your ground as soon as spring arrives.

Happy planting.  I would love to hear your thoughts, just leave them below.