How to Buy Vegetable Seeds for Your Garden - Oak Hill Homestead

It's never too early to buy vegetable seeds for your spring garden. For the biggest selection, the best time to order garden seeds is in late fall and or at least by early winter.

How to buy vegetable seeds for your garden

In the past I often waited too long to place my online seed order, only to find that the seeds I really want are already out of stock.

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So I have to go to the feed store and buy whatever seed packets they happen to have. However, there isn't much variety in retail stores. 

I like to grow and buy heirloom vegetable seeds, and sometimes they can be hard to find in those store displays.

And you might remember that in recent years, seeds sold out much earlier than usual and were harder to find. 

So I've gotten into the habit of ordering my vegetable seeds much earlier now, preferably in the fall or over the winter. That way most of the seed varieties I want are in stock.

I suggest that you order vegetable seeds for next year now!

Should you buy seeds or transplants

You might wonder why I don't just buy transplants (or started plants) instead of seeds.

The biggest reason is that I'm limited to what the nursery decides to grow and sell. 

But I want to be in charge of choosing what I'll grow and harvest and eat. My favorite varieties of some vegetables aren't available as transplants. 

I discuss this question in more depth in this post Seeds vs Seedlings, which should you plant?

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So this year let's be smart and do it the right way, by ordering our spring seeds early - NOW.

Start with a seed inventory

The first step in ordering seeds is to take inventory of the seeds you have on hand. We all have them, right? Opened, partially-used packets of seeds from last year, the year before, maybe even the year before that.

You did know you can save the leftover seeds to plant later, right? As long as you store seeds correctly, they should be viable for several years. Here's my advice on how to store your leftover seeds.

Make a list of the seed packets you have on hand

Divide your leftover seed packets into three piles: flowers, vegetables and herbs. Then, whether you use a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet, write down all the seed packets you have on hand.

I enter the information in a spreadsheet, with all the vegetable seed packets in one group, then the herbs and then the flowers.

Each seed packet should have date on it - such as "packed for " - so I add that information too. 

Now you know what you have on hand, but if any of those seeds are a bit old, it's a good idea to do a germination test to make sure the seeds are still "alive" (viable). You can learn how to do a germination test here: how to do a seed germination test.

The seeds that don't pass my germination test - when no seeds germinate, or if the germination rate is really low - are disposed of. 

I feel a bit of grief doing this, but there is no point in keeping seeds that won't grow. They are crossed off of my seed inventory list.

(Sometimes I take those old, old seeds out into the woods on our property and broadcast them by hand in a clearing. I just can't bear to throw them out! They're left to their own devices, but if any do sprout and grow, I hope they feed the wildlife and provide pollen for bees.)