Get your garden started | part 5: seedlings
AKA how to take care of fussy little babies
This garden guide is the fifth in an 8-part series I will be releasing over the next month. It covers the essentials of starting a successful garden. The 8 guides will be available to all paying subscribers and members of the Wild Garden club, and there will be some previews and sneak peeks for free subscribers. Want to access all my garden guides, tours and recipes? Click the button below to upgrade your membership.
Hello and welcome back to the How to get your garden started series that I will be sharing with you over the next four weeks. This is a simple, pared-back series that covers the topics that I think are essential when starting a garden. Think of it as a bit of a primer - a guide to the fundamental starting points to get you motivated and started in your garden this autumn.
If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on parts one, two, three and four here:
If you want to access the full 8 parts in this series, you can upgrade your subscription to paid by clicking the button below. It’s also worth noting that if you subscribe now, the price of your subscription will always stay the same - it’ll never increase - even if the subscription fees do go up in the future :)
Now, onto part five - the little fussy plant babies we affectionately call ‘seedlings’
Get your garden started | part five
In the aspirational world that is 'Gardening on Instagram', it's easy to be fooled into thinking that everyone is virtuously, impressively, relentlessly growing every bloody thing in their garden from seed. That these mysterious plant-cultivating unicorns possess such organisational prowess that they're never running late, never forgetting to sow a new batch of seeds for the upcoming season. They give the distinct impression that they have their lives totally together and we (lowly peasants, swimming in seeds we have not yet planted) do not.
Well, I'm here to disabuse you of that less-than-motivating thought.
Maybe in some corners of the internet there really are people who only grow their plants from seed, always make their own homemade potting mix and have perfectly straight carrots, but I am certainly not one of them. And you don't need to be either.
Truth is, although growing plants from seed is heaps of fun, inexpensive and satisfyingly rewarding, you definitely don't have to exclusively grow your plants from seed. And it doesn't make you any less of a gardener if you routinely head to the garden centre to buy last minute punnets of seedlings.
In fact, there are plenty of reasons to grow from seed and buy seedlings, and combining both methods can be really handy in the garden.
Why plant seedlings?
They’re a handy backup
For one thing, seedlings are a fantastic fallback for any time that life gets in the way of your seed sowing plans. If you miss the window for starting an early batch of spring seeds, don't stress! Nip to the shops, grab a punnet of seedings and hey-presto, you're caught up! It's a great way to avoid missing out on growing something you really love, just because life got busy and you got distracted.
They help with succession sowing
If you like the concept of 'succession sowing' you can use seedling buying tactically to your advantage.
Succession sowing is basically the idea that you can extend your harvesting window for certain fruits and vegetables by planting small batches of the same veggie seeds in regular intervals (successionally) so that each batch comes into maturity a few weeks after the last. This works really well for things like corn, radishes and lettuces, which - if sown all in one go - tend to ripen all at once in a glut.
By sowing seeds in several small batches separated by a few weeks, you'll avoid a single big glut and instead can harvest successive batches of veggies for a longer window of time. Buying some of your plants as seedlings can help with this - you can buy an 8 pack of corn seedlings at the same time as sowing some corn seeds, effectively jump starting your succession sowing of the corn crop.
They’ll teach you about plant care
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