Starting Inside

You guessed it, seeds!  If I am going to be gardening I want to save money and learn how to grow from seeds.  Of course you can by the nice seedlings sold at the store but you'll pay $3-6/plant while starting with seeds will cost you $1-3/bag of seeds (most come with way more seeds than I can use).

 We are growing beans, watermelons, pumpkins, cantalope, tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, potatoes, blackberry, concord grape, strawberry, and lettuce.

 Tops of the potato plants reaching for sunlight!  We allowed our seedlings to take up our dining room table for a few weeks before we could begin planting outside.  This provided them with warmth and natural sunlight.  It also allows me to open the windows during the day to start "hardening" or preparing the seedlings for life outside.  This prevents me from having to move them outside in the morning and then bringing them back in at night before it gets cold.

 The fruit of the garden! Blackberry, grape, blueberry, and strawberry.  We may not get any fruit this year from these plants but they will continue to grow and we plan to work on attracting some great pollinators to our yard this year.

Starting with seeds allowed me to pick more specifically what types of plants I wanted to grow.  I had multiple "paste and sauce" tomato species to choose from as apposed to getting seedlings where I would be lucky to find any tomatoes good for sauce and canning.