Why Start Plants Indoors

Gardening in January

Last years flowers have hardly died and now it is time to begin planning for more.  I love living in Georgia!  My kitchen drawers are filling with seed packets, my fingers are itching to get those seeds in the soil and growing. 

Now, you don’t have to begin your plants indoors.  Many plants can be direct sowed once the soil has warmed up in Spring.  But, think about it, come April and May, what you find in the gardening stores are small plants ready to go in the ground.  You can prepare such plants for yourself for a fraction of the cost, as well as, giving yourself the joy of watching them grow under your eyes.  If you waited to direct sow your seeds in the Spring, then you’d be a couple weeks to a month behind the nursery-grown plants.

So, Why Sow (Early)?

There are a few more benefits to starting your own seed for Spring.  First, you can find a greater variety of plants in the seed racks than on the plant shelves. Common nurseries usually focus their attention on a small number of basic plants, the ones that the most people will want to buy.  They can’t afford to branch out much.

Secondly, some plants benefit from being started early.  It’s a question not simply if you want earlier blooms this year, but you’ll have any blooms or vegetables at all this year. Check the back of your seed packets for the days to maturity.  90 days is 3 months!  That’s 3 months from the day you sow the seed to the day the flower blooms or the vegetable is ripe!  You may want to start early. 

Third, down here in Georgia, you have to start early to beat the bugs.  Plants aren’t the only things that begin to grow in Spring. The stinkbugs are coming out of dormancy and beginning to repopulate the earth.  Mole crickets–those rascals who ate my autumnal seedlings–are beginning to stir and grow in the ground.  Fungus and fungal diseases, which are hardly a whisper in the cool spring, are rampant by mid-summer.  The race is on to get those veggies harvested…. And, you’re allowed a head start if you’d like it.

My favorite reason to start plants indoors? It brings the joy sooner. Why wait two more months when you can watch things grow now?