RedBeard1987
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No seeds to start!

so here is my problem. I have moved into a new house and am starting a new, much much much bigger garden. the little bit of seeds I have are enough to fill a small garden bed. well now I have roughly a quarter acre to play with and want to use as much of it as I can.

so my question is where can I go to find maybe like a seed starter kit. something that might be more of a discount maybe. its going to be more than I would like to spend if I have to buy each individual packet of seeds. I see a lot of survival seed kits. has anyone tried these? they seem kinda gimmicky to me.

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Price seeds before you buy them. Tuesday I'm going to announce our seed giveaway. I've got a bunch of stuff I'm giving away. I'll post the details Tuesday. We'll get you sorted out with seeds! ;)

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applestar
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Look also at sampleseed and wintersown websites, and bulk seed at farm supply type places.

You could also look at this coming season as seed stock growing -- little bit and few plants are all you need to grow a whole mess of seeds for next year as long as you start with good quality OP (open pollinated) seeds and not F1 hybrids from which you can't save seeds to grow next year's crop.

imafan26
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Since you moved to a new place, start small. Spend the time preparing the ground instead and build your collection as you go. Depending on how far you moved the soil and climatic conditions may be different and better for planting some things and not others.

As apple said, be selective in what get. My favorite place to get cheap seeds is the grocery store and the health food store for sprouting seeds.
Find a local seed supplier. They probably have seeds that are the most suitable for your area. Try out a packet first and if you like it, then go back and get bulk seeds if you want to grow a lot of them. Bulk seeds are a lot cheaper than by the packet. This is the best way to do it with hybrids.

You can also have a bit of patience and save some of your own seeds from the open pollinated seeds and divisions from some plants.

Then you could always trade for the seeds or network with your new neighbors.

I have gardening friends and I get cuttings and seeds from them. All I do is ask, if they have it they are willing to share and when they want something I have they do the same.

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rainbowgardener
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I don't know how much gardening experience you had before this. If it isn't a lot, you might want to not try to put your whole quarter acre in veggie garden the first year. Make a smaller garden, that you work intensively on preparing the soil for (the better the soil, the better the garden - throwing down some fertilizer does not make up for bad soil). Maybe put part of your quarter acre in grass or wildflowers. You can get bulk wildflower seed pretty cheap, in bird and butterfly mixes, hummingbird mix, regional natives mixes etc.

If all goes well this year, you can expand next year. Better to have great success with 2000 square feet (! - I garden 200 sq feet very intensively, so 2000 sounds like a lot), than have 10,000 square feet over run with weeds and pests.

Also since you have so much space, think about not just growing veggies, but herbs and flowers as well. The herbs are very useful and productive, but both herbs and flowers are protective for your gardens, help bring beneficial insects and pollinators to your garden and keep pests away.

But yes, if you are planting large areas, I would definitely look in to bulk seeds. I buy some bulk seed even for my tiny garden, just because it is so much cheaper, then save the excess. Seed easily keeps for several years.

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digitS'
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There are seed companies that specialize in supplying market gardeners. Their websites may be a little clunky, like Jordan Seeds, in eastern Minnesota. Or, they may be pretty darn good like Stokes Seed, in Ontario and upstate New York. Osborne Seed may be somewhere in the middle ... altho' they are on the West Coast ;). I use seed from these three, every year.

These outfits price and sell seed by the pound or thousand (M). They may or may not have small packets. Harris Seeds has separate sites for market and home gardeners. Seed usually has multi-year viability, check a reliable Cooperative Extension site and be conservative. Not only conservative about how many years you can expect to use the seed but also what varieties you buy. You don't want to be stuck with 5# of something you'd just as soon not grow again!

Cooperative Extension may be a good source of information on varieties for your area if you don't have experience with one thing or another.

Limiting yourself is a good idea. Not only will you find that your seed buying is much more affordable but garden care is simpler and easier ... I always go a little nutz, however ;). John Jeavons said something about having about 60% of your growing dedicated to soil improvement. He didn't mean just to cover crops to be plowed in. Some could be harvested but a good lot of organic material, green and growing in the early season, would be destined for turning under at an appropriate time. About as close as I can come to this is to always be happy with surplus and realize that I never have enough compost, nor what it takes to feed that hungry pile :).

Steve

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Voices30
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After you find your seed supply, I would recommend crawling the web to find a seed starter guide for your zone. You most certainly don't have to plant the entire garden at once, you can pace yourself and plant certain plants this month, more plants next month, etc..

tomc
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red, I so want you to start small. A single bed even. it will be far more productive for you to stay hungry for the first few years as you build skills.

Grow tomato from already started plants, ditto for cabbage and cole crops for year one.

Too many people plant big and cannot manage their garden. I'd rather you to be still Tsk'ing after you've eaten the last corn. it will improve your memories and speed your aquisition of new skill-sets.

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Voices30
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tomc wrote:red, I so want you to start small. A single bed even. it will be far more productive for you to stay hungry for the first few years as you build skills.

Grow tomato from already started plants, ditto for cabbage and cole crops for year one.

Too many people plant big and cannot manage their garden. I'd rather you to be still Tsk'ing after you've eaten the last corn. it will improve your memories and speed your aquisition of new skill-sets.
Tomc is 100% correct. I am a living example. Even though I have been involved in selling products related to gardening for a few years, and I have had a citrus grove for many years, I too thought I could just start a giant vegetable garden and I would be fine, because I'm just so good at this....

I'm not. I had no idea how much physical labor would be involved in planting a large area (mind you it's not even that large, it's like 80'x30')...but that's pretty big for a beginner. Well I should really say, it's way to big for me (at least in the beginning). I not only underestimated the amount of physical work that would be required, I underestimated the COST of gardening an area that big as well. I eventually lost a lot of plants and became discouraged and my first year as a backyard veggie gardener didn't go so well! If I could do it over, I would have started MUCH smaller, and I would have paid more attention to the planting charts, and when to start the seeds. Not everything goes in the ground at the same time, and if you use your zone charts and plan accordingly you can have a far more productive harvest.

Planning is important. Don't be a sillywilly like me.

imafan26
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Cover crops are a good way to build the soil and suppress weeds. They need to be tilled in at flowering to get the maximum benefit and prevent them from becoming weedy.

I is better to choose a garden size you can manage and use. If it is the first time, you don't even know what will grow well, so really start small and have a plan for expansion.

Planting the rest in sod or a pollinator garden is a good idea. It keeps the area planted in something, keep weeds down, and can easily be transformed to other uses

Seeds will not be the only expenses you will have. You may need more equipment. If you want to plant a lot you may need a greenhouse to start, lights, trays, shelves, even if you use a basement. Unless you can eat a lot or are planning to sell, you need to find ways to use up the harvest by canning and freezing and that requires more space. You may even need more equipment for the garden like a lawn mower, tiller, etc.

While you are building your soil, work on a master garden plan and add to it as you gain experience and know how much time you have. Starting a new garden takes a lot of time, and it is only after you find out what grows for you and you gain experience that it becomes easier to manage. Start with a few garden beds and expand them as you go. Save seeds from your plants for next time. Plan for expansion, greenhouse, compost bins, storage shed.

Decide what you want to plant if you plan to sell, you need to do some market research and planning.

If you put in some fruit trees they produce seasonally, but take up a lot of space. Some perennials won't have to be dug up all of the time, so you may consider where you want to plant them.

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digitS'
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I was at a risk of having much more ground than I could have reasonably made good use of, in 2014. Fortunately for me, that didn't happen and the "tractor guy" was able to include that ground in his tilling.

It was the same size as what I call "the garden extension," an area that has not been put into beds and where I've got things planted in rows. Cultivation is with a walk-behind rototiller. It takes a long time and I really don't enjoy running that thing. However, I like running a hoe for 10 times that time, even less ... still, there was a little of that, too.

Wondering what I could do with double of what I was already working on with mechanical contraptions, I tried to come up with a rotation plan which included cover cropping.

Breaking the area into a checkerboard pattern of sub-gardens might have given me a feeling of integration where I'd be less likely to ignore the cover cropped areas and let them run to weeds, or be otherwise neglected. It was a little ambitious but not nearly as nutz as growing crops I'd need to harvest and then find a use for.

I decided that I might have time to get across those areas with cultivation and sowing as many as 3 times ... or 2 1/2 times ;).

First, I needed to think about cheap seeds. It would be nice if the selections were a variety of species for the benefit of the soil organisms. An early sowing could be of field peas. Even something like Early Alaska might be reasonably priced, I could harvest a few pods off them but no trellising would be planned. Tilled under, perhaps after mowing, the peas should give some weed-smothering sunflower plants a good start.

A bag of sunflower seed from the birdfeeder section would be cheap. They couldn't be allowed to grow very tall or the rototiller would have trouble with them.

Finally, oats could be planted late in the season. Oats will not survive winter temperatures here. They wouldn't require tilling until spring.

Fortunately, as I say, I didn't need to put this scheme in practice ...

:) Steve

RedBeard1987
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Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2015 3:28 pm
Location: South suburbs Chicago. Zone 5a

Thanks everyone for the responses. Ivery decided to just visit my local nursery and buy from them. It may be more than I'd like to spend but at least I know I'm getting seeds known to grow well in my area. As far as the size of my garden. I came from a small 9 by 3 garden bed and always wanted more. The hour it would take to tend to it just didn't occupy enough of my time. So I'm taking that bed and tripling the size and adding a few more beds. Most of my space will be taken up but my pumpkin patch and watermelons. I just think it would be so cool to have the necessary and nephews come over and pick from they're own private pumpkin patch!
I've grown from seed onice be for without issue so I'm going to try again.
So I'm really trying to keep it manageable but still a little over the he top to keep thinges interesting. I will be starting a journal this weekend on my brand new garden. I hope you all will follow along!

RedBeard1987
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Location: South suburbs Chicago. Zone 5a

Sorry for all the typos up there. Posted from my phone. Damn auto correct



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