Cold and snowy outside?  Perfect!  That means it’s  time to start seeds indoors for a luscious spring garden.  Starting seeds in the wintertime  is a great way to get a head start on your growing season. Not only that, but it saves you money and there’s lots of varieties to choose from, especially from online catalogs

Starting Seeds Inside Tips

  • Plant what you and your family like to eat.
  • Consider how much you need. Can you really eat a whole row of cabbages before they go bad?
  • Plant easy to grow veggies like tomato, radishes, lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, swiss chard, etc
  • Understand the difference between cool weather veggies and warm weather veggies.
  • Consider starting seeds of annual flowers too like zinnias and sunflowers.

Starting Seeds Inside Supply List

  • Buy seeds from a reputable mail-order catalog or from a local garden center.
  • Choose the right container. Containers from home are fine such as milk jugs, seed flats, peat pellets, garden pots, or paper cups. Some plants, such as pumpkins, melons, tomatoes, peppers, and gourds are grown in pots so the roots are not damaged when transplanting.
  • Purchase a soil-less seed growing mix. You can find bags of soil-less mix that say “Seed starting growing mix” and we highly recommend them. You may want to use “organic seed starting mix.”
  • Fertilizer is a must since soil-less mixes contain very few nutrients. Start fertilizing with a weak fertilizer solution a few weeks after the seeds germinate.
  • Figure out when to start your seed by checking the back of the seed packet to find the recommended starting times. Our last frost date for Nashville is April 15.
  • No sunny window?   Supplement your light with artificial lights called grow lights. You can buy these online or at home and garden stores.

You can see that starting seeds inside in the wintertime for a luscious spring garden will help you get a jump on the season and it’s fun to have an excuse to get those hands dirty too!

Below is a video from P. Allen Smith with more tips on starting seeds indoors.

Need help getting your garden ready for planting? Give us a call! 615-350-8030 today!