our
seeds not just one of the most amazing things on earth I mean this tiny little
seed will turn into an enormous tomato plant giving me pounds and pounds of the
most delicious tomatoes and it does it in a matter of months it all it needs is
some soil some water some sunshine but the idea of starting your garden from
seed can be intimidating especially for new gardeners you open up that seed
catalog and there's hundreds or thousands of varieties of seed to choose from
it's really easy to get overwhelmed so today I want to share with you my
process for choosing which seeds to buy and some of the things to consider and
then at the end of this blog, I'll share some of my favorite varieties that I
grow every season,
and I'm gonna have links below to the websites
that I use to source my seeds and some other references that I'll talk about in
this blog is not sponsored in any way I'm not affiliated with any of the seed
companies they're just ones that I enjoy i'm kyle from urban farmstead, and if
you follow me on instagram you probably already know that my wife and I
recently moved from our urban farm where I started urban farmstead to our new
home that has a completely empty backyard much like that one did only a few
years ago, and by popular demand I've decided to share the entire
transformation with all of you through this blog,
so
if you want to follow along as we transform this empty backyard into another
thriving urban farm click that subscribe button below what better way to start
this entire process than to share with you one of my favorite things to do
every January which is shopping for seeds, so that shopping for seeds for me it
doesn't start every January it doesn't start really doesn't ever start or end
it's an ongoing process that started from my very first garden planting a few
seeds seeing what grew and then after that figuring out what did I wanted to
try the next season I get ideas about what I want to grow each season from all
sorts of different resources whether I'm scrolling through Instagram, and
seeing what other people are growing or I'm flipping through a seed catalog or
I eat something at a restaurant all sorts of ways to find what seeds I want to
grow and I just keep a Notes app on my phone so I can write down the name of
that variety as soon as I find out about it and then when it comes to shopping
for seeds it can be really tempting to just start flipping through that Baker
Creek seed catalog or scrolling through Johnny's seed website.
and just fill in your cart with all of these
beautiful seeds and you should because that's a lot of fun and I do it all the
time, but it's a lot like going to the grocery store on an empty stomach with
no list and you come home and realize you bought all sorts of things you
probably didn't need and maybe can't even use so my advice is before you start
looking for seeds especially if you're new to gardening figure out the
limitations of your garden, and while some of those limitations are going to be
discovered over time through trial and error and growing things in your own
garden there are a few things that you can figure out now to really narrow down
what seeds will actually grow in your garden of course there are a lot of
factors that will affect your ability to grow certain fruits or vegetables.
but the two main thing is to consider are your
agricultural zone and the amount of days in your growing season you can find
those both out through a quick google search check the Farmers Almanac or just
scroll below I've added a link to help you find that out for us here in
Sacramento we're in zone 9 B, and our growing season is almost 300 days that's
the amount of days between the last frost of spring until the first frost of
fall and it's basically that window when we can grow any of our frost sensitive
plants like tomatoes, and peppers and a lot of other things so with 300 days
I'm not really limited here on what varieties I can grow but a lot of people
have much shorter growing windows for their warm season annuals.
so it's really important to know how many days
you have in that time frame and find seeds that go along with that so a seed
pack or a seed catalog should indicate the amount of days for a certain variety
especially for things like peppers and tomatoes and the number on that if it's
a direct, so variety like a larger seed like a squash or corn or something that
grows really fast and is commonly direct sown into that soil that day count
will start the day that you sow that outside but for more sensitive plants that
are normally started indoors, and then transplanted outside like tomatoes and
peppers that day count will actually start the day that you transplant it
outside so if I start my tomatoes today,
and it takes maybe 50 days for it to germinate
and harden off and be ready to transplant then I transplant it out in the soil
in another 90 days now it's about a hundred and thirty days from today until
I'm harvesting that first tomato, so depending on where you're at choosing a
variety of tomatoes that falls within that window might mean the difference between
you enjoying caprese a salad or fried green tomatoes now I'm getting pretty
hungry, so you can pretty easily figure out what varieties might grow in your
garden but how do you find out which varieties are gonna grow really well in
your garden just ask ask other people who are growing food in your area talk to
the farmers at the farmers market talk to the master gardeners at your local
gardening club go to the nursery talk to the staff there even talk to the other
customers there I love having conversations with other customers when I'm
picking out seedlings asking them their four favorite varieties.
and what they like to grow what hasn't worked
for them because I can only grow so many different varieties of cucumbers in a
season and I'm gonna pick a few that I know we're gonna do well maybe trial one
or two new ones, but if I can get information about the experiences of other
gardeners who are having success with certain things then I'm definitely going
to try them out if I know that somebody else is having success with these
varieties in my area once you've figured out what can grow in your area and
what might grow well in your area the next thing to decide is what you want to
grow, and well of course that's very broad the biggest thing I think to
consider is how much of your harvest are you going to want to preserve do you
want to eat everything fresh what do you want to actually can, and preserve
some of your harvest and while you can pretty much preserve anything you grow
there are definitely certain varieties that are better suited for it you can
pickle any cucumber but there are certain varieties of cucumbers that were
specifically bred to be pickling cucumbers you can make tomato sauce out of any
tomato.
but you're gonna have a lot better tomato
sauce out of a santa Marzano then you are out of an early girl tomato so choose
varieties that are gonna be suited for what you want to do with them I love
looking through seed catalogs, and thumbing through the seed packs at my local
nursery and it's almost always the picture that draws me in but it's, so
important to flip that seat back over read the information on the back and
actually understand what it all means because while the picture on the front of
the seat back might make me think I'm buying a 65 day indeterminate heirloom
tomato it's actually a 95 day determinate hybrid tomato and if that all sounds
like Greek to you that's exactly what I'm talking about any seeds that you buy
for your home garden will either be open pollinated seeds often labeled as heirloom
even though those terms are not exactly interchangeable or hybrids,
so open pollinated seeds are seeds that come
from any variety that is pollinated naturally without being crossed with
another variety, so you can save those seeds in replant them year after year
and an heirloom is just an open pollinated variety of seed that has been passed
down from generation to generation hybrid seeds are the result of intentional
cross-pollination between two genetically distinct varieties in order to take
advantage of specific traits of those two parent plants, and the result is
usually a variety that's more resistant and vigorous than those initial
varieties but the disadvantage to growing hybrids is you can't really save the
seeds I mean you can save the seeds and you can replant them but they won't
grow to the variety that you started with like you can do with an heirloom.
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