We know that we do talk about growing our own garden starts a lot around here. It’s what we do and the topic can be a bit mysterious to those who haven’t practiced it.
It’s important to know that “growing from seed” and “gardening” are not required to go together. They are completely different skillsets, with very little overlap, and each have their own sets of unique challenges. Growing from seed is not the easiest way to get into gardening. There is wisdom, if this is your first season or two, to consider buying plants from a nursery. Growing from seed can be a lot to take on.
Like with gardening itself, raising plants from seed has learning curves, a lot of challenges and is going to take effort to learn how to do well. Also like gardening, it looks “easy” from the perspective of someone that’s never done it and when you get into it, you then realize there’s quite a bit more to it.
We definitely aren’t saying you “shouldn’t” do it or in any way are we trying to gatekeep the subject. The reason we talk about it is to encourage people to also practice growing from seed! But, as we’ve grown in influence, we’ve realized it’s very important for us to “disconnect” these subjects and balance the perspective properly.
The main reason we grow from seed is ultimately due to cost. But, it’s important to know our perspective. Yes, it is much cheaper for us to grow our garden from seed, but that might not be the case for you! In our case, we’re growing hundreds of garden starts, which would cost us thousands of dollars to buy from the nursery. For us, spending hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars on equipment has rather short payback periods for our garden. But, if you’re raising a small little hobby garden, that return on investment is much, much slower.
We figured this was an important perspective to share, especially as we’re nearing the point in time where you need to make one choice or another. We’re not here to tell you what’s right for you, but rather to support you whatever ways you go!
