Seed Starting Chart

It’s time to start planning your vegetable garden – browsing seed catalogs, circling interesting varieties, and even getting some seeds started! Yes, some seeds need to be started this early; namely, onions. Onions started from seeds (as opposed to sets) need to be grown in a greenhouse or indoors about 10 weeks before they go outside into the ground.

I’m familiar enough with vegetables to know when to start seeds, but if you’re not, there’s a really cool tool, the Lazy Gardener’s Automatic Seed Starting Chart, over at You Grow Girl to help you. Just plug in the last frost date for your region and sow dates will pop up on an Excel spreadsheet. There’s nothing more painful than sitting down with all your seed packets and counting the days on a calendar between sow dates, germination dates, transplant dates, and harvest dates in order to plan a perfectly timed harvest. I can attest. While at school, I was required to keep an extensive and anally detailed journal of such things for my vegetable garden.
I noted a few things from my experience to share if you plan on using this chart.

• The chart doesn’t account for planting a fall or second crop, so you’ll have to do the math if you want veggies into the fall.
• Some veggies have an easier time of it if sown in cell packs in a greenhouse and transplanted to the ground when a bit larger.Conversely, some seeds are better sown directly in the ground.
• In my experience, I would not transplant corn, as the You Grow Girl chart recommends, but start corn directly in the ground when the temperatures are warm.
• Also, I would not direct sow onion seeds, but plant in cell packs and transplant.

Happy garden planning! May your headaches be lessened with this tool and your harvest be bountiful.