Seeds or Seedlings?  

Our growing season is very short here. I use seedlings to get the best results. When I lived further south, we had a longer growing season and I used seeds.

I myself normally start my vegetables from seeds. Mainly cause I like the satisfaction of seeing something come from nothing into the end product.

The one thing I have noticed though if you do it from seeds, you might end up with 30 tomato plants, and only actually want one or two to produce. So you might want to take that into consideration. Where if you do seedlings you can purchse the amount of plants you actually want in hopes they produce.

Good luck and having fun gardening!

I use seeds, except for tomatoes. With tomatoes I go with seedlings as I seem to have better luck with them.

We have designated stores at our place where every variety of seeds are available. There is also a guide book available which describes the vegetable you should grow in a particular season and in specific type of land. Accordingly i select the vegetable which suits my land in a particular season. Mostly i prefer seeds.

I have never had a garden, but found this discussion interesting because I plan to have one! I already have a spot picked out in my yard, but I doubt it will happen this year with everything else going on.

I did look in my "Gardening all-in-one for Dummies" book. (Yes, I am a huge "...for dummies" fan). Anyway, it said there are advantages to both (but the explanation was lengthy) however they really seemed to lean more towards the process you have described as the way to go and did specifically mention tomatoes. Especially in colder climates where summers are shorter.

hello ldy, I have tried both ways to start my tomatoes, it seems im with the majority that I have better luck with the seedlings. i was thinking if i had a green house than growing tomatoes from seed would be easier the temp and lighting would be the same for them in there as for in the house the lighting and the temp may be different daily and nightly, im thinking they need a controlled inviroment to get started in. two years ago I lived in a place where I had no garden space and I used containers, the tomatoes grew ok but not as big as in the ground ones. i feed mine lots of miracle grow and had very many tomatoes last year with just a few plants.

I have tried to grow from seeds, but they usually get about 3-4 inches tall then they die. So anymore we just buy the plants that are pretty well established.
Last year I dilgently planted about 400 pieces of corn in containers on my deck, so get them started. Someone told me that I could do this. When ever I plant the seeds in the garden the crows decide that I put them there just for them. One year I planted corn 5 times. Finally gave up. So like I said last year we did it first on the deck, and decided we would transplant once they were about a foot tall. Well once we transplanted they ended up growing about 2 feet altogether. Oh we did have corn on the stalks, along with the silks, but the corn if we were lucky were about an inch long. I had wanted to use the stalks for halloween decorations. Well that didn't happen.
I think after last year and the total disaster the garden was, we aren't going to have one this year.
Good luck to all who do. Let me know how it works out.
Have a blessed day.

my father is a farmer and he knows better than this but according what I observed, if it's for an investment he would buy seedlings of course but if it's just a vegetable, just a garden of vegetable. we only get it from a seed.

The last few years I have using seedlings, as I get produce faster for tomatoes. I do plant seeds for many vegetables. My growing season is very long, so I can grow any vegetable.

I came here in the US at the end of Spring and at the start of Summer. The first place where my hubby brought me to go shopping... was the plant nursery. We bought lots of seeds and seedlings for our vegetable garden. The seedlings are mostly herbs and the seeds are the vegetables like, peas, carrots, beets, celery, bell pepper, beans, cucumber and a couple of others that I am not familiar with. We found out that the herbs grow better and healthier in the garden rather than the pot.