Seeds or Seedlings?

I live in Taxachussetts where we have a short growing season. In the past few years I have started most of my vegetables by seed out doors except for the ones that needed to be started long before they went out doors. This year I am planning on starting a lot of seeds indoors (including tomatoes, peppers and pumpkins as well as a few others). I am enlarging my garden so it will pay off to grow many plants from seed indoors under lights. I will try to plant the seeds about 6 weeks before I intend on putting the plants in the garden. I have a sop light and will put in some grow lights to help the plants to grow. I just wish that I had a green house to grow them in , but I don't and will have to make room in the house for growing them.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.