You Can Save a Lot of Money by Growing Your Own Seedlings Instead of Buying Plants.
People tend to start gardening the same way: they grow their first plant outdoors, feel proud of eating their sun-ripened tomatoes, and decide to plant two plants next year. Most of these plants are purchased from a nursery, but as you build your garden, buying from a store becomes less meaningful. If you’re going to plant, say, eight tomato plants, it might make sense to start growing your own. And you should do it. You can save a lot of money by growing your own seeds.
Buying gardening tools makes sense at first.
People buy garden plants for simple reasons: By the time the weather is favorable and the soil is warm enough for growth, you don’t want to waste time waiting for the seeds to germinate. Planting grown plants instead of seeds can save weeks and sometimes months, and the plants in the nursery are usually strong, hardy and close to fruiting. Buying grown plants will also allow you to space them properly in your garden, and larger plants are more likely to survive weather and predators. Overall, it’s not a bad deal. But you pay for it. When it comes to investing, someone else did most of the work.
Disadvantages of buying seedlings for your garden
Besides being limited by nursery stock, the downside to buying seedlings is the cost. Starts typically come in three sizes: six-packs for smaller veggies, six-packs for larger veggies, and four-by-four-inch single packs. In my city, prices for individual plants have increased from $3.25 to $6 since 2020, and a large six-pack has jumped from $5 to $7. I looked at prices in Utah, Arizona and Massachusetts for comparison and found that prices have jumped 25% or more over the past few years. This adds up quickly. If you plant twenty-five vegetables in your garden (the average number of plants that gardeners buy each spring at my local nursery), that means your costs would increase from about $100 to $150.
Conversely, growing your own seedlings means you can be specific about what plants you want to grow—not tomatoes or peppers, but tomatoes or peppers. You can grow what you want, when you want, and can start them much earlier than in a nursery, which is great if you’re trying to extend the season using low tunnels or greenhouses. And growing your own seedlings teaches you a lot about plants.
Cost of growing your own seeds
The downside to growing your own seeds is that it requires more work and startup costs. You need a place to grow your seedlings, and since most people don’t have a greenhouse, you can use a simple freestanding wire rack or shelving unit that you can buy at Home Depot (though I found mine by browsing Craigslist, like many others). I always give away garage storage space). You will also likely need lighting to grow your plants, and this cost can also increase as people tend to miscalculate how many lights they need. (For example, for the shelves mentioned above, most people will need two sets of grow lights strung together.) You’ll also need trays for starting seeds—like these more convenient air trimming trays , but you can also contact your local garden group . or a garden center for the old ones, free ones – and bottom watering cans for everyone so you can water your seedlings. To keep your seedlings warm and moist enough to germinate, you will also need heat mats and tray domes .
At this point, you’re looking at several hundred dollars, which admittedly seems like a lot. However, if you plan to garden in the future, this is an investment in equipment that you will use year after year. You can also easily scale your operation up or down: you really only need one seed tray (the box can hold between fifty and one hundred and twenty-eight seedlings), a cheap dome, a heating mat and grow light, and find a good spot in your home . With a little creativity, you can probably get this cost down to under $75.
Soft costs obviously include the seeds themselves, which can range from $2 per bag to $7-8 depending on how many you buy. I recommend starting with Burpee or Ferry Morse seeds, which are cheaper so you can learn to use the less expensive seeds before buying the more expensive varieties. You can also often find free seeds at your local seed library , asking your neighbors or local gardening group. Many people save and share their seeds, and you can too. You’re unlikely to use all your seeds every year, so you can organize your own seed library to help you spend less money year after year. You’ll also need potting mix, often confused with potting soil, which is a special mixture of finer soil without nutrients that can cost you $7-$15. Other soft expenses, such as fertilizer and pest control, cost the same whether you buy a garden plot or grow your own.
Comparison of gardening and seed costs
Let’s say, for example, that you buy an average of twenty-five plant starts for $150. If you grew them from seed, you could grow them in one tray for as little as $75 for starting equipment and, say, $40 for soil and seeds, bringing the total to about $115. More importantly, however, you’ll be prepared for the first year of growing and will also have a head start the following year when you no longer have to buy seeds or soil.
Once your equipment is freed from some financial constraints, I am sure you will grow more as well. (For example, annual flowers—a few dollars for a packet of 100 seeds, compared to $6 for a packet of six seeds—are expensive to buy as a starter but cheap to grow from seed.) Even if you decide to expand your operation with more lighting and trays , the cost of the same number of launches will far exceed your initial costs. In my experience, $400 spent on starting materials can easily cost a thousand dollars at the nursery. Instead, you can grow your plants from start to finish, save a lot of money, and learn a lot in the process.