How We Start Our Garden From Seed
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Unlock the secrets of successful gardening in Canada. Learn how to create a beautiful, productive garden from seed that provides fresh, organic produce.
Save Grocery Money With A Garden
Starting a vegetable and fruit garden is a passion for some people, but it seems to be a chore for others.
I’m passionate about growing a vegetable garden and flowers around our landscape every season in Canada.
Enjoying watching something grow, mature, and flower is fascinating, so it’s a passion I don’t miss.
Growing plants don’t have to be about huge flowers; they can be the focus, backdrop, or valuable.
Every year, we grow our food in the garden, though I’ll be the first to admit we couldn’t live off the land we have; it’s more of a novelty thing.
Advantages of Growing A Vegetable Garden From Seed
There are advantages other than the cost of growing your vegetables:
- Cost Savings is the number one
- Organic with no chemicals
- Superior Flavours
- U-Pick from your yard
That’s right, organic vegetables will always taste 100 times better than anything you buy in the grocery store and far cheaper.
The disadvantage of growing a garden from seed is having to wait for your vegetables to grow so you can harvest them.
This is why it’s optimal to freeze your bounty to have fruits and vegetables available until the following growing season.
Garden Memories In The UK As A Child
I remember that when I was growing up in England, many people had apple trees in their backyards.
There was also the obligatory rhubarb patch and a sprinkling of gooseberry bushes and damson trees, and in a rough open space, you could find blackberries by the thousand.
Coming home from school at a young age, we often scoff free damsons off some old ladies’ tree.
It was called “scrumping,” though that term is more synonymous with stealing apples off a tree.
Growing up in an area dominated by old Victorian houses helped as it provided a large variety of mature fruit sources, but a love of the outdoors helped, too.
I’m guessing I was a permanent source of disgust for my mother because you couldn’t keep me indoors, and I was always covered in muck.
Enough about me getting dirty; I was talking about plants.
Seeds Instead Of Starter Garden Vegetable Plants
When Mrs. CBB and I first bought our house, we used to buy young tomato and pepper plants, grow them a little, and then plant them outside.
Over the last 2-3 years, we have increased our usage and the number of plants we need to sustain that harvest.
Buying pre-grown plants from a nursery would cost a lot of money and defeat part of the object we set out for ourselves to save money.
Gardening Advice For Beginners
This year is no different other than that growing the seeds has become cheaper by using old egg cartons instead of those “Peat Containers” or “Coconut Mat Trays.”
There’s nothing wrong with coming up with ways to be frugal that will save you some money in your budget.
After all, saving money is the name of the game here.
After collecting many egg cartons over the last year, I simply cut or, should I say, separate the lid from the egg holder portion.
The lid is lined with a blue recycling bag cut into pieces large enough to sit inside and have an excess on the edges, forming my saucer or watering tray.
From Seed To Table
It isn’t if you are wondering how to plant seeds and whether starting them from seeds is difficult.
You only need to follow a few simple steps to get your garden seeds to sprout.
I’m sure the professionals have many amazing ideas, soils to use, etc, but this has worked for me for many years.
Using Empty Egg Cartons
Fill egg cartons with seed/cutting mix, plant your seeds, and water.
Within two weeks, I’ve already got a carpet growing in the front bedroom by the window with plenty of sun and it’s warm.
Planting seeds indoors is possible with the right amount of sunshine and care, but don’t think they will grow independently, as you need to check in on them daily.
Buying Garden Seeds
We kept our eyes peeled on various shopping trips and purchased multiple packs of seeds to plant over the past few months, including garden flower seeds.
It’s not often that we find discount coupons for seeds, so we grab them when we see a good sale.
You can even order seeds online from retailers or farmers and homesteaders who sell them on eBay.
Sometimes, you can pick up prize seeds for a reasonable price.
In this case, we paid $0.67 a packet at Home Hardware, and some seeds are from Dollarama at $0.33 a packet.
Nothing fancy, just everyday garden seeds for the frugal garden.
Harvesting Seeds From Vegetables
We also have seeds from our tomatoes and peppers that I will try to grow this year as an experiment.
If they work, we will collect the seeds each year and save even more money than purchasing garden seed packets.
Currently, we have the following garden seeds ready:
- Two varieties of Tomatoes
- Spring Onions
- Peppers
- Fennel (Anise or Finocchio)
The flowers I’m growing for our handing baskets are beautiful petunias, which I will add to with various greenery.
There will also be basil, Swiss chard, and mixed salad greens planted a little later in various odd containers that I find around the house.
This will add to what is already out in the garden, such as rapini, parsley, chives, mint, oregano, raspberries, rhubarb, grapevine (no grapes just yet), and crab apples.
The seed packets are worth reading and then kept for reference purposes.
Reading the sowing information, such as the time of year and the planting outside instructions, helps harvest the best crop.
I have an area of the garden where my tomatoes and peppers seem to like it, so this year’s plants will go in the same patch.
Other plants will be moved around the garden depending on how they performed last year; it’s all about trying something new and learning from it.
Last year, I lined the hanging basket coconut liners with plastic bags (with a couple of small holes in the bottom), which led to reuse and savings this year as they never rotted down.
Composting For Your Garden
This year, I will again use the compost from the fallen leaves in our garden in my compost bin and put it in our hanging baskets.
You could say it’s a little like “The Good Life, ” a BBC comedy from the ’70s about a couple going self-sufficient, although they had a slightly bigger garden than us.
If I had much more land, I could fill it with crops like beans, cucumbers, leeks, potatoes, cabbage, onions, and carrots and get a chicken run.
I’m not planning on becoming a small farm, but growing your vegetables and flowers can be done even from an apartment as long as you have a patio/balcony area, and the best part is the reward for your time and effort.
I’ll be reporting how our frugal garden is doing all summer, so make sure you subscribe to the blog to avoid missing out on the action.
I hope I’ve given you a few small vegetable garden ideas today so that you can start your garden from seed.
-Mr.CBB
Related Posts
- Fall Gardening, Grow Something, And Save
- Landscaping On A Budget In The Canadian Soil
- How I Turned My Passion And Skills Into Making Extra Money
- How To Build A Beautiful Rock Garden Without Weeds
- How To Start Your Spring Garden Using Odd Containers
