Planting Vegetables – Are Seeds or Starts the Best for Your Garden?

Winter will be winding down soon and you’re starting to think about for spring. Your garden is calling you and you can’t wait to get your hands in the dirt. But what’s the best way to plant it? Direct seeding your vegetables is one option, but transplanting vegetable starts is another. Which do you choose?

Keep reading to get the pros and cons of both methods so you can get your garden off to a great start.

Okay—now let’s dive into the pros and cons of direct seeding your vegetables versus transplanting vegetable starts.

But don’t worry about taking notes—I’ve made a free, easy-to-print cheat-sheet that quickly outlines all the key points of this post.

Pros and Cons of Direct Seeding Your Vegetables

Let’s start with direct seeding.

Direct seeding your vegetables is a very simple way to get your garden planted. It’s also the cheapest way to plant a lot of vegetables.

Plus, you have the added advantage that if you let your vegetables go to seed and save that seed, you can essentially plant the following year for free. Though this can also be done with transplants.

If you are interested in learning more about saving your vegetable seeds, make sure to check out the great book Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, 2nd Edition.

All you need to do for direct seeding your vegetables is to follow the instructions for the specific seed you are planting and plant the seed into your garden.

Over the next week or 2 your seedlings will come up and your garden well be on its way.

So what are the pros and cons?

Pros of Direct Seeding Your Vegetables

As mentioned earlier, a big pro of direct seeding is that it is cheap and easy.

In addition, young seedlings develop much bigger roots than transplanted starts. Even a young seedling with just the first 2 false leaves (also known as cotyledons or seed leaves) can have a root that already goes deeper into the soil than an average transplant.

This will make your vegetables much more resistant to drought and reduce how much water your garden needs—which is great if you want a low water garden!

Direct seeding also gives you a higher chance that some of the vegetables will do well. Say you’re seeding lettuce—you will likely spread a lot more seeds than starts if you had gone the transplanting route.

Why is this a pro?

Because when you thin your new seedlings (often viewed as a con of direct seeding your vegetables) you are selecting for those individual plants that are doing the best in your garden.

You often don’t get to do this with transplants.

Direct seeding your vegetables also means you don’t need to take up space growing starts indoors or in a greenhouse. Depending on how your property is set up, you may not have room to grow your own starts.

Cons of Direct Seeding Your Vegetables

Are you sold on direct seeding? Well, before you go out and buy a bunch of seeds, there are some drawbacks you should consider.

A big con of direct seeding is that if you live in an area with cool and wet springs like I do here in western Washington, it can be hard to get warm-loving plants like tomatoes started early enough to still get a harvest before the cool late summer and fall weather sets in.

Not all vegetables need hot weather, but for those that do, direct seeding does not always work—at least not with store-bought varieties that have not been adapted to your local conditions (Saving seeds can help solve this problem!).

Another problem is that thinning direct-seeded vegetables can be time consuming—especially for those vegetables with small seeds like lettuce.

The solution to the problems with thinning is to be more careful about spacing the seeds, but this is not always easy to do.

I have also found that, at least in the early days of getting a garden set up, pests like slugs and pill bugs can quickly eat through young seedlings. Larger transplanted vegetables can handle this a bit more readily.

But if you work with nature, your garden will eventually reach a balance with these pest, so this issue may go away over time.

The other con with direct seeding your vegetables is that it can be challenging if you use a thick mulch. While you can move the mulch aside, depending on how thick your mulch is, that can be tricky.

Most vegetable seedlings won’t come up through a thick mulch.

Pros and Cons of Transplanting Vegetable Starts

So what about transplanting vegetable starts?

In a lot of ways, I really like transplanting starts into my garden. It is just so fun to transform a bare garden in just a single day.

One moment you have bare earth—the next, the garden is filled with vegetables.

But of course, there are some tradeoffs. Here’s how it shakes out.

Pros of Transplanting Vegetable Starts

Transplanted vegetables are more resilient to pests like slugs and pill bugs from day 1. That’s because the plants are already a decent size the moment they set root in your garden.

It’s also easier to see where all the new vegetables are, which can be helpful in a large garden.

Regardless of whether you buy vegetable starts or grow them yourself, you can give your heat-loving vegetables a head start.

This is less of a benefit for cool weather vegetables, but in some cases it can still help.

And if you buy your vegetable starts, it’s also a lot faster—you can buy and transplant the starts all in the same day.

Basically, the instant garden.

But here are the tradeoffs...

Cons of Transplanting Vegetable Starts

One of the biggest cons of transplanting vegetable starts is that you either need the space to get them started indoors or in a greenhouse, or you need to buy them.

Buying them can get very expensive if you have a large garden.

But growing vegetables starts yourself requires pots or soil blocks, trays, good soil for starting vegetables (homemade or bought), space, and possibly grow lights. This all takes money, or if you take the DIY route it can take time (building soil, etc.).

Of course, direct seeding also takes time because of the issues with thinning the plants. But doing your own starts is still the most time-consuming option.

If you do go the route of growing your own vegetable starts, I recommend looking into getting a soil block maker so you can eliminate the need for wasteful plastic pots. (Here’s a recipe for a DIY soil block maker soil).

While transplanted vegetables can have a head start over direct-seeded vegetables, they won’t have as good of a root system. This means transplanted vegetables will need more water than direct-seeded vegetables.

Sometimes, directed seeded vegetables will even catch up to transplanted vegetables because of this difference in root size.

And since transplanted vegetables tend to have poor root systems, I’m sure you can imagine what this means for the miserable transplanted carrot (Or radish, or potato, or any other root crop where the part you eat grows underground. Just don’t try it).

Also, as mentioned earlier, transplanting vegetable starts won’t let you select those plants that do best in your specific growing conditions.

But you can save seeds from your transplants, so if you grow your own starts, then over time you can still get locally-adapted varieties. That said, direct seeding still provides a better benefit in this area.

Finally, I’ve also noticed that cool weather vegetables like spinach tend to bolt (go to seed) faster when transplanted than when grown from seed.

Which is Better? Direct Seeding Versus Transplanting Starts

So, what is the better choice between direct seeding your vegetables and transplanting vegetable starts?

The answer is, of course, “It depends.”

If your goal is to have the most options for what to grow, you’ll want to do transplants. And if you want to save time, you’ll need to buy them.

If your goal is to save money, or to have the most robust and resilient garden in the long-term, then direct seeding is your best bet.

A lot of people do some combination of each.

I always direct-seed peas and beans, which naturally do well in my climate, but I tend to plant tomato starts.

I’d love to start direct-seeding tomatoes, but space is always an issue. At some point I plan to build a greenhouse or cold frame that I could use for direct seeding, but for now I rely on transplants. And I don’t have the time or space to grow my own starts right now, so buying is my only real option.

Because of this, I’m focusing on direct seeding for most of my vegetables and buying starts for plants like tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplants, etc.

Basically, the hot-weather vegetables.

It’s also true that some vegetables don’t do well as transplants, like carrots and other root crops. These plants make the choice for you!

What about you?

Think about your situation and the vegetables you are planting. If you’re like me, you may prefer a mix of direct seeding your vegetables and transplanting vegetable starts.

Please leave a comment below sharing which option you prefer or if you prefer a mix.