The Home Garden Seed Association

The Home Garden Seed Association promotes gardening from seed—an easy, economical and rewarding way to garden. The following content is provided by HGSA. Their members are seed growers, seed packet companies and packet printers.

You’ll Have Many More Choices

Cornell Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners, a citizen science program, describes 562 pepper varieties, 365 lettuces, and an astonishing 853 types of tomatoes. Only a fraction of these can be bought as seedlings. Read more

You Can Control Quality

Even if you are lucky enough to find your desired tomato, pepper, and flower varieties as plants, should you buy them? The answer depends on how well you know the grower. Seedlings that have dried out at some point in their lives or become root bound will not perform well in the garden. When you grow your own you’ll know that they’re being well cared for until the time is right for planting, and that they’ve been grown without unwanted chemicals. Read more

Growing From Seed Is Easier

It’s a fact: many plant varieties are more successful when grown from seed sown directly in the garden. These include root vegetables, herbs in the carrot family such as cilantro and dill, baby salad greens of any kind, and flowers that are best sown very early in the season, such as larkspur, Bells of Ireland, and Love-in-a-Mist. Read more

You’ll Save Money

A productive vegetable garden can feed your family all year for a fraction of what you would pay for equivalent produce at your local grocer or farmers’ market. An added advantage of buying seeds rather than plants: you’ll be able to sow succession plantings of greens, beans, and other crops for a second harvest! Read more

It’s Fun To Do!

It’s also magical, and gives you a feeling of independence and, yes, power, to watch a seed germinate and grow into a healthy seedling, connecting you to nature even as frigid weather may be confining you to the indoors. Read more

Photo credits: Home Garden Seed Association