Well dude,
Seed starting ain't for everyone, but it's just a part of gardening. For me, it's a way of extending the season. With a bit of resourcefulness, starting seeds can indeed be cost saving. Seed saving is one way and re-using and recycling materials to plant them in , is another. You do have to fork out some money for the soiless medium, but I don't find it too expensive.
But as I said, starting seeds is one part of the experience. Growing your garden from started plants from your nursery or friends is just as rewarding!
Glad to see you are fired up over it.
Good luck this year!

It'll get cheaper next year if you decide to save seeds this year and take care of those little seed starting trays so you can reuse them. You can even save the soilless seed starting stuff sometimes. Just knock most all of it off when you transplant them the first time, then bake it at about 180 right before you use it again. In my experience, squashes, melons, pumpkins and I think cukes don't much like that treatment, so you can't do that with them, but in your zone you'd be most likely direct-seeding those anyway.

And you might find other stuff to start seeds in if you experiment. Try using perlite or vermiculite next year instead of buying a pre-mixed seed starting medium. Those pre-mixes are just like those little bags of cut up salad ~ more expensive than just buying the heads of lettuce and cutting/mixing yourself.

Like Mailman said, you can save things to plant in, like yogurt cups and butter tubs. And ask around for more seed starting trays or pots ~ those six-packs work well, as do four inch pots (though they use more soilless mix). Egg cartons are pretty popular for starting the seeds, and don't use much soilless mix ~ just be sure to transplant the seedlings quick. Freecycle is your friend there ~ bet if you post asking for these things you'll get inundated.

Congratulations on not only surviving Katrina, but on thriving afterwards! I hope your garden this year exceeds your expectations. :)

It is possible, with more labor, to make the starting medium cover a lot more ground, as it were. One way is to make flat trays rather than using the plastic pre-formed ones, and just put an inch or so of medium in a two-inch deep tray. I've done it with strips of wood nailed together and old screening stapled to the bottom, which works pretty good. You can then sow seed very densely - rather than say 48 seeds in a 48-cell tray you can get a couple hundred into a tray with about the same amount of medium. But of course you have to move them up into other containers or out to the garden quite a bit earlier. But the bigger containers could just have garden dirt in them, and you can fertilize with a solution nine-tenths water, one-tenth urine. You wife will have to agree that is pretty cheap.....

Several years ago I bought a compressed bale of Pro Mix and a garbage can to store it in. That was a good investment. It has served my seed starting needs ever since and given me good results.

Yeah, seeds can be expensive and most companies are stingy about how much they put in the packet. I save a lot of my seed and do a lot of trading. But that is mainly to have the varieties I want, which is the whole reason I start my own transplants, not to save money.

Most seeds remain viable for several years. That's where you can save some money. A few companies offer a variety of packet sizes. You can get a large packet for a small additional charge. That works if you are sure you want to plant the same variety for several years. It also gives you trading material.

Jim

Ah, Pro-mix, I for one can not and will not use anything else. You might want to check out the Winter Sowing forum to rid yourself and keep your wife happy (getting flats out of the house, LOL) and although I know your weather is certainly different from mine, there were or are some successful winter sowers in your area. Check out that forum and also the seed exchange forum and it should be smooth sailing for you.

As jimster above says, the pro-mix comes in a compressed bail, and its quite a bit, I think 3.7 cubic foot, and goes a long way. Hope that helps, and Happy Gardening.

Alberta

I found my seed growing became small and weaklings and took longer then the healthy small plant starters. Practice make perfect they say.

The size of your garden, how much you can/freeze to put away later, and what you plant can make/break your "up front" costs in your garden.

Very few people can "break even" on the upfront costs of their garden within the first year...some even longer depending on their setup.

I have a very small planting area in my current residence and it took me 2 years to "break even" on it's production vs. cost since I get very little to freeze/can for later.

Some people invest WAY too much into their gardens and will never break even while growing "64 dollar tomatoes."

By the way...I don't use soiless mixes, myself. I use a neutral (not miracle grow or fertilized soil) soil mix in 4-6 cell seedling planters (the kind you generally see as starters in garden centers). I start my seeds 6-8 weeks before planting time, 2 seeds to a cell, snip/pluck one seed out once my favored has established itself...plant out. I can do this mostly because I'm only starting a few dozen plants at a time. If I was starting 100s of plants I'd probably go at it a bit more tiered in my seedling starting stages.

By the way...I do add a small (1/3rd strength) fertilizer shot to the soil diluted in water after the 2nd/3rd set of true leaves emerge.

Most people I see (including me) killing and injuring seedlings do it with over-watering or using a starting media that's way too nutrient rich.

I save money in the following ways 1) my fertilizer is from the local elevator, free or extremely inexpensive 2) many years ago I purchased a case of flats and a case of cell packs and won't have to buy them ever again. i re-use them also after disenfecting them in the bath tub (your wife might not like that). 3) some seed is harvested and saved from last year. 4) buy seed in bulk and save it for subsequent years. This fits in well with planting with a Earthway planter. 5) Figured a long time ago how to make my own custom mixes from peat, perlite and vermiculite. I'd share how to make different mixes but can only do it by sight and feel. My seeding mix is peat and vermiculite, the peat's coarseness is adjusted for different size seed.

By far, my greatest expense every year is seed. If the economy keeps tanking, those of us who haven't done so already may regret not having converted to open pollinated varieties.

I think the best part of starting seeds is not really saving money, but being able to grow the cultivar that you desire. You mentioned that you are growing heirloom tomato; do you think you would have been able to find all the ones you will soon be growing in your garden in the local nursery?

Next year you'll have all your supplies, and if you save a few seeds, you wont be paying for much.

May I suggest you try starting seeds with a cheaper soil less mix next time? both coco and perlite work fantastic and support excellent root systems. Coco is a bit finkey though.

oh i ramble, Good luck with your garden!

Let me just say that I'm a newbie at vegetable gardening and this is a sincere question... But, I thought the reason so many people started seeds indoors on this forum is because they live in areas with short growing seasons. I'm in Texas, and I understand the tomato growing - from - seed thing. Our summers prevent direct sowing for tomatoes. But most other things can be directly sowed successfully, I thought. Am I wrong?

I have not grown every vegetable yet, so I don't honestly know. I would think that in zone 9, bigoledude could be even more confident (yes, I understand about southern climates and surprise freezes, then zooms up to desert temps) about direct sowing.

How does it benefit him to sow ALL of his vegetables in pots ahead of time? Considering that he has such a long spring, fall, and mild winter, etc.

Dude, are you only starting tomato plants? Otherwise, I don't understand what benefit you will have by starting so many other things indoors - other than a few weeks jump start. You have such a long period for growing how does that add up against the cost and effort of indoor starts?

I hope I don't sound like a harpey wife, lol. Just curious as to the WHY.

And, good luck with your garden!

Hey trsinc

I am starting tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, eggplants, cucumbers and several greens-n-stuff.

There is several reasons I chose to start my own seed this year. I wanted to grow varieties that were not offered locally. I wanted healthier seedlings. I purchased diseased seedlings last year in a futile attempt at container growing.

Like one of the posters above, it just adds another dimension to the whole garden experience.

Our tomatoes and most sweet peppers shut down during the hottest part of summer. So, where others have a short growing season due to winter cold, we actually have two (summer) growing seasons. One, before the heat of mid-summer and, a fall crop of (summer) vegetables. Again, it is sorta important for me to get most of my plants in the ground early in order for me to have a decent 1st harvest.

Most of my original post was in jest. Although, some points were legit. One great forum member sent me tomato and pepper seeds and, another fellow gardener sent me some walking-onion bulbs.

The expense for the other stuff wasn't all that horrible. My fixed income was strained mostly because of it being my first year. I will certainly save seeds from my best performing varieties. And, the hard-goods will be usable next year.

I found a pretty inexpensive source for a high quality fine-ground sphagnum peat and, bought some fine vermiculite. This seems to make a good starting-mix.

My squash, melons, bush snap beans, pole snaps, southern peas, corn and okra will all be direct-sown.

I had a truckload of stable litter delivered. Now, my wife and the neighbor across the street want to hurt me! I agree the flies are horrendous!!! But, we differ in opinion on the foulness of the smell.

The stable owner guessed the load would only be about 10 or 15 wheelbarrows-full. Well, we've moved about 45 wheelbarrows-full and barely even changed the size of the green, heaping, steaming, smelly pile of manure, alfalfa hay, feed pellets, regular hay, sawdust and other wonderful free stuff I can't recognize.

If I've made my wife appear to be less than exited about this whole operation, it's no accident.

I'm a skinflint and hate spending money I don't need to. I'm also growing about 1300 plants with the idea being to sell most of them at Flea Markets, Yard Sales, to senior citizen and gardener groups.

Besides lights, which I hope to use for years and years, my biggest cost has also been seeds. I've spent probably close to $100 on them, but that isn't bad since I'm starting eleven different types of peppers, two kinds of Alpine strawberries, two kinds of flowers and nine types of toms.

I sow seeds in those plastic carry out trays one gets at a restaurant - I can start 30 different types in a 2.5 x 8 ft. area, cutting down tremendously on lighting needs.

Use Ferti-lone potting soil - $9 for 40 quarts. Scour nurseries after the spring sales have ended to find cells to plant the sprouted seedlings in. They often give them away rather than having to pay to get rid of them.

For what it's worth, I get 95 percent of my seeds from Rareseeds.com. Normally way more seeds than I need for three years, let alone one year.

One other thing - I've heard stories about using stable manure, especially when it contains alfalfa and straw. That's asking for a lot of weeds.

Mike

If you have neighbors with a nice horse farm or a horse boarding barn nearby ask if they use "smartpaks" (an individual packaging system for feed additives) and if so if they would save them for you to recycle. They are just perfect for starting seedlings. :) There's a picture in the line below.

If you agree to take some manure with you, they may load you up. :-)

That's a great idea on the Smartpaks, CurlyLindsay! They sure are nice sized for seed starting. Love that tip.

"One other thing - I've heard stories about using stable manure, especially when it contains alfalfa and straw. That's asking for a lot of weeds." Not necessarily, Mike. It all depends on what the horses ate, how well the straw was gleaned, how well the stall is cleaned out, how old the pile is (whether it was allowed to compost or not), the quality of the alfalfa, etc., etc, etc.

For instance, well gleaned (harvested) wheat, oat, etc., straw doesn't have as much seed left in it. There is much variability in harvesters due to age and upkeep (if it's old and/or hasn't been well taken care of some of the "teeth" may be broken off, thus will leave more seed behind than a new harvester). Most of the seeds still in the straw when it's put down for bedding drop in the stall and if the stall is just raked out (as is usually done in dirt floored stalls) instead of swept out (as they sometimes do with stalls with mats on the floors), those seeds stay there for the most part. If they sprout, the horse just eats them.

A horse fed only clean hay and pellets won't be eating many if any weeds, therefore few to no weed seeds will be present in the manure. Alfalfa, when baled at the correct time, won't have any seeds in it (same with most other types of hay). If the hay man knows what he's doing, he'll cut it just as it comes into bloom as he can get a better second cutting. Of course there always are some who don't know when to cut it, or who can't get into the fields to cut at the correct time (maybe because of too much rain making for muddy fields) so those bales may have seeds in them, but it's definitely not the norm. And believe it or not, there are pastures out there with little or no weeds. Many horse people work hard on weed eradication as there are so many things out there that can cause a horse to colic. Considering colic very well can lead to a $10K surgery or death of the horse, it's worth the effort to many to keep the weeds at bay.

There is another good reason to start your own vs buying them. Unless you know what to look for, you may be buying insect and/or microbiological pests on the plants or in the growing medium.