Menards has seed packs for 10 cents. I don't remember the name and it's valley something but I buy them every year for common vegetables and it's all open pollinated. Not a lot of seeds in the pack but if I need more seed I buy 2 or 3 packs. I've never had any problem with seed quality but hurry, closer to planting and the seed prices shoot up to 29 cents!

Bought my onion seeds a couple days ago with a couple of new varieties so when they arrive It will start my planting season in the basement.

Unfortunately I added more houseplants again and right now that distraction has been helping as far as seed ordering goes. I still can't resist plant society seed exchanges, but since fewer paper catalogs are showing up in my mailbox these days it's a little easier to avoid the 'in-hand' temptation of sitting there looking through it again and again lol

It also used to be far more dangerous when you could order like ten different bean seeds for under $20 and it wasn't a big deal when they were all unplanted in July.... but it was so much fun imagining neat rows of all kinds of beans in February. Now it's like a $75 investment and the unplanted seeds kind of loom over you all summer making you feel even more guilty about neglecting things ;)

I did plant a few perennial seeds though. Collected seeds of daylilies, agapanthus, and hardy palms, so staying on the cheap side, and as far as sunflowers go -I expect there will be a bunch coming up anyway based on how sloppy the birds are at the feeder. Not as cool as the rich reds and strong stemmed cutting sorts, but good enough for me I guess.

I am growing the ridiculously expensive 'Colibri' Icelandic poppies this year (alongside various other poppies such as the bizarre 'Black Magic - p.macrostomum and the tiny dwarf Californian e.caespitosa). At a frankly eye-watering £7 for 50 seeds (around $8, I think), these fabulous poppies are generally only grown for the cut-flower market and usually only for wholesale growers, I find I am uncharacteristically nervous. I am going to hedge my bets with a fast stratification - 4 weeks in the fridge - with half of the seeds, while growing the remaining seeds with some additional bottom heat. I have dragged out an ancient propagator (having not used one for at least the last 15 years or so.

Also, for cutting, I have started some antirrhinums - growing snaps for the first time ever after my eldest gifted me with a bunch of F1 peach coloured snaps

https://www.plantsofdistinction.co.uk/antirrhinum/antirrhinum/antirrhinum-costa-apricot-f1-1088.

Apart from some pots of parsley, these are the first 2025 seeds I have planned...so far...as the greenhouse is scarily full of last years haul awaiting transplanting. Anyone else getting going yet?

cheers, campanula/rosaprimula

"Anyone else getting going yet?"

I've got cuttings of heliotrope and salvia rooting on the light cart in the basement. Seed starting won't start until mid-March or so.