Curious whether seed-starting is worth the effort, or if it's better to buy seedlings? Let's dig into it.

trays of seedlings black plastic 1020 brassicas broccoli cabbage onion green and purple
1020 trays of brassica seedlings in 2" soil blocks ready for transplant into the garden

Why You Shouldn't Start From Seed

First, a quick aside here: I absolutely love starting all of my plants from seed myself and I rarely if ever buy any seedlings / starts from nurseries that I can grow on my own.

That said, I'm going to do my best here to outline (as objectively as possible) all of the downsides of starting your own seedlings first, before we look at the benefits:

Difficulty

Starting plants from seed is difficult. It's a skillset which will take time to dial in. There will be trial-and-error, frustration, and many failures along the way. It will challenge your skill as a grower.

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The Repercussions of Failure

If you rely on growing everything from seed, any failure will bubble up and become a bare or empty space in your garden.

Investment in Seed-Starting Infrastructure

Infrastructure needed to start from seed can be costly. All of my most expensive garden investments were indoor grow lights, trays, domes, soil-blockers, shelving for seedlings, and coco peat for seedling mixes.

It took a sizable initial investment to build the infrastructure to start thousands of seedlings. This alone can be a large hurdle to overcome.

While this investment does eventually pay itself off in the form of savings over the cost of nursery starts, it will likely take thousands of plants started from seed to repay you for the infrastructure.

Why You Should Start From Seed

Seed-starting is one of my favorite aspects of gardening. It's extremely rewarding to raise plants up all the way from seed and bear witness to the entire process from start to finish.

I'm fascinated by the seed-starting process, have the infrastructure built out for raising my seedlings right, and save too much money doing it to ever coax me into shopping at nurseries for most plants.

Long-Term Cost Savings

Starting all your own seedlings also saves an enormous amount of money once your aspirations scale up from windowsill gardening, to patio gardening, to an allotment or community garden plot, to a full yard, to a farm and beyond.



The bigger you go, the more the savings per-plant from starting your own seedlings really scale up, and you can stand to save some truly monumental sums of money by not outsourcing this part of the growing cycle.