How to Choose Garden Seeds

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How do you choose garden seed varieties to grow in your garden? This is a common question we receive. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself while making those decisions.

The entire family being silly in the garden.

🌱What Will You Eat?

Before you even ask other questions, you need to consider this: Will you actually use what you grow?

Start by considering your primary purpose for growing a garden. Do you want to supply fresh food for your family to help save on grocery bills? Do you want to grow food for others or try more exotic crops you wouldn’t be able to find locally? Do you want to grow your own herbs for culinary or medicinal use? Are you looking to grow your own cut flowers and ornamental crops for home decor or craft projects? Will animals be eating some of what you grow? Whatever your reasons, consider them here.

Most importantly, will you actually EAT what you grow? For example, eggplant is a wonderful garden crop, but not everyone loves it. Will you eat that much eggplant, and even if you do, will you use it for anything other than Eggplant Parmesan? And if you have extra, does it freeze well for your cooking needs? If not, you may want to consider growing other food in that space and getting a few eggplant from a local grower instead.

A young boy watering plants in a garden bed with a large metal watering can.

🌱What are Your Growing Conditions?

Even the best gardener has a few constraints out in the garden, and weather/climate can be one of the biggest. So what growing conditions do you have available? Do you have a lot of heavy shade or direct afternoon sunshine in your garden, conditions which sun-loving or cool-loving plants might not like? What is the soil like – can you grow root crops or will those need to be in a raised bed because you have rocky or clay soil, for example? Are you growing in containers? How far is the water source & how much water do your plants need?

Ladybug next to orange aphids on a stem.

🌱What Pests & Diseases Do You Face?

This is a question for more experienced growers. If you haven’t been gardening for long, don’t worry too much about this question yet. But if you have been gardening for a long time, then you know what pests and diseases give you the most grief. Can you find varieties or even alternative crops that will resist these pitfalls more easily?

Quick Tip: Need help tackling pests & diseases organically. Here’s our blog series on the topic!

🌱What Kind of Seed Will You Plant?

While researching seeds, you’ll find 3 kinds of seeds: heirloom, hybrid, and GMO (though GMO seed isn’t widely available for garden vegetables yet).

Sliced red, meaty Indigo Apple tomato with a whole tomato to the side.

Heirloom Seed

Heirloom seed (i.e., open pollinated seed) is a variety that is genetically stable and breeds true from parent to child. For example, an heirloom tomato seed will produce exactly the same tomato that it came from. We sell only heirloom seeds!

Unfortunately, we’re losing thousands of plant varieties today, because we’re gardening less and not preserving genetic diversity, so you should consider using heirloom seeds.

Hybrid Seed

Hybrid seed is a hand-pollinated cross between two different varieties, in an effort to produce a plant with certain traits. Hybrid seed won’t breed the same as before. Instead, it will likely produce a parent plant. (For example, a hybrid tomato seed will probably produce a product that is identical to one of the parents or will express some of the parents’ traits, but not be completely identical to the original fruit you harvested the seed from.)

GMO Seed

GMO seed isn’t natural. It’s made by essentially playing God and crossing genes of dissimilar plants and/or animals that with other plant genes cannot breed together in nature! It hasn’t been proven to be safe, and it isn’t true breeding either (contrary to government opinions). We’re committed to providing GMO-free seeds to our customers! (See our Safe Seed Pledge.)

🌱What Can You Optimize for Your Space?

If you have limited space, you’ll want to situate your plants in the most productive manner possible. Eggplant, for example, is a very bushy plant, but really doesn’t produce that much. Corn also takes a lot of space and organic matter (i.e. compost), but it also really doesn’t produce that much when compared to other seed choices.

Also, consider maturation days in comparison to your season length. Some pumpkins, for example, take 120-140 days to mature, while other varieties take less than 100 days. What variety matures best for you climate?

Quick Tip: Most people are using USDA Zones all wrong! Learn the RIGHT way to use them here.

Sometimes, you can grow multiple crops in a single plant too! Turnips AND turnip greens, for example. Both parts are edible, and this is a common characteristic of root crops. Some of the best veggies are veggies you’ve probably never eaten before!

How to Choose Garden Seeds – Conclusion

What will you use? What kind of seed will you plant? What can you optimize for your space? Answer these types of questions, and you’ll be well on your way to determining how to choose garden seeds for the year.