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Seed or Transplants?
Seed Versus Transplants: Pros and Cons
There are merits and drawbacks to planting flowers from seeds or transplants in a home landscape’s flower garden.
While you’ll always plant bulbs from nursery-grown stock, you’ll choose to plant most annual, biennial, and perennial plants either from seed or from transplants in nursery containers.
Let’s look closely at the many pros and cons of seed and transplants.
Your choice of seed or transplants depends on the size of the site you’ll plant, the length of your growing season, your budget, and the varieties of flowering plants you select to grow in your yard.
It also makes a difference whether you’ll rear your plants outdoors or indoors, and if the flowers will grow in soil or in containers,
Size of Planting
Because more flowering plants are required to cover large areas than small-space garden beds, budget and plant variety are the primary considerations affected by site size.
Seed is always the least-expensive option for planting flowers. The trade-off is the extra time and care required to plant, germinate, and grow the seeds to transplanting size.
Seeded flowerbeds will look bare at first if you plant seed. If you’re eager to see a full bed of flowers, choose transplants that are already on their way to full size. Keep in mind that 6-packs, small, and large containers are progressively more expensive than seed.
Garden Season Length
If your gardening season is long and you will plant your flower seeds directly in the beds or containers, they are easier to sow than transplanting from grower flats or containers.
Those in short-season areas often sow seeds indoors before soils warm outside, rear their plants, and transplant them to the garden or containers after temperatures warm. Others prefer to obtain their transplants and avoid the work of starting seeds indoors.
Variety
For every variety, cultivar, or hybrid of flower offered in garden centers, there are dozens or even hundreds of other options available if you plant seeds.
That is a difference that goes beyond preference.
Many plant varieties have protections inbred genetically that prevent them from succumbing from common plant diseases and viruses.
Others have specific climate preferences, so you can choose flowers that are perfect for your region and weather, avoiding those that would struggle in your area.
Aesthetic choices also matter.
You may prefer flowers that are simple but beautiful, such as purple coneflowers or daisies. On the other hand, you’re eye may be drawn to the double or very-double, fringed, wavy petals of dahlias, carnations, or complex Shasta daisies.
Such choices are hit and miss in most garden centers, but a certainty in seed catalogs or online grower offerings of seed.
Budget
Economize on your plantings by choosing seed for fast-growing annual and perennial flowers that you’ll plant in quantity. Use your savings to splurge on a few special biennial and perennial plants with star qualities to transplant into your beds or containers.
When planting a 10-ft. (3-m) bed with seed, the cost will often be half or a third of that you would expend for transplants. The diffence in expense for planting transplants in a 3-ft. (90-cm) bed might be negligible, but quantity and size matter.
The difference in cost between seed and transplants might even mean the satisfaction of enjoying exactly the flowers you wanted instead of settling or compromising on less.
Seeds or Transplants: The Choice
Choose Seeds
Plant seeds when:
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- Garden centers near you are out of stock for the flowering plants you want for your home landscape
- Transplants offered in your area don’t match your site’s conditions or regional climate
- Your flower beds are large and using transplants would be too expensive
- Your garden season is long and you routinely sow seeds directly in garden soil or containers
- Your garden season is short and you routinely start flowering plants indoors for later transplant
- You are planting a flower garden for the first time in a site.
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Avoid seeds when:
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- Your flower beds are small and the economies of seed are unimportant
- Your garden season is short and grower transplants are more reliable and convenient
- You can divide or propagate existing plants in your flower garden for other plantings
- You are filling in spaces in a bed or container with one or two new plants
- You are replanting for a succession of flowers.
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Choose Transplants
Choose transplants when:
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- Garden centers near you have quality flowering plants of the species and size you want for your home landscape
- Transplants offered in your area match your site’s conditions or regional climate
- Your flower beds are modest in size
- Transplants will fill in gaps in an established landscape or replace a few mature or dying plants.
- Your garden season is short and transplants will produce flowers quickly
- You are replanting portions or small areas of a landscape’s flower gardens
- You are planting bedding plants for quick color
- You can divide or propagate existing plants in your flower garden to make new transplants.
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Avoid transplants when:
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- Your flower beds are large and the economies of seed will keep the project within your budget
- Your garden season is long and there’s time for seed to germinate, grow, and flower
- No existing plants in your flower garden can be divided or propagated to provide a source of new plants
- You are planting an entire bed with many plants
- You are planting late in the season when few quality transplants are available.
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