The Seven Vegetables You Should Always Grow From Seeds (and Why)

It's so tempting to buy starts—I get it. It feels great to look out over the garden, and finally see something in the beds, bringing color back to the landscape. But before you buy, you should seriously consider growing the following vegetables from seed. It might mean waiting a little longer for your crops, but your yields will likely be better. 

Carrots

Carrot seeds are small and cheap. You can pick up a pack of seeds at the grocery for a few dollars and it will yield far more carrots than a few six-packs of carrot starts. That’s $14 for starts vs. $3 for a packet of seeds. Not to mention: When you buy carrot starts, each cell holds a ton of individual carrot seedlings. You can’t simply plunk a whole cell of starts into the ground. You have to carefully separate them, and then plant each seedling in the ground, with space around it. It takes forever.

If you grow from seed, you simply draw a line in the dirt using a yard tool, sprinkle seeds down the line, and lightly cover with dirt. Water, or let the rain do the work for you. You’ll have to thin the seeds, sure, but it's a much easier endeavor. 

Beets and radishes

Beets and radishes both suffer from the same crowded-seedling problem as carrots, but there are two additional reasons to seed these yourself.

First, beet and radish seeds are a lot bigger and easier to handle than carrots. So it's quite easy to ensure you’re planting one beet or radish every few inches, and neither has to be buried deep—you can push a seed into the ground with your finger. This means you won’t have to thin them later, and both beets and radishes germinate easily.

Second, you don’t want 50 radishes or beets to be ready for harvest at the same time—as every seedling from a six-pack will be. You want 10 or 15. By planting several seeds weekly, you’ll have radishes or beets that are ready for harvest week after week.

Corn

Corn has insufferably shallow roots and is annoying tall. When you transplant corn, it inevitably does not develop strong enough roots to hold itself upright, and will need some additional support. Which is silly, because corn is a huge seed, and has incredibly high germination rates. Even better, you plant it late in the season, so you’re unlikely to miss the timing.

Plus, most nurseries only carry standard sweet yellow corn. With seeds you get access to more interesting varieties like Glass Gem or popping corn.

Beans

Beans, like corn, don’t develop very deep roots, and those roots need to support either a big bushy plant or a tall, climbing vine. It’s almost always better to plant from seed for that reason, so the seed has the opportunity to genuinely root itself in place.

Like corn, you can access so many wild and wonderful bean seeds, while your nursery will offer a much smaller variety. In fact, you can try growing almost any bean you buy in the store and really like. Some bean purveyors like Rancho Gordo encourage it, allowing you to sign up to test-grow their beans. For a shipping fee, they’ll send you seed beans every year.

Cucumbers

For years I purchased cucumber starts, to get a jump on the season. And then my cucumbers did nothing for the first few weeks, which was always disappointing. Meanwhile, I noticed that the cucumbers that naturally grew from whatever seeds were left from last year grew prolifically. This is because cucumbers hate their roots being disturbed. When you transplant them, they go into shock for a few weeks, and stall. They’ll recover, but in those few weeks, you could have grown the starts from seed. 

Lettuce

If you want to eat lettuce all summer long, you want to be planting it all summer long. With lettuce seeds being as abundant and cheap as they are, it’s far more efficient to grow them yourself. Lettuce is easy to germinate, and sprinkling in some seeds every week starting in spring just makes sense. Let the rain do the hard work. Lettuce is great to grow in blocks in your garden, or grow it between other plants.