January is when excitement for the summer garden really starts to build, and it’s a great time to decide which easy to grow vegetable seeds you want to buy for the summer potager. With the abundance of vegetable seeds available online, choosing which to buy can be daunting.
January used to be the month when seed catalogues would fill mailboxes, but I’ve noticed that many arrive in December now. While I have found a handful of super popular varieties already sold out when placing my seed orders, don’t worry, there are plenty of great options available.
Which seed company is best?
As written about in my first blog post, “What is a Potager?”, vegetables are a key component to the potager or kitchen garden. Aside from dedicated flower seed companies, vegetables more often then not, occupy more than half of the seed offerings. And, with so many seed companies online, which seed companies have the best seeds? When you search online, the big players are the first to come up, like Burpee, Territorial Seed Company, and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I recommend that you click on the websites that interest you, take a look around, read some of the reviews. You really can’t go wrong with the more well known companies.
If you have favorite gardeners that you follow on social media, look into what seed companies they purchase seeds from. You can also start your search by looking up what you’d like to grow. Take carrots for an example. When you search “carrot seeds” on Google, a variety of seed listings show up with colorful photographs. If you have never grown carrots before, click on the photographs that you like the best, and read about the variety. I would also read a few of the reviews. I usually read a few 5 star reviews, and I am always curious about 1 star reviews. What was so bad about that carrot that made the reviewer give it a 1 star?!
In the end, the best way to find the seeds that work best for you is to buy from a variety of sources and grow the seeds in your garden. It will take a few seasons, but you will eventually gravitate toward a company or two that are your go-to seed companies.
A few of my favorite vegetable seed companies are:
- Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (also known as Rare Seeds)
- Johnny’s Selected Seeds
- Swallowtail Garden Seeds
- Seed Savers Exchange (membership required to buy from the exchange)
4 easy to grow vegetable seeds
I have grown a wide variety of vegetables from seed in my potager, but I definitely have a few must-haves that I couldn’t garden without.
Tomatoes
I love growing tomatoes! In fact, they were the very first plants I grew from seed. They are very easy to grow vegetable seeds, and you have a much wider selection of seed varieties to choose from than plants offered at the garden center in the spring. I grow a variety of colors and sizes, and my excitement grows every season as the fruits ripen. Beginning in spring of 2020, I now grow enough tomato plants to have a roadside stand at the house. I even have repeat customers checking in when they see me around town in the spring, asking when the plants will be ready!
Beefsteaks and canners
Here is a selection of beefsteak and canner size tomatoes that I like to grow. Our favorites are Gold Medal, German Pink, and Classic Beefsteak. Bread and Salt and Large Barred Boar were new to me for the 2023 season, and I will definitely grow them again this year.
The unusual
This is just a small selection of what excites me about growing tomatoes from seed. The more unusual, the better! Some favorites are: Costoluto Genovese, Black Beauty, and Berkeley Tie Dye Pink. Queen of the Night is new to me for 2024. I couldn’t resist the striking colors in the listing photographs!
Cherry tomatoes
We don’t eat a lot of cherry tomatoes, but I have added more into the collection for my plant sale. There are some real stunners in the cherry world! My favorites are: Sungold Select, Purple Bumble Bee, and new to me in 2023, Evil Olive. They really are orange and green and I was surprised by their excellent flavor!
Tomato seeds take up the largest space in most vegetable catalogues. Find a few classic, tried and true varieties, like Abe Lincoln and Mortgage Lifter, and then, take a chance on something crazy. Anticipation will grow as the fruits mature, I promise!
Pumpkins and squash
Close on the heels of tomatoes as my favorite vegetables to grow from seed are, pumpkins. I don’t grow the regular jack-o-lantern varieties, you can get those anywhere. I grow mostly heirlooms, (many French heirlooms), and once again, the stranger the better! Rouge Vif D’Etampes might be the first heirloom pumpkin I grew, discovered in the pages of Louisa Jones’ “The Art of French Vegetable Gardening“. Also known as Cinderella Pumpkin, I love the deep red orange color of the shell and the flat, ribbed shape.
Flat White Boer has a similar shape to Rouge Vif D’Etampes, but is creamy white, a unique color for pumpkins. Galeux D’Eysines has really interesting peanut shell shaped growths on the shell. This is one I really look forward to from the potager. Displayed at the front door in October, this pumpkin always draws comments from visitors!
Other easy to grow vegetable seeds
A few other vegetables that I have found easy to grow are kale and celery. Both varieties have continued growing when the cold weather hits in my garden.
Kale and celery
Kale reseeds itself freely, which means it is one of the first plants to grow in the spring. I was not expecting celery to be perennial in my zone 5a garden, but, to my delight, it has come back each spring!
These are my top 4 choices for easy to grow vegetable seeds. Tomatoes, pumpkins, kale and celery are solid choices for the kitchen garden. I encourage you to look at all the seed varieties available, and try growing something you aren’t familiar with. I’d love to hear from you, what vegetable have you never grown that interest you? Thanks for following along in the potager!
