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You can get a jump on your spring and summer garden by starting your seeds indoors in February. Garden centers, as well as Home Depot and Lowes, are already well stocked with seed starting supplies and tons of fruit, vegetable, herb, and flower seeds.
Most fruits and vegetables can be started indoors and then transplanted outside in about 6-8 weeks. However, root vegetables such as radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, and parsnips do not transplant well and should be sown directly outdoors around St. Patrick’s Day.
Starting your own seeds opens up a whole world of vegetable, fruit, herb, and flower varieties that you’d never be able to find as seedlings at a local nursery. And even for plants that you can easily get at a nursery, a packet of seed is usually under $4 while a flat of the exact same variety of plant is about $16 – and you get a lot fewer plants for that $16 as well!
Seeds to Start Indoors in Mid-February
Fruits & Vegetables:
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Chilis
Eggplant
Leeks
Lettuces
Peas
Peppers
Spinach
Tomatillos
Tomatoes
Any and all herbs – in fact, you can grow these indoors all year long!
Flowers (these are just a few of the many you can start indoors):
Marigolds
Zinnias
Impatiens
Nasturtium
Snapdragon
Salvia
Cosmos
Planting Calendar
After looking at the almanac, and several growing guides for our area, plus personal experience, I have come up with my own planting calendar for eastern PA & southern NJ. I have listed some of the more popular vegetables that I grow, as well as a date for starting the seed indoors, and for transplanting them into the garden or direct sowing the seed. But here’s the thing, these dates are never firm. Never! Some years, we will have a very mild winter, and you could move up your planting a little bit. Other years, we will have snow and icy temperatures into late April. Those years, I hold off transplanting until after Mother’s Day.
Great advice for gardeners. You can also get a good planting time table by contacting your local extension office or at the Farmer’s Almanac website. I’m getting antsy to get out in the garden, but it just snowed yesterday…gonna be a few more weeks. lol
It snowed here too, but by afternoon it was closer to 60! With the warm-up later this week, I’m going to chance planting my root veggies a few weeks early. *fingers crossed*