Cheap vegetable seeds: are they worth it?

Can't you just feel it? Spring is almost in the air! Right? Okay, so not so much in some parts. Well, it will get here! And winter will be not much more than a memory. For now, how about some armchair gardening. It's all the fun of gardening, without the sore back afterwards!

I was at Dollar Tree yesterday and discovered that they had their vegetable and flower seeds in stock for this year's planting season. The cashier said they had just received them and put them out. They price their seeds at 4 packets for a dollar. On many varieties of seeds, this is a phenomenal price. I snatched up 16 packets of seeds, and spent just $4.

This brand packages their seeds for the discount market. They put less volume in each packet. But there are many instances where these are still a great deal.

• if you just want to have a couple of plants of a variety, such as zucchini, eggplant, peppers, winter squash/pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers
• if the seeds themselves are very small, so a few grams are still a lot of seeds, such as carrot, lettuce, radish, turnip, broccoli, cauliflowers, kale, green onion, or cabbage seeds
• if you like some of a vegetable, but not a farm's worth. I find this is true for us for beets, chard, yellow wax beans and arugula.
• you are growing in pots, or otherwise have limited space available for planting

Of course, there is an instance where these smaller packets are not the great value that you'd think.

• large seeds, that you want to grow an entire row or square of, such as peas and beans. I think there were only about a dozen seeds in each of these packets. I'd need to buy about 5 or 6 packets of the beans to plant a square for the summer. I should be able to find bean seeds for around $1 to $1.50 in larger packets, off the rack at Home Depot or our neighborhood drug store. Both these places discount most of their seeds. And I'll have more varieties to choose from in both the peas and beans at HD or the drugstore.

And there's also the consideration that these seeds are not for you at all.

• if you are looking for heirloom varieties, these are the modern varieties.
• their variety within a seed type is limited. They package only the most widely available seeds. Only 2 kinds of bean seeds, 1 kind of pea, 2 types of lettuce, etc. Other vendors offer a larger variety. And if you have found one specific variety that does well for your garden, you may be better off to stick with that one.

You may be wondering if these seeds are viable -- will they produce? My experience has been, yes. Just because they're cheaper doesn't mean they are of inferior quality. The lower price is more a reflection of their ability to buy in volume and limit selection, than of being a lesser quality.

I will occasionally find some chaff in the packet, along with the seeds, or a broken large seed like a bean. But I figure for the price, I can overlook a tiny bit of waste. When I'm just not sure if there will be enough seeds in a packet of what I want, I buy 2 packets. It's only an extra 25 cents -- a small price to pay for insurance that I'll have all the seeds I want to plant this year.

I spent $4 on seeds so far this year. I'll also be buying bush green beans and snow peas at a place like Home Depot. So my total seed expense should come to about $7 to $8. In comparison, in years that I've bought all my seeds at Home Depot, I've spent about $20 to $25 on seeds for the vegetable garden.

If you are interested in this sort of seed deal at a discount store, you'll need to act fast, as their supplies tend to be more limited than nurseries or big box stores. The selection at our local Dollar Tree is picked over by the first of March, every year.