Grow Something • Spring 2026

You do not need a lot of space, a lot of money, or a lot of time. You need fifteen minutes a day, a few good seeds, and someone to share the wins with.

We want to grow something with you this year. Not just give you instructions and send you out to figure it out alone, but actually walk through it together, step by step, from the first seed packet you open to the first tomato you pull off the vine and eat standing in the garden because you cannot wait to get back inside.

The whole secret to seed starting is small amounts of consistent time. Fifteen minutes in the morning to check the trays. Five minutes to water. The seeds do the hard work. You just show up.

Seed starting is better with other people. Post a photo of your first sprout. Text someone when germination happens. Swap extra seedlings with a neighbor. The people who stick with gardening year after year almost always have someone they grow alongside.

Indoors or Outdoors: How Do You Know Which?

Some vegetables need a long growing season that your local outdoor window cannot provide. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and broccoli go indoors weeks before your last frost date. Others do not like having their roots disturbed and grow so fast they do not need the head start. Carrots, beets, beans, cucumbers, squash, and corn all prefer to go directly into the soil outside.

Your seed packet tells you which method to use. Find your last frost date by typing your zip code plus "last frost date" into any search engine. That date becomes the anchor for your whole season's planting calendar.

What to Start Indoors

• Tomatoes: 6 to 8 weeks before last frost
• Peppers: 8 to 10 weeks before last frost
• Broccoli and cabbage: 4 to 6 weeks before last frost
• Eggplant: 8 to 10 weeks before last frost
• Lettuce and greens: 4 to 6 weeks before last frost
• Celery: 10 to 12 weeks before last frost

What to Direct Sow Outdoors

• Beans: After last frost, soil above 60 degrees
• Carrots and beets: 2 to 4 weeks before last frost
• Cucumbers and squash: After last frost, warm soil
• Radishes: As soon as soil is workable
• Peas: 4 to 6 weeks before last frost
• Corn: After last frost, soil above 65 degrees

Starting Seeds Indoors, Step by Step

1. Get a seed-starting mix, not garden soil. Garden soil compacts in containers and suffocates tiny roots. Seed-starting mix is light, sterile, and designed to hold just enough moisture for germination. Moisten before filling trays — it should feel like a wrung-out sponge.

2. Fill containers and make a small indentation. Use seed trays, small pots, or recycled yogurt cups with holes poked in the bottom. Make a shallow indentation at the depth your seed packet specifies, usually a quarter to a half inch.

3. Place two seeds per cell and cover lightly. Two seeds gives you insurance. Label every cell now, before anything has sprouted. Everything looks the same as a seedling.

4. Keep trays warm and covered until germination. Seeds do not need light to germinate. They need warmth and consistent moisture. Cover with a plastic dome or plastic wrap. The moment you see the first sprout, remove the cover and move the trays to your brightest light source immediately.

5. Give them as much light as you possibly can. A south-facing window gives less light than you expect. Seedlings respond to insufficient light by stretching tall and thin — called leggy growth. A simple LED shop light hung two to three inches above the trays and run for fourteen to sixteen hours a day solves this entirely.

6. Thin to one seedling per cell. When both seeds sprout, keep the stronger one and snip the weaker one at soil level with scissors. Do not pull. Two seedlings competing for the same cell will both come out weaker than one with all the resources to itself.

7. Pot up when roots reach the bottom. When roots start poking out the bottom of the cell, move to a three or four inch pot before transplanting outside.

Hardening Off: The Step Most People Skip

Your indoor seedlings have lived their whole lives in still, warm, protected air. Move them outside too fast and they shut down completely. Start about ten days before your planned transplant date. On day one, set the trays outside in a sheltered spot with indirect light for one hour, then bring them back in. Add an hour each day. By day ten, they are ready for full outdoor conditions.

Transplanting Outside

Choose a cloudy day or transplant in the evening. Dig a hole slightly deeper than the root ball, set the plant in so the top of the root ball sits at or just below the soil surface, firm the soil around it, and water deeply right away. Water daily for the first week, then let the plants tell you what they need.

Every expert gardener you have ever admired started exactly where you are right now. What carried them forward was not talent. It was showing up for fifteen minutes a day and caring about what happened next.

Reference: Better Homes and Gardens — Start a Vegetable Garden from Seed