Spring Gardening: Live Plants vs. Seeds for Quick Herb Garden Results

Getting a Head Start: Why Spring is the Perfect Time for Live Plant Purchases vs. Seeds

As the soil warms and daylight hours increase, gardeners everywhere face a crucial decision: should they start their herb gardens from seeds or invest in established plants? While both approaches have merit, spring offers unique advantages for purchasing live plants that can significantly enhance your herbal harvest this season.

At Richters, where we've been growing and sharing herbs since 1969, we've guided countless gardeners through this decision-making process with our decades of expertise.

The Spring Advantage: Maximizing Your Growing Season

Spring represents nature's great awakening, a time when everything in the garden accelerates. With increasing daylight hours, stabilizing temperatures, and typically abundant soil moisture, this precious window of optimal growing conditions shouldn't be wasted, especially for herb enthusiasts.

Starting with live plants in spring allows you to synchronize your garden's development with nature's calendar. While seeds require germination time, often weeks, before showing significant growth, established plants can immediately begin expanding their root systems and foliage. This timing advantage is particularly important for gardeners in northern climates like Canada, where the growing season has definite limits.

For many popular herbs, especially slow-growing perennials like rosemary, lavender, and oregano, the head start provided by established plants can mean the difference between a bountiful first-year harvest and merely setting the stage for next year's growth. When you purchase Richters' carefully nurtured herb plants, you're essentially buying time, often months of growing time that seeds simply cannot match.

Live Plants vs. Seeds: A Practical Comparison

Understanding the advantages of both live plants and seeds helps make informed decisions about what's best for your specific gardening situation.

Advantages of Live Plants:

Immediate Visual Impact: Live plants provide instant structure and presence in your garden, allowing you to visualize the final design.
Faster Harvests: Many herbs purchased as live plants can be harvested within weeks of planting, whereas seed-started plants might require a full season before substantial harvest.
Guaranteed Varieties: With live plants, what you see is what you get; the specific variety, growth habit, and characteristics are already evident.
Easier Growth of Challenging Species: Some herbs, like rosemary and bay laurel, are notoriously difficult to start from seed, with low germination rates and slow initial growth.
Extended Growing Season: Live plants effectively add weeks or months to your growing season by skipping the germination and early development phases.
Simplified Care: Established plants are typically more resilient than seedlings, requiring less precise attention to watering, temperature, and protection.

Advantages of Seeds:

Greater Variety: Seed catalogs often offer more varieties than are available as live plants.
Cost-Effectiveness: Seeds are generally less expensive, especially when growing large quantities.
The Complete Experience: Starting from seed provides the full growing journey and can be particularly rewarding for educational purposes.
Storage Capability: Seeds can be stored from year to year, providing flexibility in planting schedules.
Ease of Shipping: Seeds can be shipped worldwide with fewer restrictions than live plants.

For most homeowners, the ideal approach combines both methods, using live plants for immediate impact and for challenging species, while growing some varieties from seed for economy and selection.

Quick Results: The Immediate Benefits of Live Plants

In our fast-paced world, there's something gratifying about seeing quick results in the garden. Live plants deliver this satisfaction, especially our Colosso Collection of extra-large herb plants that provide an even more dramatic immediate impact. Unlike typical seedlings, the Colosso™ Collection features lush, mature herbs grown in generous gallon-size pots. These well-established plants arrive ready to plant, with abundant foliage and strong root systems-so there’s no waiting for them to size up or managing delicate early growth stages. With Colosso™ herbs, you can transform a bare spot into a fragrant, thriving garden instantly and even begin harvesting right away.

Consider this timeline comparison for a typical herb like Greek oregano:

From Seed:

Week 1-2: Germination
Week 4-6: First true leaves develop
Week 8-10: Plant reaches 2-3 inches tall
Week 12-16: First potential light harvest

From Live Plant:

Day 1: Plant installed at 4-6 inches tall with a developed root system
Week 1-2: Plant becomes established in garden soil
Week 3-4: New growth appears, showing adaptation to the environment
Week 5-6: First harvest possible

This expedited timeline becomes even more significant for slow-growing herbs like rosemary, which might take an entire season just to develop into a plant large enough to survive its first winter when started from seed.

Beyond speed, live plants provide certainty. While seed germination can be affected by numerous variables, including temperature, moisture, and seed quality, a healthy live plant has already overcome these early hurdles. When you purchase quality live herbs from Richters, you're investing in plants that have been nurtured under optimal conditions by specialists who understand the specific needs of each herb variety.

When Seeds Make Sense: Strategic Seed Starting

Despite the advantages of live plants, there are certainly situations where seeds remain the better option. Annual herbs like dill, cilantro, and basil grow quickly from seed and can be succession-planted throughout the season for continuous harvest. These plants actually benefit from direct seeding, as they don't always transplant well and can rapidly produce abundant foliage under good conditions.

Some herbs also self-seed readily, creating a sustainable garden that regenerates naturally. Calendula, borage, and many mints will voluntarily return year after year once established, making an initial seed investment particularly worthwhile.

For gardeners with specific interests in rare varieties or those experimenting with breeding and selection, seeds offer greater genetic diversity and possibilities. Our extensive seed collection provides options for the herb enthusiast looking to explore beyond common varieties.

Making the Most of Your Richters Plants: Tips for Success

When you invest in live plants, proper handling during the critical transplanting period maximizes your return. Follow these guidelines to ensure your herbs thrive:

Acclimate Gradually: When plants arrive, place them in a sheltered location for 2-3 days, gradually increasing exposure to direct sunlight and outdoor conditions.
Plant at the Right Depth: Most herbs should be planted at the same depth they grew in their nursery containers. Planting too deeply can cause stem rot in many herb species.
Water Wisely: Most herbs prefer to dry slightly between waterings. Overwatering is a common cause of failure, particularly with Mediterranean herbs like lavender, rosemary, and thyme.
Consider Light Requirements: While most culinary herbs prefer full sun, some medicinal and woodland herbs require partial shade. Research each plant's specific needs.
Group Thoughtfully: Plant herbs with similar water and light requirements together to simplify care and maintenance.
Harvest Properly: Regular, appropriate harvesting actually stimulates new growth in most herbs. Learn the proper harvesting techniques for each herb to maximize production.

Remember that plants are living beings that respond to their environment. The care taken during the first few weeks after planting often determines their long-term success.

The Role of Climate and Timing

Spring's arrival varies dramatically depending on your local climate. In Canada's southern Ontario, where Richters is located, spring typically means the period from late April through June. During this transitional time, soil temperatures rise above 50°F (10°C), making it ideal for planting most herbs.

The advantage of purchasing live plants becomes even more pronounced in regions with shorter growing seasons. In zones 3-5, where winters are long and summers relatively brief, those extra weeks of growth can determine whether slower-growing herbs like lavender or rosemary will establish sufficiently before fall arrives.

Timing also matters for seasonal herb varieties. For example, many biennial herbs like parsley benefit tremendously from being planted as established starts in spring. This gives them time to develop substantial root systems and foliage before their natural lifecycle triggers flowering in their second year.

Economic Considerations: Value vs. Cost

While live plants typically cost more than seeds initially, the economic equation isn't quite so simple. When calculating true value, consider these factors:

Harvest Timeline: How much earlier will you harvest from a live plant versus seed? For perennial herbs like thyme or sage, this could mean months of additional harvests in the first year.
Success Rate: What percentage of seeds typically germinate successfully? For herbs with notoriously low germination rates, live plants may actually be more economical.
Space and Resources: Starting seeds requires dedicated space, growing media, containers, and often supplemental lighting, all costs that should be factored in.
Time Investment: The hours spent tending seedlings represent a real investment. For busy homeowners, the convenience of established plants often justifies the additional cost.

When viewed through this lens, live plants frequently offer superior value despite their higher initial price point, especially for gardeners who value their time and want reliable results.

Creating a Balanced Herb Garden: The Hybrid Approach

For most home gardeners, the most successful herb garden combines both pre-started plants and seeds. This hybrid approach allows you to enjoy the benefits of both methods while minimizing the disadvantages of each. Consider this strategy:

Start with live plants for:

Perennial herbs that take time to establish (lavender, rosemary, thyme)
Varieties you want to harvest quickly this season
Difficult-to-germinate species
Specimen or focal plants in your garden design

Use seeds for:

Annual herbs that grow quickly (basil, cilantro, dill)
Succession planting throughout the season
Varieties you need in large quantities
Experimental or unusual varieties

This balanced approach provides immediate gratification while also offering the pleasure of watching seeds develop into mature plants. It also spreads your harvest throughout the season, as live plants provide early yields while seed-started plants mature later.

Conclusion: Investing in Your Garden's Success

At Richters, we've been helping gardeners grow exceptional herbs for over five decades. We've seen how the strategic use of live plants, particularly in spring, can transform a garden's productivity and a gardener's satisfaction.

When you purchase live herb plants in spring, you're not just buying plants, you're buying time, certainty, and a head start on the growing season. You're investing in months of growth that seeds simply cannot provide, especially for perennial and slow-growing herbs.

While seeds certainly have their place in every garden plan, the immediate impact and accelerated timeline of live plants make them particularly valuable as spring arrives. By combining both approaches strategically, you can create an herb garden that delivers both immediate rewards and long-term sustainability.

This spring, give your herb garden the advantage of a strong start with quality live plants from Richters, where we've lived, worked, and breathed herbs since 1969.

Getting a Head Start: Why Spring is the Perfect Time for Live Plant Purchases vs. SeedsArticle