Should you choose seeds or organic seedlings for your vegetable garden? Discover the advantages of each option and find the one that best suits your garden, your experience and the varieties you want to grow.
Seeds or seedlings: which to choose?
Both options have their advantages. Seeds offer more variety and flexibility, while seedlings save time and maximise your chances of success. The best choice depends on your experience, the time available and the crops you want to grow. In this article, we help you identify your gardener profile to find which solution suits you best.
Organic seeds or organic seedlings: a quick comparison
Criterion | Seeds | Seedlings |
Cost | Very economical | Higher |
Variety diversity | Very wide | More limited |
Time to harvest | Longer (germination) | Faster |
Yield | Ideal for staggered crops | Ideal for direct harvests |
Equipment needed | Seed trays, pots, bright space | Planting tools and materials |
Maintenance | Careful monitoring at the start | Easy establishment |
Satisfaction | Very high | High |
Suitable for balconies | Yes | Yes |
It all depends on the gardener
Seeds or seedlings: there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Everything depends on the time you have available, your experience, the space for sowing, the crops you want to grow, and so on.
Seeds allow you to follow the entire plant cycle from germination to harvest, and offer an enormous diversity of varieties. Seedlings, on the other hand, save precious time, reduce the risks associated with sowing and allow you to start the season with plants that are already strong and well developed.
The real question is therefore not which method is better, but which one best suits your situation and your gardening aspirations!
What type of gardener are you?
You're a beginner or short on time
Seedlings are an ideal starting point. They offer the possibility of starting a vegetable garden even with little equipment. By buying plants that are already well developed and robust, you'll avoid many pitfalls! You also don't have to tackle the sowing stage, which can prove tricky when you have little gardening experience. All you need to do is place your seedlings directly in your garden or on the balcony.
For more information on how to arrange your crops, you can download our free guide to plant associations.
Where to find seedlings?
Order seedlings online
You can order your organic seedlings online in just a few clicks on our website. With our satisfaction-guaranteed delivery service, you receive your seedlings directly at your door, ready to be planted in your garden or on your balcony.
Buy seedlings in person
If you prefer to choose your seedlings yourself, come to our big Seedling Market! It takes place once a year in May, under our greenhouses in Roche (VD). A wide choice of vegetables, herbs and flowers awaits you there.
Visit the events section so you don't miss the next one.
You garden at altitude
In the mountains or in high-altitude regions, the growing season is often shorter. Spring temperatures stay cool for longer and the risk of frost can persist until the end of spring. In these conditions, seedlings are often the safest choice for a successful vegetable garden.
Already well developed at the time of planting, they allow you to gain several weeks in the season and offer a better start for crops such as tomatoes, squash, lettuces or cabbages. More robust than a young seedling, they also cope better with the temperature variations at the start of the season.
For gardeners in mountain regions or areas with cooler climates, combining a few seedlings with vegetables that are easy to sow directly in open ground is often the best strategy to make the most of the growing period.
Seedling Market.
You have space and curiosity
If you have enough space and are ready to invest time in gardening, organic seeds open up a whole world of possibilities. You'll have access to an unrivalled diversity of old and rare varieties. What's more, seeds offer excellent value for money, as a single packet can produce dozens of plants.
Beyond the harvests, owing your own seeds allows you to experience the full plant cycle and brings great satisfaction when tasting the fruits and vegetables grown with your own hands. To know when to sow which variety, consult our sowing calendar.
Seeds also offer more flexibility: you can easily stagger your sowings to harvest over a longer period. For example, by staggering and planning your lettuce sowings throughout the season, you can harvest salads almost all year round.
Every year, our team produces several hundred varieties of seeds and just as many organic seedlings. This dual activity allows us to observe very concretely which vegetables are better suited to direct sowing and which benefit from being started as seedlings.
Which crops to choose as seeds or seedlings?
- Tomato: seedling or early sowing
- Pepper: seedling recommended
- Aubergine: seedling recommended
- Courgette: both
- Radish: seeds
- Carrot: seeds
- Bean: seeds
- Spinach: seeds
- Lettuce: both
Flower mixes: a special case
There is one situation where the seeds-or-seedlings question simply doesn't arise: flower seed mixes. A mix packet contains several combined species, designed to bloom together and complement one another.
At Zollinger Bio, our mixes serve very different purposes: attracting butterflies, feeding birds, filling a vase with cut flowers, decorating the plate with edible flowers, supporting pollinators with a bee-friendly mix, or self-seeding from year to year without replanting. In this article, discover how to choose the one that suits your garden.
The choice of many gardeners: combining seeds and seedlings
In reality, many gardeners don't choose between seeds and seedlings — they use both, and rightly so, as they complement each other perfectly!
Long-growing crops that are sensitive to cold, such as tomatoes, peppers or aubergines, are often preferred as seedlings in order to save time and achieve an earlier harvest.
Conversely, vegetables that are easy to sow directly in the garden, such as radishes, carrots, beans, spinach or annual flowers, are generally grown from seeds.
This is the approach we recommend at Zollinger Bio, as it allows you to take advantage of both methods: the simplicity of seedlings and the diversity of seeds. Whatever you choose, you'll gain in self-sufficiency with Zollinger varieties, grown from free and reproducible organic seeds.
I prefer to start with seedlings
Discover our organic seedlings
I prefer to sow the seeds myself
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Seedlings allow you to grow most vegetable garden crops without going through the sowing stage. They are an excellent solution for beginner gardeners or those with little time.
Not necessarily. A plant grown from a seed can be just as productive as a seedling. Seedlings are mainly useful for saving time and reducing the risks associated with germination.
Carrots, radishes, parsnips, beetroot, beans, peas, spinach and flower mixes are generally sown directly into open ground.
At Zollinger Bio, we recommend opting for seedlings for tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, squash, cucumbers and certain lettuces.
Yes. Zollinger Bio seeds are reproducible and are not F1 hybrids. Under good conditions, it is possible to harvest the seeds from certain crops and re-sow them the following year.
Seeds or Seedlings: What to Choose for Your Vegetable Garden?