To Try or Not To Tray
We got a great question today - our first official Patreon question! Susan asked "Do you recommend starting sweet peas in trays/pots or can I sow direct ? I am in the Bay Area; growing zone 9.5 ish." I am so glad you asked and kicked things off!
We're going to quickly learn that almost every single answer I give you is going to be "It depends." But thankfully there is a lot of context to provide that will lead you to the best answer for your specific circumstances.
zone 8b, March 2024
Like the question about row spacing earlier in the week, the answer to the question of starting in trays or pots versus direct seeding will rely on (a) for what purpose you are growing, and (b) what your specific environmental factors are. Let's start with the first item.
If you are growing in your own personal garden, the goals might be beauty, ease, and abundance. If you are growing for stem production, your goal is the production of as many harvestable stems for as long as possible. If you are growing for seed, your goal is as many possible seed pods as you can get in one season. Each of these three outcomes has subtle differences.
The other item we have to consider is environment. Temperatures are important for sure, but also so is moisture and pest pressure. Because these things cross over in a sort of Venn diagram of concern, we have to think about them that way to solve for the right option.
zone 8b, February 2025
Gardens are (mostly) controlled spaces that have designated spots for a number of different plants. Managing all of those things at once can be complicated so simplicity is often the best way to go about it. In any zone, If I knew I could manage the pest pressure (voles, bunnies, deer, groundhogs, etc), I would direct seed in those spaces with the appropriate deterrent at the time that the soil was at the correct temperature for germination.
Stem production has tighter timeline. Maximizing the number of stems you can get from a sweet pea vine, means getting early vines and leaving no empty spaces in a designated row. So I would want to know that every spot I had reserved for a sweet pea vine was taken by a sweet pea vine and nothing was left to chance. I would choose to start those seeds in trays and know for certain when I planted out that the production value of that growing space was optimized.
Seed production is similar to stem production with one difference. While the timing is important, it is not the front end of the season that matters as much as where we end up at the close of it. I start all of my seeds in trays and if there are losses, meaning spaces in my row at planting out time, I will drop a seed in the ground at correct spacing and let those catch up. Our soil is so wet here at the time I would need to start a seed in the ground for production that it would rot or be eaten by pests before it even had a chance. And I can't count on chance. So the combination of seeding everything I need and filling the gaps with the occasional seed mitigates both concerns of timing and environment.
zone 5b, Maine, April 2021
So if I was in zone 9, I'd want to consider when I planned on planting my seeds, what soil moisture looked like for that time, what my biggest pest pressures would be for direct seeding, and what my end result wanted to be - garden, stems, or seeds and make my decision from the answers to those questions. If you're asking me personally what I'd do, I'd start in trays. I'd always start in trays. I have control issues. ;)
