How to choose the right seeds
Hundreds of varieties and no idea where to start. That is the first hurdle for almost everyone. It gets much clearer if you choose in this order: your conditions first, then your goal, then the seed type.
1. Look at your conditions
Light is the biggest factor. Count how many hours of direct sun a spot gets per day:
Light | Hours | What grows well |
|---|---|---|
Full sun | 6 or more | most vegetables, fruiting crops, most flowers |
Partial shade | 3 to 6 | leafy greens, many herbs, shade-tolerant flowers |
Shade | fewer than 3 | limited choice; some herbs and ornamentals |
Every product page lists the position the plant needs, so you can filter on it directly.
Soil decides the rest. Sandy soil drains fast and needs organic matter to hold moisture. Clay is rich but heavy and slow to drain, and needs organic matter to open it up. Loam is the ideal. Whatever you have, compost improves it — see Preparing and improving your soil.
Frost decides your timing. When you sow depends on the last frost in spring and the first in autumn. See When to sow what for the calendar.
2. Decide what you want
- Fresh produce — start with tomato, cucumber, lettuce, courgette and pepper
- Colour and cut flowers — sunflower, zinnia, calendula
- Kitchen herbs — basil, parsley, dill, chives
- Fruit — strawberry, melon, cape gooseberry
Many gardeners mix all of it. Flowers among your vegetables draw in pollinators and natural pest control.
3. Choose the seed type
Type | What it means | When to choose it |
|---|---|---|
Organic | Grown without synthetic inputs, verified by an independent inspection body | If you want to garden chemical-free |
Open-pollinated and heirloom | Traditional varieties that come true from saved seed | If you want to save your own seed, or for the flavour |
F1 hybrid | A cross of two parent lines, selected for vigour, uniformity or disease resistance | If you want a reliable, even crop |
None of the three is better than the others. F1 seed simply cannot be saved: what you collect from it will not come true.
4. Match it to your experience
Beginner — lettuce, radish, courgette, basil, parsley, chives, sunflower, marigold, nasturtium.
A step up — tomato, pepper, cucumber, cosmos.
More demanding — melon, cauliflower, perennials from seed.
Start with a few easy crops and expand once they work. That beats ten varieties at once of which seven fail.
5. Plan your harvest
Sow fast crops such as lettuce, radish and beans as a short row every two weeks rather than all at once. This is called succession sowing, and it saves you a mountain of lettuce in June and nothing in August. With flowers, mix early, mid and late bloomers for colour all season.
6. Store what is left over
Seed keeps for years stored cool, dark and dry in an airtight container. See Storing seed and how long it stays viable for shelf life by type and the germination test.
The full version of this guide is on seedschoice.com.
Ready to sow? What you can sow now
- Vegetables you can sow this month
- Flowers you can sow this month
- Herbs you can sow this month
- Vegetables to sow directly outdoors
- Fast-growing vegetables — quick results, ideal for beginners
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Updated on: 05/10/2026
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