This indoor seed sowing plan simplifies everything! Follow the printable chart and organize your seeds into logical sowing groups. You will save time, and your new plants will be ready for transplanting after last frost.
This is part of a series, Indoor Seed Starting for Beginners | Sow Indoors Grow Outdoors, where I walk you through the process from seed to garden. It’s all the information I wish I had when I was getting started.
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Seed Starting for Beginners | Ebook
$5 US | Instant Download
Everything you need to know to start your own garden plants from seeds indoors. See contents ->
64 pages | color images | PDF format for Acrobat Reader | Includes handy printable checklists
Simple Indoor Seed Starting Plan | Free Printable
This is an excerpt from the ebook, Seed Starting for Beginners: Sow Inside Grow Outside, sharing everything you need to know to start your own garden plants from seeds indoors.
If you would like the entire ebook with all the printable lists in one handy file, you can download it instantly here.
Easy Seed Sowing Schedule
The sowing instructions on seed packets tell us how many weeks before our average last frost date seeds should be started indoors. This can range from 3 to 12 weeks or more, depending on the plant type.
To keep it simple, I use this streamlined sowing system. The seeds are grouped by start times, in two-week intervals.
Sowing Groups
This includes veggies, herbs, fruits, perennials, and flowering annuals. You can print this chart with the free, printable seed sowing schedule (below).
- Group 1: 12 weeks / 90 days before last frost
- Group 2: 10 weeks / 75 days
- Group 3: 8 weeks / 60 days
- Group 4: 6 weeks / 45 days
- Group 5: 4 weeks / 30 days
Here’s an example
My last frost is approximately May 15.I start my slowest growing seeds (Group 1) in late February, 12 weeks before this. Then, every two weeks I start a new group until it’s outdoor planting time.
Seeds that do best with direct (outdoor) sowing go in after that. If I do not have a good spot in the garden for a plant, I put it in a container. That allows me to control both the soil and the light.
Free Printable Seed Sowing Schedule
This seed sowing schedule is free to download.
It’s a PDF document you can view in Adobe Acrobat and print out if you prefer. Use it as the starting point and fill in the slots with your seed choices. I’ve listed the sowing groups and seed examples to get you started.
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~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛
Seed Starting for Beginners | Ebook
$5 US | Instant Download
Everything you need to know to start your own garden plants from seeds indoors. See contents ->
64 pages | color images | PDF format for Acrobat Reader | Includes handy printable checklists
Miss Lovey says
Dear Empress… I just love your site, so many beautiful and creative ideas and pictures. I live across the Lake from you so to speak – a little south of Rochester New York, so we both share beautiful Lake Ontario!
You were the inspiration for me making my pond. It’s a preformed molded plastic, sitting beside my platform deck, 88 gallons – about 5′ x 3-4′, with 2 pumps gushing water. It’s become a haven for frogs lately! I put large flat rocks around the rim, and floating water hyacinths & water lettuce, that the smaller frogs “ride” in. , in fact – I have a Green frog sitting in one of my plants just as the one in your picture is! Instead of the floating planter, I have a concrete block standing upright, holding a round tub with stones in the bottom, and water plants arranged among drift wood & rocks. That’s where Mr. Frog is right now. It’s been very hot & dry this summer, so the pond idea, thanks to you, has become a much needed refuge & oasis for them. At one point – I counted 14 frogs, mainly wood frogs of various sizes. The only fly in the ointment is the 1 or 2 garter snakes that lurk around. I put lime around the pond, which seems to keep them at bay, but do you have any other ideas that would get rid of them? I don’t want to kill them – but just want them relocated!… Thanks for the inspirations, and keep up the good work!
Melissa J. Will says
Love your pond ideas! I’ve never actually had a snake in any of my gardens that I know of so I have no suggestions. I know they love rocks and stones warmed by the sun but that’s hard to avoid in a garden. Thanks for your kind note. 🙂