5 Seedlings To Plant Now For A Bountiful Cool Season Harvest

When shopping for seedlings, look for plants with healthy leaves and strong stems, free of pest or disease damage.

I like to pick up medium-sized seedlings if I’m ready to transplant, or smaller seedlings if I’m going to wait a bit. I tend to avoid larger seedlings as sometimes spending too long in a punnet can lead to crowded roots and stressed-out plants.

I recommend transplanting cool season seedlings when temperatures drop to the mid 20s. This reduces transplant shock and helps plants get off to a strong start.

Scroll down to see my top picks that’ll give you a plentiful harvest:

Salad mix

For salad lovers, I recommend picking up a couple of salad mix punnets containing lettuce, baby spinach, rocket and mizuna. Mixed seedling punnets like these are handy as you don’t have to buy each plant separately.

Leafy salad greens don’t need too much space so can be transplanted 15cm apart. I like growing them in raised beds and containers, as it’s easier to harvest from. You can also grow numerous plants in a large pot.

Coriander

You either adore or despise coriander, and I’m firmly in the former camp. I love using coriander’s citrusy flavour to garnish bone broths and steamed barramundi.

Place a couple of pots by your door and you’ll be able to harvest whenever you like. When buying coriander seedlings, you’ll notice they’re grown in clumps. Transplant clumps as they are, as coriander does best when plants can provide support for one another.

Parsley

Fresh parsley is crisp, flavoursome and easy to grow. I recommend choosing a larger pot with a few seedlings rather than a small punnet with many. This is because parsley grows abundantly so a few plants give a big yield.

Towards the end of the season, parsley will flower. Let the flowers set seed, and you’ll have new plants popping up in the garden year after year.

Bok choy + pak choi

For a leafy stir-fry staple, grow bok choy. A punnet of this juicy Asian green will yield a continual harvest throughout the cooler months that can be used in stir fry, noodle soup and curry.

Transplant your bok choy or pak choi into a sunny spot in the garden or grow a few in a trough on your balcony. Expect your first harvests within 4-6 weeks of transplanting.

Snow peas

Snow peas do fabulous in containers as they’re not particularly fussy about soil fertility, and can be planted quite close together.

When it comes to snow peas, I recommend picking up smaller sized plants, especially if you’re not ready to immediately transplant them. This is because snow peas have fragile, fast-growing stems that can snap when transplanting.

Look for bush varieties for plants under one metre or climbing varieties if you want to grow them over a trellis.