Hi there, it's Minami.

When you start a vegetable garden, you probably buy seeds and seedlings of plants and vegetables you are interested in, but home centers are not the only places you can buy them.

In this issue, I will show you where I usually buy my products and how to do so economically or effectively.

Warehouse (Home improvement retailer)

The most common place to buy seeds and seedlings is probably a home improvement center (Warehouse). This is the most common place to buy seeds and seedlings.

If you want, you can change the seedlings or even the seeds.

I think this is the most advantageous way to buy seedlings. If you want to buy them as seedlings, the Internet and other places charge quite a bit for shipping, and they are a bulky, difficult-to-handle category, so if you can, buy them at a home improvement store!

I guess the disadvantages are that you have to leave the house to go out and buy the seedlings, and it is a bit of a hassle to make sure the seedlings are actually easy to grow because you don't know what the reviews are.

However, there is a pattern that heavy items are easier to buy when you physically go to the store, so I think it would be a good idea to actively use the store depending on what you want.

Typical examples would be Viva Home and Cain's Home in Tokyo and the Kanto area.

It might be a good time to buy fruit seedlings, for example.

Mercari and other flea market apps

I buy from Mercury in most cases.

The nice thing about Mercury is that you can find so many species that you don't see in stores~!

Of course, some companies have recently opened stores on Mercari, but most of them are individuals, so in such cases, they can lose a small number of seeds suitable for home gardens that are harvested in their personal vegetable gardens.

It would be like a neighborly relationship that involves monetary exchange, so to speak.

I have also purchased seeds several times, but generally everyone sells them at the same time, so unless the seeds are very rare, you can acquire them for as low as 300 or 500 yen. The most important thing is that seeds are not bulky, so the shipping cost is not so high.

The disadvantage is that the reliability is still not guaranteed.

Basically, I don't think it is a problem, but it does have a somewhat more waspish disposition than the seeds that are generally sold with a germination rate. This is because they are sold by amateurs.

I know I've talked a lot about seeds, but I have personally purchased both seedlings and seeds from Mercari.

If you are buying seedlings, I don't recommend buying them because they are basically bulky and shipping costs are high, but if you are looking for something thinner, I think it would be a good idea.

For example, succulents, such as the ones I am showing in my article here , can actually be transported because they grow easily without roots.

So I had them shipped in a small cardboard box with a set of succulent plants on gauze.

Daiso and other 100-yen uniform stores

Did you know that you can actually buy seeds for your vegetable garden at 100-yen stores?

One advantage is that the 100-yen store offers a large selection of flowers in addition to the vegetables that one might immediately associate with a so-called vegetable garden.

If you have a vegetable garden with a lot of vegetables that you have to take care of from the beginning, it may be difficult to make a pot to plant some flowers, or if you have extra space but lack the confidence to grow new vegetables, why not consider growing flowers in a 100-yen pot?

I had bought eggplants at the end of the summer and other times, but it only grew once.

It didn't work (or maybe this is just the way I was raised and just didn't grow up).

I think it would be a good idea to check the germination rate and other factors before purchasing.

If you have family members or others around you who have vegetable gardens, expand your circle and interact with them.

This is my pattern.

My family is into vegetable gardening, so I have been giving them mint plants to share when they come home, and I have been giving them some herb plants and seeds that I am growing!

There are no disadvantages. However, if you want to carry them a long distance, you need to prepare soil and cotton balls for transportation to prevent them from withering, which may be a little time-consuming.

Well, we all help each other, so it would be nice if we could expand our relationship with each other in the spirit of "we can have it all, we can have it all", even if it is related to our vegetable garden!

Buy on Amazon (or other e-commerce site)

The big advantage of Amazon is that you can buy seeds from well-known companies.

You can also change your mind based on other people's reviews, which is perfect if you want to see what other people think of your purchase.

In particular, Sakata Seed Corporation is famous in Japan for its high germination rate.

I think this is a good opportunity to give it a try.

And the disadvantage is that the seedling system is still super expensive.

As mentioned above, seedlings, especially fruit seedlings such as lemons with thick branches, can be quite expensive, especially when shipping costs are included in the price.

How was the article?

If you want to buy a few things and a variety of things, I personally recommend that you buy on a flea market application.

There are also methods of growing vegetables such as regenerative cultivation, in which discarded parts of the vegetables we normally eat are planted in the soil, etc.. For more information on regenerative cultivation, please click here!