Do I Start My Pollinator with Plugs or Seed??

It 100% depends on what you want. While natural prairie and pollinator is a messy though beautiful, you can minimize the “mess” by planting plugs. Normally plugs are much more expensive $4-$15 a piece, but if you only need 10 or 15 for a small area, then it is worth the cost. However, you want to cover more than a hundred square feet, it’s worth the extra effort to plant seeds.

Planting plugs. Plugs are the surest way of getting a plant to thrive. When you start from a seed in an uncontrolled environment, you can have innumerable things go wrong—not enough water, too much water, too deep in the ground, eaten by birds, etc. So when you plant a plug, you take many of those risky variables out of the equation.

Another huge benefit for some, is the organization it can add to your pollinator garden. You can arrange colors in any way you would like. Or you can arrange them by height. You can arrange them anyway you like. Which for a smaller area is optimal.

There are draw backs though, which we’ll get into with the seed planting.

Seed planting. Planting seed directly to the ground is best with larger areas. Planting plugs over more than a 100 square foot area can be quite a bit more work and many times more expensive. Seed planting also creates a thicker stand. The seeds will fill in the cracks, and you’ll have a thick stand of prairie as opposed to a few scattered plants.

The planting techniques, while different don’t offer many pros or cons either way. Seeds are best planted in November or May-June, while plugs should be planted in May. It’s also worth noting, normally with plugs, the ground gets mulched around the plants, and that can be a hassle, but isn’t necessary.

At The Prairie Farm, we like to see thicker stands of prairie and pollinator with more species, so we prefer seed plantings, but beauty and value are in the eye of the bee holder, and the bee holder has to have pollinators for their bees.

If you are looking to start a pollinator garden, check out our carefully crafted pollinator mixes at our prairie shop.

Best of luck, our fellow Garden Lovers.