tomatos seeds vs plug plants ???

[Ani]

I did plugs last years because I wanted only a few plants. I bought patio veg set - one tomato, one chilli, one sweet pepper, one aubergine, one courgette, one cucumber. And I bought another three hanging baskets tomatoes. This all was one online order, easy way how to try bit of everything.
Buying seeds and using one seed per packet would cost a similar amount and be more complicated.
This year I do almost everything from seed. I am still doing small amounts but much more varieties. I also gave some seeds to my grandmother (which is in the Czech Republic so it will be fun to grow the same varieties). I spent much more on seeds (easy to buy 10 varieties of one vegetable when they are for £1 or even less per packet) than I would spent on plug plants but I think I have lifetime provisions of seeds. Which is probably worthless because I guess I will want to try another 10 or 20 new varieties next year
I think I will still buy some plugs this year in May or so when I decide that I desperately need to try one more variety.

[Elfeda]

You may buy Just 4 plants and give them good care at home will be plenty. You can have extra plants by propagation of sideshoots.

[hamamelis]

Tomatoes grow so fast from seed to plug plant size I wouldn't bother. I sowed tomatoes on the 10th, and the first one has just popped up in the last few hours.

I buy larger tomato plants occasionally, if I find an interesting variety, but the only time I've bothered with plug tomatoes is when a) they were marked down to about 10p each, and b) I was in one of those moods where I really should never have gone near a garden centre. In my experience, they get past their best so fast in the little plugs that they're sold in that they're more messing around that way than seeds would be.

[MarkPelican]

As most people have said, the answer is "depends". How many plants do you want to grow? How will you grow the seedlings? Why only grow one variety (I grow as many different varieties as I can fit in - one year it was 70, this year just 30 - I couldn't afford/get that variety of plugplants). Germinating seeds isn't hard (I put them into new compost and put them on top of the boiler. All 30 varieties have germinated in less than a week, now they're into the (unheated) greenhouse in the day and the house at night.

If you're going to buy plug plants, make sure they're from a good source. There's no point in spending several pounds per plant if it hasn't been well looked after in the garden centre. There are lots of plugplants available on the web but, again, I would buy them from a reputable source, I once bought some on fleabay and by the time they arrived they were 2ft high and spindly rubbish.

[Martin H]

The way to tell a good healthy plug plant is to check it still has its seed leaves (the first two, spear-shaped leaves). If it's been stressed at any stage they will have dropped off.

Personally I think seeds are so easy, plug plants aren't worth it. I put four seeds of each variety in a small pot on the kitchen windowsill with the intention of potting up the best three into individual pots and eventually keeping only the best two. They come up in a week or so and all four seeds nearly always germinate.

[SlugLobber]

I always grew from seed or allowed self-seeding in the greenhouse. Last year, though, I went into Wyevale for onion sets during late March and saw that sorry looking sets of moneymaker and a beef variety plugs were on offer (£2 for 6 wilted plugs). I bought one of each, deciding it was worth a punt and had an excellent crop from both! Last weekend I was in there again and found alicante on offer for £1 for 6. It's a bit early to be dealing with leggy tomato plants, but for that price, I'm taking another gamble! If they fail (I've got 12 of them!), then I can just let the self-seeded ones in the GH soil take hold. :-)