What Seeds to Order Now for Spring 2027 Planting

If you want to order seeds for spring 2027 planting, the last week of September through October is the quiet sweet spot. The current season's seed has just been harvested, cleaned and germination-tested, inventory is at its fullest point of the year, and almost nobody is shopping yet. By February, when everyone remembers the garden at once, the varieties that were easy to get in October are the ones sitting on a backorder list.

Here is how we'd build a spring seed order right now, in the order the decisions actually matter.

Why Order Seeds for Spring Before Winter, Not After

Three things are true in the fall that stop being true in the spring.

The first is supply. Seed crops are annual. What was grown out this summer is what exists until next summer, and the rarer the variety, the smaller that number is. A widely grown butternut will be available all year. A rare Japanese or Italian heirloom grown by a handful of small farms will not.

The second is that this year's garden is still fresh in your head. You remember which vine sulked through the August heat and which one kept setting fruit. In February you will remember none of it with any accuracy. Ordering now means ordering from evidence instead of from a catalog photo.

The third is timing. Some things want to be started indoors six to eight weeks before your last frost, which in Zone 6b Kansas means seed needs to be in hand by early March at the latest. Ordering in October removes shipping from the critical path entirely.

The one thing fall ordering asks of you

Store it properly. Cool, dark, dry, and stable. A sealed jar in the back of a closet beats a garage that swings from 20 to 90 degrees. Pumpkin and squash seed held in decent conditions stays strongly viable for several years, so a fall order is not a race against the clock.

Start With the Varieties That Already Earned a Spot

Before adding anything new, write down what worked. The varieties that produced through your real conditions, not ideal ones, are the backbone of next year's patch, and they should be the first line of the order.

In Kansas, that list skews heavily toward Cucurbita moschata. The solid, dense stems of the moschata species make them meaningfully more vine borer resistant than the hollow-stemmed types, and they handle a hot, dry August better than most. Resistant, not immune, and the distinction matters when you're planning. Our vine borer resistant collection is the shortest path to that group if borers were the thing that ended your season.

Then Add the Ones That Sell Out

After the reliable performers, this is where fall ordering actually pays. The rare open-pollinated varieties move first and restock last. If there's a variety you've been meaning to try for two seasons running, this is the month to stop meaning to.

Open-pollinated varieties carry a second advantage worth planning around: seed saved from them grows true to the parent, so one packet can become a permanent fixture in your garden. That's not true of F1 hybrids, which are excellent plants but won't come true from saved seed. Both have a place in a well-built order, and it's worth knowing which is which before you buy. The heirloom and open-pollinated collection is where to look if seed saving is part of the plan.

How Many Seeds to Order for Spring

Gardeners routinely over-order, and the fix is simple arithmetic. Our packets run 10 to 20 seeds depending on the variety, which is more than enough for a home patch.

Count your actual planting spots, not your ambitions. A vining pumpkin needs real room, so a 20-foot row might hold four or five hills. Plan two to three seeds per hill and thin to the strongest, then add a small margin for a germination failure or a cutworm. For most home gardens that lands at one packet per variety, with a second packet only for the variety you plan to grow the most of.

Money saved on quantity is better spent on a second variety. A patch with three varieties in it is far more resilient than a patch with one, because disease pressure, heat and borers rarely hit every type equally.

Test the Seed You Already Have First

Before the order goes in, spend ten minutes on the envelopes in your closet. A quick germination test on a damp paper towel tells you whether last year's seed is still worth bed space, and it's the single easiest way to avoid buying something you already have. Our guide to winter storage, germination tests and planning walks through the method and how to read the result.

Seed that comes back at eight out of ten is fine, just sow a little thicker. Seed that comes back at two out of ten goes on the order list. Seed that comes back at zero saves you a bed you'd otherwise have lost in June.

Build the Order Around Your Planting Calendar

The last step is to sort what you've chosen by when it actually goes in the ground, because that determines what needs to arrive first and what can wait.

Pumpkins and winter squash in Zone 6b generally go in as direct-sown seed or as transplants after the soil warms, which sets the real deadline. The Kansas pumpkin planting calendar lays those dates out, and the Zone 6b spring planting guide covers what gets started alongside them. Sorting the order this way usually reveals that the long-season varieties, the ones at 100 to 110 days, are the ones with no slack in them at all.

While you're in the planning frame of mind, the beds themselves are worth a thought. Fall is when compost, chopped vines and decomposed plant matter can go down to break over winter, so the soil that receives your spring order is already working for you before the first seed goes in.

A Short List to Start From

If you want a starting point rather than a blank page: one reliable moschata you already trust, one rare variety you've been curious about, and one pie type for the kitchen. Three packets, one season, and by next October you'll know a great deal more about your own ground than any guide can tell you.

You can browse the full pumpkin and squash seed collection and build your spring order whenever you're ready. Everything is in stock at its fullest point of the year right now.

The gardeners who order seeds for spring in October are rarely the ones sending us a message in March asking whether something is coming back. Take twenty minutes with a notebook this week, and next spring starts with a box on the porch instead of a waiting list.

All seeds ship from Newton, Kansas. Free shipping on qualifying US orders.