There is almost nothing that cannot be direct sowed somewhere. A lot of vegetables do better when direct seeded, others take so many plants that transplanting become too labor intensive. With todays technology almost any thing can be transplanted. But traditionally Cabbage, Cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, onions are transplanted. Serves to get the proper spacing and get a jump on the growing season. Those direct sow when the soil is warm ( summer vegetables) direct sow a week or so after the last frost.

Thank you farmerdilla, i was going to try the direct sowing everything and just do alot of it, then thin them out!

As Farmerdilla put it nicely and clearly, you CAN direct sow whatever you wish
as long as you have a long growing season (zone 7 ++++) and you are willing to wait.
Last year I direct sowed my egplants, peppers and some tomatoes. I did fine but not grat.

cyrus

Given the volunteer toms/squash, I am getting from my compost and now in beds, which was frozen solid during the winter, I imagine anything can be winter sown, I was going to say, they are not as big as my in house grown, then realised actually, they have been popping up since March, but I have treated as weeds, and pulling them as weeds since I first saw them, so I say go for it :) depending on your Zone as in I seem to be nicely in the middle, hot summer long enough to support Toms ect, cool enough in fall and spring for cold weather stuff to mature nicely.

Austin, where are you located? You'll find me being an advocate of "winter sowing" on various boards...for the simple reason that it works, and as a self-professed former brown-thumb, I whole-heartedly recommend it.

I get a head-start on my growing season here in NH (which typically is traditionally started Memorial weekend) by starting my veggies OUTDOORS in containers sometime after April 1st.

I like the idea of using 'starts,' but I'm way-too-cheap to buy them from the store when they are so incredibly easy to start from seed. And I'm not a fan of an indoor light setup. I used to direct-sow my whole veggie patch, but find that I like the head start I can get by winter-sowing things. The weather has also been very erratic over the past several years- with rainstorms heavy enough to wash away much of my direct-sown things (I still do DS my leafy green stuff), and if I DSd other things, I know they'd be gonners in the same way.

So I winter-sow.

My point is that you don't necessarily HAVE to wait until "the soil is warm enough" to start your garden. Packet directions are for direct-sowing, but with winter-sowing, you can push the envelope on the timing.
Obviously, some of the items that do like warmer soil will be done a little later in your containers, but the timing is still earlier than if you DSd them.

Also, depending on where you are, there are certain things that need a longer time to grow- for me here in NH, peppers and eggplants are on that list. I'd have to either buy starts, or do them indoors to actually get a harvest of those things because our growing season is so short. But there are plenty of other things that do well, so I simply opt-out of those two.

Here is a link that might be useful: Winter-Sowing forum