I’ve never done this, but the email message I got in late June from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds makes me wonder why I haven’t – I’m a Mainer and can be as cheap as the next person.

What Scheepers suggests – and the catalog sells seeds, so of course this could benefit them – is that you plant your perennial flowers now for use next spring. “There’s no need to fuss with grow lights and timers, repotting or hardening off,” the company advises.

You can either plant the seeds into flats or pots filled with moist growing mix that you put in a sunny area outside and water them when required. If you want, you could create a seed bed in your garden and keep that bed well watered and weeded.

By fall, the plants will be large enough that they can either be moved to their ultimate home or, if you used the seed bed, left there for transplanting in the spring.

Scheepers suggests this practice can be done with echinacea, poppies, foxgloves, catmint, gaillardia, coreopsis, lupine, shasta daisies and columbine.

When I told my wife, Nancy, that I was writing this item, she told me she had done it before with hyssop and Eupatorium – but I wasn’t paying attention. ­