Last month, I posted this list of seed companies to get your mind off the holiday madness. The way I deal with the seasonal chaos is to savor the seed catalogs that come with the junk mail catalogs.
January is serious garden-planning time, so I am sending this to you again. I’m sure you have more presence of mind now to think about summer, rain, fresh vegetables and maybe even your fire escape!
Winter is a quiet time for planning and drawing your gardens, imagining and planning putting up food, and maintaining your tools. I used to have stacks of notebooks of garden plans, and I finally broke down and bought A Gardener’s Journal – A Ten Year Chronicle of Your Garden. I used that up years ago, and now I plan my garden on the freebie calendar that either comes in the mail or is on the counter at the hardware store.
My considerations for buying seeds
1) cool weather/short season plants for outdoors.
2) appropriate varieties for the greenhouse in summer and winter.
3) open-pollinated (OP) and heirloom seeds, not hybrids.
4) organic seed is a bonus.
My favorite seed companies (in no particular order)
1) Territorial Seed Company This is where I bought my seeds for 2009. It’s a big, fat catalog printed on newsprint that I can either burn, recycle or compost. There is a huge selection of OP seeds, so many, I had a hard time deciding what to buy! The stock is mostly vegetables, but there are also flowers, herbs and fruit as well as supplies for garden and kitchen.
2) Johnny’s Selected Seeds Lots of great greenhouse varieties, not a huge selection of OP seeds, but everything is clearly labeled in the catalog. Wonderful gardening advice throughout. I bought from these folks exclusively when I lived in NH, but they have since included too many hybrids now. They do have commercial size offerings for market farmers.
3) Nichols Nursery I love Nichols! They have an extensive herb seed collection and other unique things for cooks and the kitchen. I usually buy a few things from them every year, since it is such a treat. They have items I haven’t located elsewhere. Their catalog is printed on newsprint to burn, compost or recycle.
4) Renee’s Garden Seeds (formerly Shepherd’s Garden Seeds) Renee Shepherd is a great cook, and she offers unique gourmet vegetables and herbs. Her cookbooks are also available, as well as an extensive collection of flowers. Her catalog is online only.
5) Seed Savers Exchange You can buy directly from SSE or become a member to save and share your heirloom seeds. SSE ‘is the largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States. We permanently maintain more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties, most having been brought to North America by members’ ancestors who immigrated from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world.’
6) Bountiful Gardens Another awesome source for heirloom seeds. Vegetables, fruits, green manures and supplies. Bountiful is a project of Ecology Action, which developed ‘GROW BIOINTENSIVE®, a high-yielding, sustainable agricultural system that emphasizes local food production and is based historically on intensive gardening systems.’
7) Seeds of Change I am adding SOC here, because their seeds are certified organic. I don’t buy from them. I actually have a bone or two to pick with these people. I used to buy from them exclusively when I first came to New Mexico in the late 80s. I was living and working on a seed farm, and the plan was to grow bulk seed for them. They were local and organic. Since then, they have been bought by Mars (M&M Mars), although that is not clear on their website. To top it off, in the last couple of years, they started packaging their seeds in plastic zip lock baggies to ’save the environment’ by making them reusable. I have to throw away that little plastic baggie, but I could burn or compost the paper packaging. I don’t see how moving from paper to plastic helps the environment. So even though SOC’s farm is just down the road in El Guique near San Juan Pueblo, and the offices are in Santa Fe, I only buy from them in a pinch when I am at Cid’s Market and need something right away.
For all you greenies, I love catalogs. I love to turn the pages, scribble, make notes and fold over the corners of especially interesting pages. I love to sink into a hot bath with a seed catalog and a pen. Sorry. I am not 100% green. No one is, and this is one of my sins.
Nevertheless, each of these websites and catalogs is a wealth of information for gardeners of all levels. That is why I keep them around long after their season.
Here are a few must-read gardening books. I have read them all and owned them all at one time or another.
