Some Great - and Little Known - Seed Catalogs


“In Hindi, seed is bija or ‘containment of life." Vandana Shiva

Ah, so true....So where should we buy our little 'containments of life' these days? Here is a list of seed companies that are worthy of a look:

Renee’s Garden
Check out their Basil collection of seeds and their new "Rainbow Kitchen Garden",  5 packets of colorful vegetable varieties that are easy to grow and great for anyone starting a garden from seed. Includes:
  • Farmer's Market Lettuce Mix: rainbow of colors and textures
  • Garden Candy Cherry Tomatoes: red, orange, yellow and sweet as sugar
  • Tasty Duo Scallions: red and green skinned, savory and crisp
  • Tricolor Bush Beans: purple, yellow and green pods
  • Tricolor Zucchini: gold, light and dark green, with buttery flavor

This group offers heirloom and open pollinated seeds. This will be so important in the years to come. Start now growing the plants as nature intended them...Become a 'heritage gardener and a seed saver' now...

Try their Al-Kuffa Tomato - This little tomato is early, and produces 3-4 ounce fruit on compact, dwarf vines that yielded till frost.


Fedco Seeds - based in Waterville, Maine, Fedco is a cooperative -  one of the few seed companies so organized in the United States. Fedco provides cold-hardy varieties and gardening supplies. Go to their pdf cartalog and read anything CR Lawn writes...(Reminds me a little of the Dr. Bronner soap labels..you know, 'faith in one-god-state-to-date')...CR Lawn writes about weird weather conditions saying, "In my youth when I sought advice from the I-Ching, how often was I told that“perseverance furthers.”

Seeds of Change A great catalog!  with lots of information about all and sundry horticultural related things...Their Farm is the Rio Grande Valley in Northern New Mexico, midway between Santa Fe and Taos. In the past few years, Seeds of Change Farm made a commitment to becoming more sustainable in its farming practices by incorporating permaculture design principles in all aspects of its work. Check it out on their website.

Tomato Growers – everything tomato from Fort Myers Florida....check out their exclusive Black Cherry tomato - the first truly black cherry tomato. It is a perfectly round cherry with classic black tomato flavor, sweet yet rich and produced in abundance on vigorous, tall plants. Indeterminate 65 days...
 Johnny's Selected Seeds  A wonderful history and a wonderful organic seed company in Maine...A great source of unique and hardy vegetables. This year they offer a nearly seedless Red Pearl tomato, a grape size tomato, with intermediate resistance (IR) to the dreaded late blight.

Comments

  1. Curbstone Valley FarmFebruary 7, 2010 at 3:20 PM

    Great post! We actually know most of these seed suppliers. We don't buy from most of the 'big guns' in the seed industry as they have poor heirloom/organic seed selections. Renee's (formerly Shepherd Garden Seeds) got its start just up the road from our first house in Felton, CA. We order a lot of organic seed from Johnny's (and they're expanding their organic selection significantly), and we love Seeds of Change too. Also order from TomatoFest (who despite having over 500 tomato seed choices is quite a small operation), and Botanical Interests has some very nice organic seed selections too...in fact, we just planted some of their Goldenrod seeds this morning!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Garden, Travel, Food BlogsFebruary 16, 2010 at 2:46 AM

    I posted this blog on my Twitter - http://twitter.com/Just_Plants also see: http://utopiacanberra.blogspot.com/

    Cheers

    Just Plants

    ReplyDelete
  3. viagra onlineJune 4, 2010 at 1:41 PM

    Botanical Interests has some very nice organic seed selections too..

    ReplyDelete

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