Most Satisfying Seed Catalogs

I've lived and gardened in Northfield for almost 19 years, and many seed purveyors had me on their mailing lists. Then, due to shall we say "fluctuations" in marital status, I moved three times in three years. I'm now, at least for the present, back at the house where I lived from 2001 to early 2006, but the poor seed merchants have yet to catch up with me. Since Christmas I think I've received only a Gurney's, a Gardens Alive! (which sells environmentally responsible gardening products), and most recently a Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog.

The Baker Creek catalog, which I requested after reading my blog friend Deb at Sand Creek Almanac describe it as "vegetable porn for a Minnesota gardener in midwinter," has to be in the running for the most beautiful seed catalog ever. The website is no comparison. Being in the communications business myself, I know this large glossy color catalog has got to be one expensive publication to produce and mail. The photography and presentation are simply gorgeous; occasionally a whole page is devoted to a single photograph that's so lovely you might want to carefully remove it from the catalog and frame it.

But beauty alone isn't my standard for an excellent seed catalog. What makes Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds particularly beautiful in my eyes is its mission of preserving and bringing back to popularity many time-tested, non-GMO, non-hybrid, untreated, unpatented varieties of fruits and vegetables in an age where much of the market pressure has been in the opposite direction. (It shares this mission with the Seed Savers Exchange, whose Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, I have visited, and numerous catalogs also feature at least some heirloom varieties these days.) The Baker Creek folks also offer Heirloom Gardener magazine, now in its seventh year, which I'll have to look into.

My longtime favorite catalog is from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Heavy on untreated, organic and heirloom varieties, Johnny's is also a premier source of practical planting information, and since Johnny's is based in Maine it is a reliable source of advice for northern gardeners. Their mission is "to provide superior product, research, technical information, and service to critical home gardeners and specialty and small commercial growers," and they do an excellent job. They have a nice virtual catalog on their site, which allows you to browse their catalog pages as you would with a printed copy. I'll confess to still liking to have a printed version to pore over, so I've requested one to make sure I get back on their mailing list at my current location.

Renee's Garden Seeds, which offers "the finest seeds of heirloom and cottage garden flowers, aromatic herbs, and gourmet vegetables from around the world," has been another favorite of mine, and it's the only catalog I got around to ordering from last winter.

Chime in with your own favorites! Please! I'd love to hear which catalogs rate highly with fellow gardeners.

It's January: Start Thinking Garden!

Now that the holidays are behind us, Mary of My Northern Garden is marking the new year and looking ahead to the 2009 growing season with a reflection on Garden Resolutions. The Green Grower blog at the Daily Green offers a good perspective on what's important as you get ready for spring gardening with a post on Seven Habits of Great Gardeners (hint: they pretty much boil down to "feed the soil, not the plants"). The seed catalogs are trickling in -- in fact, if you're on a lot of lists, they may be flooding in.

January is the gardener's time to dream and plan and make lists: new varieties to try, new garden beds to prepare, new garden layouts for those mindful of the benefits of rotating crops to different areas of the garden. Soon it will be time to order seeds and to start seedlings for some crops indoors.

For people who are cutting back on their discretionary spending, a fairly modest investment in seeds and some basic gardening supplies can translate into both a satisfying pastime and fresh, edible results that can save on your grocery bills from spring into fall and beyond.

If you don't have your own garden space, or need more, the Greenvale Park Community Garden is offering full and half plots on a first-come first-served basis for 2009. The cost of a full plot is only $25, and water is provided. Applications will be accepted beginning February 2 and can be downloaded from the website or picked up at Greenvale Park Elementary School, the Community Services Office, Northfield Public Library, or the Community Action Center.

Happy gardening in 2009!

Ordering Seeds: An Act of Hope in a Cold, Cold February

I was reminded by my friend Mary that there is hope for spring, though it seems a distant possibility while contending with things like windchill factors of 35-50 below zero, as we experienced Saturday night. So, as an act of faith, I have just placed a seed order with Renee's Garden Seeds. Renee Shepherd was the founder of Shepherd's Garden Seeds, and her new venture brings the same lovely illustrations by Mimi Osborne that I remember from the Shepherd's catalog and seed packets.

I haven't pored over seed catalogs this winter, mainly because I've only received one or two -- a side effect of the fact that I've moved twice in the past two years. And I don't know about you, but I don't get quite the same pleasure from poring over pages of a website. So I just flung myself into the process, ordered a bunch of things that sounded good, and called it enough.

Here's what called to me:

Two seed collections:
The Container Vegetable Collection: "Five of the best tasting, compact varieties especially bred for growing in containers. Enjoy fresh homegrown flavors picked right from your own small space garden." Includes: Super Bush Tomato; Garden Babies Lettuce; Pot of Gold Chard; Bush Slicer Cucumber; Pizza My Heart Pepper. (My home garden is a set of large containers on a southwest-facing patio. That's where I'll grow these babies. I've had terrible luck with peppers, but we'll see what happens.)

Children's Garden Collection: "Five easy to grow, colorful, big-seeded flower and vegetable varieties that kids can plant, harvest and enjoy on their very own." Includes: Easter Egg Radishes; Cinderella's Carriage Pumpkins; Sunzilla Sunflowers; Tricolor Pole Beans; Raggedy Anne Zinnias. (I have an 8-year-old son at home, and I'm hoping I can get him interested in having his own garden. Though it will have to be at my second garden, at his other house -- more on that below. If he's not into it, I'll grow some of these myself and enjoy them thoroughly.)

I also ordered two varieties of basil -- the herb without which no summer is complete: Mrs. Burns Lemon ("sweetest lemony flavor bouquet") and Italian Cameo ("From our best Italian breeder. Easy growing and deliciously fragrant, Cameo has closely packed, luscious big leaves and a compact 6- 8 inch habit. Perfect for containers, window boxes or edging garden beds.")

For what I hope will be my second garden this summer -- unused garden space at the house now mostly occupied by my ex-husband and one of my daughters -- I ordered:

• Garden Oasis cucumbers: "Extra-sweet, burpless, uniquely smooth-skinned Beit alpha cucumber renowned for quality throughout the Mediterranean basin. High yields of glossy fruits with refreshing juicy-sweet flesh."
• Big Beef beefsteak tomatoes: "These scrumptious giant slicers are our hands-down favorite, combining delicious full flavor, heavy yields, wide adaptability and superior disease resistance."
  
• Garden Candy mix of orange, yellow and red cherry tomato varieties.
• A Farmers Market blend of lettuces : "This mix of tender, sweet red and green lettuces draws raves at local farmers markets. A blend of delicious varieties for a balanced palette of colors, shapes and textures."

I'll want some bunching onions as well, but I didn't find them today. And oh my, I seem to have no squash at all. That will never do. I'll have to go and peruse another website another day soon. Johnny, you'll be hearing from me.

First Seed Catalog of the Season

The first seed catalog of the season hit my mailbox on Saturday. Many years this has been the Totally Tomatoes catalog, but this year Jung Quality Seeds made it first. Having just looked at both websites, I noticed that they're both based in Randolph, Wisconsin, and are in fact part of the same company. So much for the race to be first; either way, they win.

This past summer I gardened in containers on my back patio; I currently live in a rented duplex and it isn't really practical to dig an in-ground garden. I was considering trying to get a plot in a community garden for the coming year, but it would probably be more sensible be to take advantage of an open invitation to continue gardening at what is now my ex-husband's house, where I lived and gardened between 2001 and 2006. It's got a 30-foot-long partially raised bed built into the slope of the back boundary of the property, gets quite good sun, and I'm familiar with the soil there. There are some perennials in the bed -- bee balm, phlox, joe pye weed, spiderwort, ornamental grasses, and daylilies -- but they are mainly toward the back of the bed and I just work around them in planting the lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash that have usually made up the main part of my gardening efforts. Not having dug or planted the bed for the past two summers, I'm sure it will be a big job to clear out the weeds and spreading grasses.

If I have some real space to work with again this year, I will allow myself to play the gardener's favorite winter game: imagining the ideal garden, making lists of varieties, deciding between the tried and true favorites and beguiling newcomers. Over the years my favorite catalog has been Johnny's Selected Seeds, which comes from Maine and always offers a wealth of planting and care information with a nice selection of heirloom and organic seeds. All these catalogs are available online, but there is a much greater delight in sitting down with one or more printed catalogs and a pad of paper and a pen or sharp pencil and making list after list. It's a pleasant way to while away the weeks before it's time to get seeds started indoors.