Catalogs

Tue Jan 08, 2013 9:39 am

What is the best seed catalog to buy from?

Thank you.

Tue Jan 08, 2013 10:32 am

It depends on what you want to grow.
For unusual and heirloom tomatoes, Johnny's Select Seeds and Totally Tomatoes are good.
For home-garden size packets of vegetable and flower seeds, PineTree Garden Seeds is excellent.
I like Jardin du Gourmet for herb seeds since they offer a huge variety, and even have low-priced sample packets for herbs you might like to try.

Tue Jan 08, 2013 2:45 pm

Fedco gives great seed counts for the money, especially with their onions. They carry all kinds. As does Johnny's.

Some people like to keep regional- though unless they say so, it's not likely that all the seed offered by a seed house was grown locally.

Fedco & Johnny's are employee owned/operated in case that makes a difference. I buy most of my seed from them, with High Mowing & John Scheeper's as runner ups. I grew some High Mowing seed for the first time last season, and I was very impressed with the vigor, toughness & yields of the ones that I did. I'm beginning to think that organically grown seed does make a difference.

For interesting Asian seed, (shishito peppers!) Kitazawa is good too.

Tue Jan 08, 2013 2:56 pm

I get some stuff through Johnny's Selected Seeds and the rest at the local nurseries or big box stores.

I am not loathe to buy some of my early spring stuff already started at the nurseries. I see no sense in getting several packs of tomato seeds when I only want a few of each variety. Same with the different peppers I like to plant each early spring. I'll get them already started in the 4 or 6 pack cells. I can get the 6 packs for about $2.50 each in the early spring.

Tue Jan 08, 2013 5:03 pm

My all time favorite is Park Seed. I LOVE them.

Wed Jan 09, 2013 7:30 am

Gurney's has been my favorite.

For the most part, I only order from catalogs when I want to try a variety I can't get locally.

I buy most of my seeds from the local garden store that gets the seed in bulk and measures out the amount you want. For a packet sized amount they only charge about 1/5 what a packet costs from a catalog, and no shipping. It would break me to buy all my seed from a catalog. I save seed too from some varieties.

Wed Jan 09, 2013 9:16 am

IMO saving seed is by far the best way to go. And it is pretty fun too.

Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:05 am

I have ordered from Park and Gurney's and others in the past and I save a lot of seed. This year I ordered from HPS because they had bulk seed at wholesale prices. I don't really have a use for the bulk seed, except that generally seed keeps real well. I figure I won't have to buy much more seed until 2016. But HPS doesn't have a big selection of varieties and their herb section was pathetic. So I will probably still buy a bit more seed this year from somewhere like Territorial Seeds that has good variety of more unusual things. (territorialseed.com).

Wed Jan 09, 2013 12:39 pm

I like Burpee, Gurney, Henry Fields. I am moslty a hybrid tomato guy and Burpee has a good selection. I have looked at a lot of them. I am sure if you are looking for Heirloom or Organic there are better ones. Burpee's has the best website. You can select maters by season/desease/color and so on.

Wed Jan 09, 2013 2:03 pm

rainbowgardener wrote:I have ordered from Park and Gurney's and others in the past and I save a lot of seed. This year I ordered from HPS because they had bulk seed at wholesale prices. I don't really have a use for the bulk seed, except that generally seed keeps real well. I figure I won't have to buy much more seed until 2016. But HPS doesn't have a big selection of varieties and their herb section was pathetic. So I will probably still buy a bit more seed this year from somewhere like Territorial Seeds that has good variety of more unusual things. (territorialseed.com).

How do you store seeds? Right now mine are just in a plastic container and I am not having good results.

Wed Jan 09, 2013 5:17 pm

I store seed in a cardboard box with no lid. The box is down the basement which has an almost constant temperature of between 67 - 71 degrees. Of course you have to also realize that we have a very low humidity here at this altitude in Utah.

I prefer to have seed in paper rather than plastic, so it can breath.

Ok, it is recommended that seed be kept cool and dry. Whatever it takes for that to happen at your place is a good bet.

Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:00 am

Agree. I store mine in paper envelopes in the frig or freezer. (Put the envelopes in cardboard boxes just to keep them compacted) Either one seems to work.

Thu Jan 10, 2013 5:43 am

I ordered and just received tomato seeds from Johnny's. They are in Maine and I live in south Louisiana so I called them before ordering. The varieties they offer are new to me and I want to plant what is most likely to do well in my region. The woman I spoke to was very helpful. I told her where I lived and described my growing conditions and my preference on plant type (meaty and indeterminate). She gave me a list of recommendations. I culled the list and ordered 4 varieties. I will plant as soon as it stops raining -wall-

My garden is small. I will not be starting large numbers of each (6) and will only plant 2 each. The rest will go to family - both starts and seeds. I have a back up plan - I will also plant tried and true varieties just to make sure I have maters this summer.

Based on the excellent service I recommend Johnny's.