This is the time to make a garden plan and purchase your gardening seeds for this year’s growing season. The longer you wait to order your seeds, the more chance the ones you want will be out of stock or back-ordered. Ideally, January would be the best month to shoot for, but I’m late in this post…so sorry!
Don’t know where to buy seeds from? The following suggestions are who we support. I am not saying the rest are bad. Since we are in New England, we primarily support companies that are near us and in our zone. We are in zone 5b. We primarily support two to three seed companies.
What to look for in a seed company & who we use
I don’t know about you but what’s important to me when ordering from a gardening seed company is that they are GMO free and that they carry organic seeds.
We buy many seeds from Johnny’s Seeds out of Maine. You can find their website here. Always looks for an about page. This is where you will find information on their practices and whether they carry GMO seeds. Johnny’s has taken the safe seed pledge and they were one of the original signers of that pledge. To learn more about the safe seed pledge, click here. Johnny’s carries many things other than seeds – they have a lot of tools and garden aides for you. Many of the tools that Johnny’s carries were invented by Eliot Coleman. He is a four season gardener up in Maine. He is one of our idols and has written many books and been around for a very long time and has a lot of knowledge. You can check him out here if you are interested.
Our next seed company where we purchase seeds from is High Mowing Seeds out of Vermont. You can find their website here. This company carries strictly organic gardening seeds as opposed to Johnny’s who carries conventional and organic. Between these two companies we usually can find the seeds we want.
If you are looking for an off the wall seed, check out Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. Their website is here. I particularly like this company as they carry rare, hard to find seeds. All of the seeds they carry can be saved for next year’s planting.
Also worthy of noting is Fedco Seeds out of Maine and if you are looking for seed potatoes we like Maine Potato Lady also in Maine. Wood Prairie Family Farm in Maine also carry seed potatoes. They are a bit more expensive but they have some cool varieties. We’ve purchased from all of them in the past and are happy with their products.
Finally, your local feed store such as Agway, carries seeds. These are smaller quantity packages which are ideal if you have a small growing space.
Heirloom, open-pollinated & hybrid
Let’s talk about what heirloom, open-pollinated and hybrid mean. All heirlooms are open-pollinated but not all open-pollinated seeds are heirlooms. Heirloom is in reference to the age, historic and cultural value of an open-pollinated variety. An heirloom seed could be from something your grandmother or great-grandmother planted and has been handed down for generations. Some seed savers insist heirloom seeds have to be so many years old, like 50, to be called an heirloom. These seeds will breed true year after year. An example would be our dried bean seeds that we planted last year. We are offering 20 varieties of bean seeds to plant in your garden this year. You can order them here.
Open-Pollinated means you can save seeds from the fruit/vegetable that you grew that year and when you use it next year it will remain true to what the seed came from – it will be the same as long as their is no accidental cross-pollination happening. You can continue to save seeds from open-pollinated vegetables every year.
Hybrid seeds you cannot save from the fruit/vegetable that you grew. If you did, it would not breed true and you might end up with some strange vegetable characteristics – certainly not what you got when you first planted that hybrid seed. You would have to buy fresh hybrid seeds each year. If you have seeds you did not plant, you can plant them the following year. However, keep in mind that each year that goes by the less viable that seed will be. So when purchasing hybrid seeds you would want to consider only getting what you need for seeds that year.
That’s about it folks. Have fun planning your summer garden and ordering your seeds. Peeking at those gardening catalogs is such a joy as we currently sit in front of a woodstove with snow on the ground outside. Happy planning.
Your farmers, Keith and Michelle
