seed catalogs

[catjac1975]

Gurney's has 50% off until 2/8

 

[flyboy718]

Man, I haven't looked a a seed catalog in about 10 years and I did for the first time the other day and I am still trying to put my eyes back in my head, I did manage to finally get my mouth closed! Since when do seeds NEED to cost so much! So, having said that, what is a RESONABLE priced seed company that offers seeds that you can let your plants go to seed if you like and replant in subsequent years?

 

[so lucky]

If you can find an old-fashioned farm store, a local one, not a chain, you may find bulk garden seeds. They are usually a lot cheaper than Burpee, Olds or some of the big pre-packaged brands. You can buy your sweet corn and green beans by the pound, or 1/4 lb, what ever you want. You will forego the pretty picture on the front, but you can see what that particular vegetable is supposed to look like on the web or in the catalog. Go in the middle of the week, when they are not busy, and ask which are the open pollinated varieties for each vegetable. If the clerk is not busy, they will probably be a good source of information. If they garden themselves, all the better. Make a friend!
If you need to go with pre-packaged, I found Livingston Seeds packages their bean and corn seed in 1/4 lb. packs, which is a deal, generally. I noticed Wal-mart has a line of "organic" seeds this year. Expensive.

 

[flyboy718]

If you can find an old-fashioned farm store, a local one, not a chain, you may find bulk garden seeds. They are usually a lot cheaper than Burpee, Olds or some of the big pre-packaged brands. You can buy your sweet corn and green beans by the pound, or 1/4 lb, what ever you want. You will forego the pretty picture on the front, but you can see what that particular vegetable is supposed to look like on the web or in the catalog. Go in the middle of the week, when they are not busy, and ask which are the open pollinated varieties for each vegetable. If the clerk is not busy, they will probably be a good source of information. If they garden themselves, all the better. Make a friend!
If you need to go with pre-packaged, I found Livingston Seeds packages their bean and corn seed in 1/4 lb. packs, which is a deal, generally. I noticed Wal-mart has a line of "organic" seeds this year. Expensive.

So open pollinated means that if you save the seed you can subsequently produce future crops?

 

[nachoqtpie]

So open pollinated means that if you save the seed you can subsequently produce future crops?

Yup

 

[Ridgerunner]

Seed potatoes is another place you can save a whole lot by buying local if you can find a true gardening store. Last year I paid about $0.45 per pound for seed potatoes at my local "Chicken Holler" versus about 5 to 10 times that much plus shipping if I order them on-line. I only get 10 pounds but $4.50 plus tax versus $20 to $45 plus shipping? The Maine Potato Lady is a popular place on this site for seed potatoes. For 5 pounds of Kennebec and 5 pounds of Red Pontiac seed potatoes, they cost about $25 plus shipping. These are about as basic a variety as you can get. If you buy less pounds or get more exotic varieties, the cost per pound goes up. Guess where I buy mine from?

Call your County, I mean Parish, Extension Service office, listed in the phone book under Parish Government, and ask them where such a store might be. They might be an independent one like my Chicken Holler but a pretty common one is a Co-op or Farmer's Cooperative. A lot of us have Co-op's around. You won't get the different varieties you can find on-line, but they should have varieties that do well in your area.

There are several threads on here about saving open-pollinate seeds. I don't find saving most seeds hard at all, but there are a few things you have to know. If you save seeds from a hybrid or F-1 cross, the plants will not produce true. If you see F-1 in the plant name or description, it is a hybrid.

If you have different varieties of the plants, they might cross-pollinate and make hybrids. Squash are notorious for this. But some things, like beans and tomatoes almost always self-pollinate, so you don't have to worry about that happening very much. You are dealing with Nature so anything can happen, but I only remember one time that a tomato seed did not grow true and I grow many different varieties of tomatoes side by side.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i've actually saved some of my potatoes that have started sprouting for use in the garden. i've just moved them to a cooler location to slow their growth for a couple more months. i did buy from the Potato Patch last year the Purple Viking and i liked them a lot but can't get them locally so i had to spend the extra $$ to get them shipped. the more pounds you buy the lower the cost per lbs. i will buy the usual varieties at the local feed store for about .55 cents/lb, but the specialty ones i like to see if anyone wants to go in with a larger order so i can distribute the costs some. same with onions from Dixondale in TX. no one locally carries the right long-day onion plants unless i order, and getting them directly from Dixondale is much cheaper than ordering from Johnny's Seeds (who is closer) which gets them from the same people! (Home Depot the last 2 years have ordered short day onions for some reason :/ )

i did get a nice catalog from Double A Vineyards over in NY. they sell most of their grapes for about $7.50 per vine. they also sell red, yellow, and black raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, rhubarb, elderberries and blueberries! they get much better prices than some of the deals i've seen in some of the other catalogs. the prices also go down for the more items you buy in bulk! something that i'll probably get this year from them: if you buy between 1-5 of the red or yellow raspberries they are $2.75 each. getting 11 or more and the price drops to $2 each!

 

[digitS']

. . . what is a RESONABLE priced seed company that offers seeds that you can let your plants go to seed if you like and replant in subsequent years?

Flyboy, other than growing plants you can save seed from, what kind of garden are you planning to have in 2012?

If you want lots of variety in your garden, I will suggest Pine Tree right off - wide selection, small packets, good prices.

If you limit the number of varieties, buying in larger quantities is a good way to save. I don't suppose that you are too concerned that bulk seed can be kept usually for several years. Saving seed can work fairly well and you can become your own supplier . Limiting the number of varieties also makes sense for seed-saving. You will have to think about isolating what you want so there won't be cross-pollination.

Here's some information on seed-saving: http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/seed_saving.htm

The vegetables that are self-pollinating are generally easier to save seed from. Also, you will notice how squash, for example, can be grown in several species and seed safely saved (these are species not just varieties). The isolation distance looks to me to be quite extreme but keep in mind that Fedco buys seed for resale and has a number of small outfits that supply it. They are NOT wanting to have cross-bred seed in their catalog offerings. And . . . Fedco is another place to find good seed prices.

Steve

 

[ksacres]

I ordered from www.heirloomacresseeds.com in 2009 and 2010. I was very happy with the seed, prices are very reasonable, IMO. And you can buy in bulk and share if you wanted to. Shipping is very reasonable, even on things like onion starts and seed potatoes. And, as the name implies, it's all open pollinated non-GMO seed, which is important to me. I want the real McCoy, and the ability to save my own seed if I want to (which I haven't done yet, the idea that I could is comforting), but is a great bonus, beyond the "frankenfood" fears.

I'm going to be ordering a few more varieties from them this year.

They come in plain white envelopes that are hand labeled with the kind, variety, amount, germination rate, and date. I like that they test germinate all seed and provide honest percentages, this helps me to know if I need two, three, four, whatever seeds to insure that each cell grows a plant. Helps from having too many or too few seeds used.

 

[flowerpower313]

A few places to order open pollinated seeds are Baker Creek, Comstock-Ferre, Sandhill Preservation & Tater Mater seeds. There are plenty of OP varieties on the seed racks too. Burpee has an heirloom line, and Page and Livingston seed companies have decent collections.