Wow. It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet and I am already getting seed catalogs. It used to be late December or January before the catalogs arrived.
First one was from Seeds of Change. They are a good company with organic seeds, but I don’t order from them because they are in the southwest rather than in the north. They do have a lot of heirloom varieties though, and work to preserve wide varieties.
Then within a day or so I got catalogs from Harris Seeds, Stokes Seeds, and Pinetree Seeds. Harris and Stokes are good regional companies for commercial growers, and their information on growing the various vegetables is excellent, but Stokes has almost no untreated seed, let alone any organic seed, and Harris has only a few untreated or organic seeds. Pinetree Seeds is a great source for gardeners wanting small quantities of seeds, though in glancing I don’t see any organic seed.
I greeted the Johnny’s Seed catalog with great anticipation. They are one of my main seed sources. A Maine company, they trial varieties in their test gardens, breed varieties, produce seed, and have lots of organic seed, and I don’t think they have treated (fungicides) seed.
My other two main seed sources are Fedco and High Mowing. The Fedco catalog hasnt’ arrived yet, but the High Mowing came. One indication of the competitive nature of the seed business this year is that the week before the High Mowing catalog came, at the time when the others were arriving, I got an email from High Mowing saying their catalogs were being mailed. High Mowing is a small, northern Vermont company that sells only organic seed. They produce a lot of their own seed too and have been very instrumental in supporting small scale local seed production. And they have partnered with European companies to provide certified organic hybrid seed for varieties that have done well in their trial gardens.
So, I have been going through the Johnny and High Mowing catalogs underlining disease resistance and flavor ratings, looking at photos, and making comparative lists to try to keep my seed buying within reason.
Selecting seed for a 100 share CSA is very different from selecting seed for a backyard garden. I now have to approach variety selection from a time management standpoint. Instead of being enticed into trying four or five varieties of broccoli, I need to limit it it an early and a late variety. Why? to minimize management time – which variety now, how many packets of what, keeping records of yields, etc. I am still using flavor as one of the most important criteria, but now yield potential and disease resistance (minimizing risk for my share holders) is as important as flavor. I still go with flavor on some things, like Costata Romanesco zucchini. It doesn’t yield nearly as much as the modern type, but its flavor and texture are so much better that I still want to grow it. But we have problems with insect transmitted viruses in our squash, so resistance to those are at the top level of criteria for the squash. Interestingly, the heirloom Costata held up to disease pressure very well this year, when the others did not. And the expensive zucchini that are bred for greenhouse production and don’t require pollination succumbed very quickly to disease when planted out in the field.
So now the “fun” begins. Seed selection was more fun when it was just a backyard garden and it didn’t really matter how well everything did. It was fun to try oddball stuff. Now the major thrust is provide great basics and some “new” stuff to keep it interesting and expand members’ food repertoire.
