I had been putting off ordering seeds. My friend Claude confirmed what I have heard from other people, that after two or three years, seeds are not as fertile. I have three wonderful seed catalogues. Vesey's which is based on Prince Edward Island, William Dam which my friend Jas passed on to me (based in Ontario) and Richter's, another Ontario company. Over the past few years we have ordered a few types of seeds that were specialty and not easily found in gardening centres or even Dollar stores, such as our San Marzano tomatoes and a couple varieties of basil which are grown more by commercial growers.
The world of seeds can be a very confusing place. Each catalogue has similar and complementary items, so it is not as simple as finding the company that has the better prices. William Dam had a lot of overlap with Vesey's at better prices, but their shipping costs were different so in the end the prices were not so different. Since there were a couple of items in the William Dam catalogue that were not available in Vesey's and the shipping cost was higher, I ended up choosing some near identical items from William Dam so it appeared that I got more for my money even though I am not sure I saved anything.
Buying seeds at the local store is simple, but the choices are limited. The advantage of a catalogue is that you can find all kinds of varieties not available elsewhere, and have information which can be helpful to find what you are looking for. The carrots I grew last summer were not ready to harvest before the first frost, and never reached full size. Josh says it was because I grew them too close together. Though probably true, catalogue shopping allows me to see if there are varieties which are better suited to a northern, short summer with a faster maturity. You can also get seeds for plants that sound fun. I am not sure if Black Krim tomatoes, a very dark purple variety from Russia, taste better than what I grew last summer, or if monkeyface peppers will survive the transition to indoors better than goat horn pepper, but they both look very different from other varieties and had pretty appealing taste descriptions.
In addition to the variety, catalogues offer such things as heritage seeds, organic seeds, and pelleted seeds. More confusion for the novice. Heritage seeds are basically from varieties of a plant which went out of style and have become rare. Some are referred to as heirloom seeds, which indicate that they are from cultivars grown and passed down through the generations of a family, which means they may have been very local. Produce from heritage seeds is not easily available commercially, and if you want to know what they taste like you need to grow them yourself or know someone who does. Heritage seeds are often swapped between gardeners. Our friend Alex has been a provider of the occasional interesting item for our garden. In fact, just a day or two after I put my orders on-line, Chloe sent me an e-mail to tell me that she has some seeds from Alex to pass on to me, having visited with him recently. I have no idea what I will be getting, but will let you all know!
Sometimes heritage seeds have become rare due to commercial reasons. A tasty tomato that is not red, or is very soft and does not transport easily, peppers that are hot and flavourful but have odd shapes that do not pack well for shipping, apples that are huge, sweet and very crisp immediately after harvest but become mealy quickly and do not store well would lead to their being abandoned in favour of other varieties. If grown in your back yard where shipping considerations, uniform appearance and short shelf life are not an issue, it is a pleasure to have more interesting and varied choices.
Another advantage is that some heritage plants may have more resistance to certain insect infestations or fungus, or other problems that could knock out a crop. I have, even in my limited experience, had certain breeds of tomatoes die out while others thrived under the same conditions because of different levels of resistance to a fungal infection. More variety is better, and the local stores do not offer much choice. On a bigger scale, if we do not continue to grow and produce heritage seeds, we may be ultimately placing our food supply at risk. Many of the plants which produce our supermarket food come from hybrids, and seeds of hybrids may not reproduce the same plant as its parent. Even more ominous are companies which have developed seeds which produce plants incapable of reproducing themselves. Not being able to keep and grow seeds from our own plants creates a dependence on seed companies. On the level of my back yard garden this does not appear to be a big issue, but on a global scale, it could spell catastrophe. Imagine everyone grew one variety of tomato from one single company, and all these tomatoes had the same weakness to an invader species of insect. Instead of cutting our losses, and eating a different variety that year, there could be no harvest at all.
Organic seeds was a new concept for me. I am very familiar with organic gardening, and although I practice a lot of the techniques, up to now I have not given much thought to the parentage of the plants I grow. I do not know the effect of pesticides sprayed on the plant which produced the seed which I planted in my garden will have on what I harvest, and until I picked up the William Dam seed catalogue I honestly had not put much thought to it. In fact, it begins to take on a religious feel, along the lines of "in order to reproduce something pure one needs be pure oneself." Of course the organic seeds are more expensive than the same cultivar without the organic guarantee. I find myself pressured without evidence to go for the purer form. Something else I need to research.
Pelleted was a puzzler for me, I was not familiar with that concept. I asked Claude, who explained that the seeds are coated, either to make tiny seeds easier to handle and plant, or to add pesticides directly onto the seeds themselves. I checked online for more information on pelleting, and found some other companies that sell organic pelleted seeds, for twice the price of course, which suggested to me that the pelleted seeds that did not specifically mention they were organic may possibly have pesticides or other additives included with the inert substances used to pellet organic seeds. It may also be that the parent plant did not meet organic standards. The idea of being able to plant individual carrot seeds more easily is quite appealing to me, but the catalogue does not elaborate on what the pelleting is, so I ended up buying the non-pelleted varieties.
So in addition to our standards, (romaine lettuce, mixed baby greens, scarlet runners, a couple of varieties of basil, sunflower, hot peppers, tomatoes, carrots) this year I am trying onions, swiss chard (rainbow colours), burgundy beans, snow peas, soybeans, a new variety of cucumber called salt and pepper (claiming to come pre-seasoned) and some calendula flower seeds. I have yet to figure out where we will put everything, but I am planning to hang cucumbers in suspended pots as a means to beat the beetles this summer, so that will clear some space for additional beans and peas. I also kept some seeds from the beach peas in New Brunswick with the hope they will like the conditions in my back yard. With a little luck, I will have pink, red and white pea and bean blossoms this summer.
