My Favorite Seed Catalogs

It's getting late to order seeds, but there are two great companies I "discovered" this year that are worth looking at:

BAKER CREEK HEIRLOOM SEEDS publishes a catalog that is a visual feast! Page after page of huge colored photos--and not of just ordinary varieties of vegetables--make my mouth water for summer's fresh produce. All of the seeds are non-hybrid, non-GMO, non-treated, and non-patented. There are more than 1,200 fruit and vegetable varieties, many of them collected by owner Jere Gettle on his world-wide travels. One summer squash is described as "the ethnic heirloom pumpkin of the Maori people of New Zealand." One kind of corn is an "old variety reputed to be basically unchanged from the days when Native Americans grew it in New England." Or an onion "from the village of Galmi, a small community in the Ader Valley of Southeast Niger." Fun!

Gettle started his seed company when he was just 17 years old, and is now joined in the family business by his wife and young daughter. (His mom does the art for the catalog covers.) They have a store in Mansfield, Missouri and a "Seed Bank" in an old 1920's bank building in Petaluma, California. Baker Creek gives seeds to schools, orphanages, and prisons--over $50,000 worth in 2009. You can order their seeds at www.rareseeds.com or subscribe to their magazine (The Heirloom Gardener) for $12.00 per year.

Another seed company with a less-flashy catalog, but just as important a mission, is

BOUNTIFUL GARDENS (a project of Ecology Action). These folks, besides selling seeds, are dedicated to teaching sustainable agriculture. That means "creating a system in which the soil will live at optimum health and will produce crops at a rate which can be maintained indefinitely, without degrading the environment." Their catalog outlines the eight steps for their "Grow Biointensive" solution. These steps include things that many home-gardeners do (composting, companion planting) and things that most of us don't do (growing grain crops). I'm starting this year to change to some of these new practices in an effort to be a good steward of my garden.

To support their focus on education, Bountiful Gardens offers many DVD's, books, and other publications. While their orientation is sustainable organic gardening, they offer a variety of resources on food storage and processing, self-sufficiency, solar, and food security. You can see what they have to offer at www.bountifulgardens.org. All of their seeds are open-pollinated to "preserve our agricultural heritage in all its diversity."

As Jere Gettle says, "You are the biggest threat to big, corporate agriculture." Please write back and let us know what are YOUR favorite places to buy seeds.