Enablers - Seed Companies

Around Christmas time, they start arriving. Seed catalogs from Burpees, Territorial, Johnny's, Harris and other companies. Each with glossy, colorful, larger-than-life photos of vegetables on the cover. The pages inside are filled with hundreds of pictures and descriptions of vegetables - new varieties and old standards - to add to our 2021 garden! Like kids in a candy store, it's hard to resist wanting everything. But we've already planned our garden, so the task is to reign in our enthusiasm and find the right seeds from the right companies for our garden.

Given our garden plan, we must have enough seeds for the plants that will be required to fill each plot. Our first order of business when ordering seeds is to take an inventory of the seeds we have from last year. If kept in a cool dry place, older seeds will usually germinate and grow well. But there is always a risk that they won't. We keep this in mind when making our order.

We use Excel spreadsheets to tally and record each year's order. The seed inventory spreadsheet, which includes columns like plants needed, seeds on hand, last year's germination rate, etc., allows us to see at a glance what our needs are. Satisfied that we know what we need, we turn to the catalogs.

Since we are in Western PA agriculture growing zone 6, we like to order our seeds from regional growers. But we will also try seeds from other regions. Territorial is a seed company in Oregon. That is where we found Indigo Rose seeds, the first small black tomato that we tried in our garden. But most of our seeds come from Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. We also like a number of the varieties that Johnny's Seeds sells.

For the first time, we've decided to order our seeds on line. For the most part, it was straight forward and easy. We set up accounts with each company except Totally Tomatoes. They seemed to be having some issue with their web site. Then with our catalogs in hand, we searched for the seeds we needed and added them to our cart. After checkout, it was great to print out a receipt not only to have a record of the transaction, but also to have documentation for tax time!

This year, our seed orders are from Burpee, Holmes, Harris, Johnny's, Territorial, Totally Tomatoes, Artisan and Seed from Italy. Most are repeat orders of those seeds that have done well in our garden in years past, but we always like to try new plants. One of this year's new additions is a green tomato named Green Bee for our "cherry tomato mix." We discovered it in Johnny's catalog but ordered the seeds from Artisan because Johnny's supply was sold out.

So now we wait for the seeds to arrive and get ready to put them in soil. We will start planting them indoors in trays the first week of February.