I am addicted to magazines and catalogs, but none so much as seed catalogs. When January rolls around and the white barrenness of winter is everywhere, these gloriously glossy pages spring to life in a dazzling array of color and form as an indicator that soon the green world will awaken from its slumber. As the new catalogs arrive they are saved in a big pile for New Year’s Day. This is the day that I traditionally sprawl the dozens of catalogs, dripping with alluring photos, across the kitchen table and sit myself down with a chocolate cheesecake to swoon over each and every luscious flower petal.

Of course my eyes are always bigger than my stomach when it comes to the cheesecake, but the same holds true for my seed order. I invariably end up with more varieties of flowers, herbs and vegetables than I will be able to grow. But that doesn’t deter me at all.

There are a few things I must have such as heliotrope, zinnias, nasturiums, sunflowers, sweet peas, cockcomb and pumpkins. I’m always on the lookout for new and interesting varieties and keep my eyes especially peeled for them while leafing through the catalogs. I like to try new and different things each year as well, but limit myself to about five or six or so. Okay, let’s not pin me down here because in 2004 I had 35 new varieties of seeds going in addition to the old standbys!

Most of the catalogs will be looked at once and then placed on the recycle pile with the magazines, but there are few that are keepers that I refer back to throughout the seed season and to order from.

I don’t believe Renee’s Garden produces a print catalog, but is my top pick for buying seeds. I’ve had superb results from her seeds and the instructions are clear and detailed. All seed packet info and exceptional specimen photos can be seen online. A big problem with buying seeds is that photos in a lot of catalogs are not typical examples of what you will end up with in your garden. Renee breaks that pattern by providing photos that I’ve found to be consistently accurate. And the seed packets are gorgeously illustrated too, which look charming in my seed basket!

Select Seeds is another good choice for unusual antique varieties of flowers. They offer a small selection of transplants started from seed, including sweet peas, though I have never tried them. Their seed quality and info is also excellent as is customer service. I had purchased a 4′ Hydrofarm tabletop lighting system from them, but the fixture itself was defective. They informed the manufacturer who was to send me a replacement in a few days. After a couple of weeks it hadn’t arrived and I called them back. They were aghast that it had not arrived. I had gotten their last one and they themselves were waiting on new stock to arrive. Knowing my time window for starting certain seeds was closing, they packed up one they were using in the office and sent it to me. It arrived the next day and they graciously told me to keep it along with the replacement that the manufacturer would be sending, which finally arrived a few days later.

Burpee is an old standby with good quality stock and I do buy quite a bit from them both online and locally. I do find their information to be somewhat sparse in print, online and on seed packets compared to some others.

I don’t order much from Johnny’s or Stokes, but find their catalogs and Web sites to be some of the most informative. They both are slow on shipping compared to Renee’s and Burpee. Territorial Seed is another I don’t order much from, but is one of the few places to obtain ‘Magic Lantern’ pumpkin seeds, which seem to be the preferred variety of my garden. I tend to get good yields, large fruit and little mildew compared to other similar varieties.

Park Seed is also a good catalog, but I have had mixed results with seed germination and accuracy between the catalog photo and the actual plant growing in my garden. I have yet to buy a packet of seeds from Park’s that resulted in looking like the photo in the catalog.

Posted in: Gardening