www.tomatogrowers.com

Request a catalog!

Tomato Growers Supply Co. (TGSC) has been selling tomato and related seeds since 1984.  The 2009 TGSC catalog is 60 pages long (over half devoted to tomatoes naturally!) and includes these categories:

• Tomato Seeds
• Pepper Seeds
• Eggplant Seeds
• Equipment
• Miscellaneous

If you are as obsessed with fond of tomatoes as we are at Meadowwood Garden then you are going to enjoy this catalog.  TGSC offers red, pink, yellow, orange, green, white, purple and black tomatoes.  The variety they offer is dazzling.  The descriptions and photos are a big boost in narrowing down your selection.

TGSC didn’t stop at tomatoes — they also offer a very nice selection of sweet and hot pepper seeds.  And did we mention the eggplant section?  (Mmmmm… Eggplant Parmesan…)  At Meadowwood Garden we like to think of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants as the “Holy Trinity” of the summer garden!

TGSC is a specialty seed catalog, and as such they assume their customers have a reasonable knowledge of how to grow what they offer.  Culture Boxes?  Nah.  Germination graphs and charts?  Nope.  Instead the catalog is just packed full of seed descriptions and photos.  We like that a lot, because the more they offer the more choices we have!

With it’s laser focus and outstanding selection we think the TGSC catalog is worth a spot in your seed catalog stack.

Sample Pages

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Tomato Growers Supply Co.

www.seedsavers.org

Request a Catalog!

Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) is a non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.  They have an outstanding reputation among gardeners as being a great place to look for unusual or hard-to-find varieties.  SSE produces a beautiful 100 page catalog each year to help produce funds for their organization.  The catalog includes:

• Heirloom Vegetable Seeds
• Heirloom Herb Seeds
• Heirloom Flower Seeds
• Books

Squash

The first question you might have is, “Do I have to be a member of SSE to order from the catalog?”  Happily the answer is no — SSE sells their seeds to members and non-members alike!  Members do receive a 10% discount and some other nifty benefits which you can read about on their website.

The SSE catalog is different from the standard commercial seed catalog you might be used to — we think different in a good way.  This is a catalog geared towards gardeners who already have a pretty good idea of what they are doing.  There are no Culture Boxes telling you how and when to plant.  Instead, that space is used to offer more seeds!  In fact, the SSE catalog is literally STUFFED full of beautiful color photos and descriptions of more seeds than you could ever hope to plant.

One of our favorite aspects of the SSE catalog is the uniqueness of their seed descriptions.  You might learn when and where a variety was introduced, where it was popularly grown and why it was popular before falling out of favor.  Basically SSE is teaching you the history of each variety and explaining why it is important that it be saved for future generations.  We like that — a lot.

You won’t find the usual hybrid varieties that all of the commercial catalogs seem to offer.  SSE only sells open-pollinated heirloom seeds.  If you want a Better Boy or Celebrity tomato this isn’t the catalog for you.  And therein lies the beauty of SSE — instead of seeing the same things you see catalog-after-catalog you end up finding jewels like the Black from Tula tomato (part of the description reads, “described by an SSE member as ‘the ugliest, most delicious tomato I’ve ever grown.’”)  How can you not be intrigued by THAT?  Or how about Dr. Wyche’s Yellow tomato?  Apparently Dr. Wyche owned a circus and used to fertilize his garden with lion and tiger waste to keep out deer and rabbits!  Now there is a tomato-lover ladies and gentlemen!

By now you might have gotten the impression we are big fans of the SSE and their catalog — and you’d be exactly right.  We like seeing varieties that we don’t see anywhere else.  We like learning a little about the history of the things we are planting in our garden.  Above all, we feel that preserving our genetic heritage through the saving and sharing of heirloom seeds is an important thing to do and we applaud the SSE for helping us do that.

Do yourself and your garden a favor this year.  Request a catalog or visit the SSE website and place an order.  Grow something you might not have grown otherwise, something unique or unusual that catches your eye.  Come harvest time you will be glad you did!

Sample Pages

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Seed Savers Exchange

johnnyseeds.com

Request a Catalog!

Johnny’s Selected Seeds (JSS) is an employee-owned company based in Maine that has been selling seeds for 36 years.  They have cultivated an excellent reputation among gardeners — whenever you surf the internet looking for seed company recommendations JSS is often included in the list.  The Spring 2009 Catalog is 204 pages (half devoted to vegetables) and includes:

• Vegetables
• Cover Crops
• Fruits
• Herbs
• Flowers
• Tools & Supplies

Culture Box

JSS sells to both the home garden and commercial markets.  One of the more interesting aspects of their product selection is seeing things like row seeders and backpack sprayers that are more geared to a small commercial operation, but are just as applicable to a larger home garden as well.  Seeing prices for 25,000 seeds is also a hoot when you are used to purchasing by the packet.

More than any other catalog JSS is the one we turn to at Meadowwood Garden when we have questions about something in the garden.  The Culture Box for each vegetable variety is the most comprehensive we have encountered to date.  The Germination Guide chart is very handy — having that information provided visually is a nice bonus.  There are even photos of the actual seeds!

As you might expect from a company headquartered in Maine, JSS is no stranger to cold weather gardening.  They have a plethora of short-season offerings and the product mix is somewhat skewed towards gardeners in the northern part of the country.  JSS has over 21 pages devoted to lettuce and greens alone!  Salad fans rejoice!

JSS offers 300 organic products.  With more and more gardeners trending towards eco-friendly gardening methods this is important to a lot of people.  All of the organic offerings are clearly marked and easy to find.

Obviously we like the JSS catalog here at Meadowwood Garden.  It seems to have many unique varieties that we are interested in and that would do well in our climate.  More often than not it also contains answers to many of the gardening questions that seem to pop up throughout the growing season.  Small garden or large, the folks at JSS should be able to provide you with the seed you need.

Sample Pages

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Johnny’s Selected Seeds

www.territorialseed.com

Request a TSC Catalog!

30-year-old Territorial Seed Company (TSC) based in Cottage Grove, OR was one of the first seed companies that was recommended to me last year when I was planning Meadowwood Garden.  Their Spring 2009 catalog is 168 pages and contains an excellent selection of seeds and supplies for the home gardener in the following categories:

• Vegetable Seeds and Plants
• Fruit Seeds and Plants
• Flowers
• Growing Supplies

When you browse the TSC catalog you might notice a few interesting things right away.  The TSC founder’s vision was to “Improve people’s self-sufficiency and independence by enabling gardeners to produce an abundance of good tasting fresh-from-the garden food 12 months a year.”  They definitely focus on the home gardener — seeds are offered in manageable quantities and the descriptions contain all sorts of useful information about taste, yield, disease resistance and more.

Culture Box

Each variety has a “Culture Box” at the beginning of the section that provides even more detailed information for the home gardener.  Things like when to sow and transplant, how much to water, and lots of little snippets of information to ensure your gardening success.  Although not unique to TSC, these Culture Boxes serve as a vegetable-growing encyclopedia of sorts and are in my mind reason enough to obtain this catalog.

There seem to be more cold-tolerant varieties offered than in the usual catalog.  In fact, many of the plants they sell have been developed in Oregon by one of the universities there.  As Zone 5 gardeners we at Meadowwood Garden definitely appreciate this expanded selection of shorter-season vegetables.

The Spring 2009 TSC catalog offers an outstanding selection of seeds and plants geared towards making the home garden a success.  It also serves as a reference for growing those seeds and plants that you will turn to many times throughout the growing season.  Whether you are experienced or new to gardening (and especially if your growing season is short) you will probably fine something useful in this fine catalog.

Sample Page

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Territorial Seed Company

The catalogs are here! The catalogs are here!

As you can see from the photo we have accumulated a stack of 2009 seed catalogs here at Meadowwood Garden. Many hours have been lost spent pouring over all the new varieties and dreaming about the possibilities!

As we were selecting the varieties we want to plant this year it occured to us that it might be useful to work up some sort of cost comparison between the different catalogs.  Often the varieties of seeds sold are the same across several catalogs, but the prices and shipping policies seem to vary tremendously.

We plan to come up with a generic set of seeds a beginning gardener might purchase and compare # of seeds/packet, prices and shipping totals across the catalogs we have.  Hopefully this will serve as a basis for comparison for those who are interested in purchasing seeds this year.

We are also planning to review each catalog in detail beginning tomorrow.  Although they all exist to sell seeds, some of the catalogs provide valuable information such as culture needs, disease and pest information, when to harvest, etc.  We will let you know who does what the best so you can benefit from these valuable resources!

Of course, the catalogs pictured above are only a very small sample of what is out there.  Do you have a favorite catalog that isn’t pictured?  We would love to hear about it!

Post from: Meadowwood Garden © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

Catalogs Galore!