March 12, 2018

I have written on this subject many times and I think revisiting on occasion is a good thing. Why would you buy seeds over plants? Myself I like the idea of selecting veggies that have the qualities that I desire. When plants are selected You have allowed someone else to perform the screening process. In a lot of cases you take what you can get and hopefully the mature plants will meet your needs. Besides purchasing plants over seeds is way more expensive. I have not purchased plants in a long while. I am reasonably sure that the cost of a packet of seeds is less than what a plant would cost, of course depending on the size of plants that you purchase.

I have a   seed “bible” that I like to use. I still use it but not too the extent when I was selecting all the veggies I would be growing for market. It is my definitive book to go to.

The last time this book was updated was in 2004. The title of the book is “Garden Seed Inventory” sixth edition by the Seed Savers Exchange.

This is an inventory of all the open pollinated and heirloom varieties of veggies that were available in 2004 for sale in North America (both the US and Canada). This is an impressive book. Front Street books most likely can get a copy for the would-be browser.

Not only does this book list all of the seeds mentioned above but also a short description and the seed houses where they can be purchased. By and large a lot of these seed houses are mom and pop operations. Sadly, there are a number of these “mom and pop” operations that have gone out of business due to retirement or being bought out by larger seed houses. At which time the destiny of all this DNA diversity is up in the air.

I often just like to browse this book and see if there may be some new veggie variety I would like to try. It can be over whelming. Personally, I think it reads almost like a novel, only this is all noon fiction. This book also keeps the reader attached to reality at how vulnerable many of these seeds are to the trash heaps of history. It notes the seed houses that are out of business along with the various varieties of veggies that were discontinued and the year.

This book is quite thorough. The tomatoes cover 64 pages with at least 15 varieties per page. The tomato varieties are further broken down by color.

I encourage any gardener to get a copy. And a little on the side, nowhere in this book is Monsanto even mentioned.