What To Grow And Where To Get Seeds
Sharon July 7th, 2009
Let’s divide the possibility for what you can grow into the fall and winter up a bit, and then discuss where to buy seeds and plants.
Category #1 – Long warm season annuals suitable to season extension by container planting: These include the true perennials that can be brought in and overwintered, like peppers and eggplants of normal size and dwarf tomatoes. There are other plants that could be brought in, but these are the most common. Generally it is now too late to start these from seed, but there’s no reason not to plan for next year.
Category #2 – True perennials that do well in pot culture and can provide overwintered herbs, fruit or other good stuff. Look for varieties that do well in pot culture.
Category #3 – This is a small one, but these are warm season annuals that are bred to produce good keeping varieties of things not ordinarily good keepers, or to be harvested green late in the season before first frost, and ripen gradually, like Burpee’s Longkeeper Tomato or the Banana Melon.
Category #4 – Warm season annuals with short growing season – bush beans, cukes, summer squash, etc… that can be planted later in the season for succession crops. You should look for varieties that do well in short seasons.
Category #5 – Vegetables that are naturally cold tolerant – brassicas, asian greens, lettuces, mustard, non-tropical root crops, that cannot be overwintered in cold climates but can do well for an extended season or in storage after late harvest.
Category#6 – Vegetables suited to true overwintering in cold climates – including varieties bred specifically for this purpose.
Now which category your stuff falls into is somewhat fungible. Someone growing vegetables in the Pacific Northwest will find that Category #6 includes an awful lot of stuff – you may be able to overwinter fava beans and peas, things that just don’t work here in zone 4/5. Some people simply won’t be able to overwinter anything – the ground freezes too hard.
Now, seed sources. It will probably not surprise you that the best seeds for this purpose come mostly from a. companies in cold places that are dealing with the problem of cold weather all the time anyway and b. from places where winter gardening is something of a tradition, due to a mild year-round climate like the Pacific Northwest and Britain.
I think Fedco Seeds www.fedcoseeds.com is probably the best source of overwintering, super cold-hardy seeds – their “ice bred” arugula, “evenstar” mustards and collards and other breeds of greens specifically for cold season production have been some of my best producers. They also carry a lot of winter standards – Bloomsdale LongStanding spinach and Winter Density Lettuce. If you are ordering from them, order early, because it can take them several weeks to send out orders in the summer, when they work with a skeleton staff.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds are pricey, but they put a lot of effort into research on cold season gardening, and consult directly with Eliot Coleman on some things. They are a great source of chicories for winter forcing and a solid supplier of obscurities like salsify and scorzonera (probably too late to start them from seed this year, though). www.johnnyseeds.com They have the advantage of being employee owned as well, and thus you are supporting something good.
You have to page through Richter’s herb catalog carefully to find them, but they do include a fair amount of information about herb varieties suitable for pot culture, and sell, among other things plants of tropical basils that can handle low light conditions, and Rau Om, a Vietnamese Cilantro taste-alike that will overwinter happily. They are in Canada, but do international orders: www.richters.com
Seed Savers Exchange is always the best first source for me, and I strongly urge all my readers to become members. But even if you don’t join, you can still order from their catalog, which includes a lot of fascinating varieties designed for keeping – here are banana melons and Longkeeper tomatoes, and beets, turnips and garlic that store especially well. Remember, many of the older heirlooms were bred in an era where much of summer’s bounty went into the root cellar for winter. www.seedsavers.org
Thompson and Morgan is a British company with US/Canadian and Aussie sites that has a number of container gardening plants, and also some good, cold hardy varieties that are hard to find here in the US. US site: http://www.tmseeds.com/ Britain: http://www.thompson-morgan.com/
Container Seeds was founded by our own wonderful Pat Meadows, she of so many wise things like “The Theory of Anyway” and the Edible Container Gardening Yahoo List – she no longer runs it, but she wrote most of the product descriptions, and the site is still operating under different ownership. www.containerseeds.com Edited to add: Pat Meadows reports that she doesn’t actually recommend that we use Container Seeds anymore, so scratch that, although I do recommend container gardeners look at the site for her recommendations, which are all pretty much there intact. She suggests (and I agree) Pinetree seeds instead www.superseeds.com which has a container gardening section.
Territorial Seeds has its own winter growing catalog which is enormously valuable both to Pacific NW gardeners in the US also to all cold season gardeners – not everything will work the same way – for example, the Meridia carrot they advertise as for overwintering doesn’t really do as well here. But there are lots of good things and much that is worth experimenting with. www.territorialseed.com
Salt Spring Seeds also has a lot of overwintering and suitable cool season seeds – they sell only in Canada, but have an excellent selection. www.saltspringseeds.com.
So what are your favorite winter varieties and crops?
Sharon
- cool season gardening
- Comments(14)
I’m glad to see a current seeds post, because I have a question I haven’t seen answered among your archived posts, although it’s not really pertinent to your fall/winter design class. When storing garden seeds as part of your food storage program, how much do you store? I’d love to see a post on that, though I know readers’ demands can’t always be met
Territorial Seeds is worth getting on their list just for the sheer amt. of seed starting/growing information it contains. We’ve had good luck with their winter veggie section and it is hard to do here in MO where it doesn’t cool down until late Oct. or even later. Can’t start anything in the greenhouse past May or it cooks no matter what you do. DEE
Hi,
I had not mentioned this to Sharon, but unfortunately I cannot recommend ContainerSeeds.com any longer.
However, Pinetree Garden Seeds has many excellent container selections and their prices are low as well. Their website is: superseeds.com.
When dealing with a seed or gardening-related company new to you, it’s always a good idea to check them out on The Garden Watchdog, located at: davesgarden.com/products/gwd/
Cheers,
Pat Meadows
[...] What To Grow And Where To Get SeedsLet’s divide the possibility for what you can grow into the fall and winter up a bit, and then discuss where to buy seeds and plants. Category #1 – Long warm season annuals suitable to season extension by container planting: These include the true perennials that can be brought in and overwintered, like peppers and eggplants of normal size and dwarf tomatoes. There are other plants that could be brought in, but these are the most common.? Generally it is now too late to start these from seed, [...]
Sharon,
I have seen zone charts in a couple of seed catalogs – and they didn’t agree what zone north central Oklahoma lies in. Is there a useful zone chart online?
And, is the zone chart moving due to climate change?
I’d avoid Richter’s if you can. I have bought from them in the past and received three different plants misidentified to species.
I’d like to reccomend High Mowing Seeds here in Vermont. I’ve had very good luck this year with their seed.
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/
Brad K,
Yes, the climate zone maps have changed. The newer maps are based on more recent weather data than the older maps.
In October of ‘08, I wrote a a blog post about the maps that includes links to the maps and to an article about them, so you can compare the old and the new.
Not that I am suggesting that my blog is all that great to read, but the links are useful (assuming they still work!).
-Amy, in NW GA
(hope the link to the blog post works–if it doesn’t, it will look like a mess in the comment block)
A good source for cold hardy greens is Wild Garden Seeds in Oregon.
http://www.wildgardenseed.com/
I have to say I used to champion Fedco Seeds, but since we grow 90% of our food and strive to eat from our gardens and winter stores instead of relying on the store, getting numerous off-type seeds of many different vegetables from them over the last 4 – 5 years has been disheartening. Their cheap prices and eclectic catalog don’t cut it for me when I am looking at a year of lost production of a staple vegetable. A simple shrug, and oh well, and they offer the same seed the next year…
I don’t know if the problem is relying on amateur seed savers or just general bad luck in choosing their suppliers. But if you’re depending on your food supply, don’t order exclusively from Fedco.
I’ve been ordering most of our seeds from Fedco for years, including when we ran our CSA, and I’ve only once gotten a off-type, just as a contrary opinion. I do think the reality of getting most of their seeds locally grown will probably lead to less homogenization than buying most of them from large scale seed suppliers, as most (though not all) companies do.
Sharon
Dewey, what did you have problems with from Richters? I’ve not spotted any difficulties, but I’m curious.
Sharon
I agree with fellow Missourian Dee, getting veggies to overwinter here is not the easiest thing in the world. Besides the late cooldown, we have to contend with very changeable winter weather. Missouri’s Zone 6 (actually I think where I am is more borderline 6/7) is nothing like the Pacific Northwest’s Zone 6. They don’t get the weird weather swings that we do.
I use Fedco’s seeds and like them a lot, but even the “ice-bred” seeds don’t overwinter well in the open garden for me, at least not so far. In the cold frame, many things like kale and arugula do overwinter nicely, and the Spring Wok bok choy from Peters Seeds overwintered in the cold frame also. I’ve had great arugula in the cold frame that I allowed to go to seed and come back from seed for a few years. But I moved that cold frame and lost the variety … I’ll be starting arugula again in the cold frame this year.
My DH and I like the storage radishes, Red Meat and Round Black Spanish, very much. I pull them in November and store them in 5 gallon buckets in the area we call the root cellar (a staircase down to our basement from the outside). We overwinter leeks the same way. They have lasted until March.
[...] but now is the time to be thinking about your plans for your fall/winter gardens. Check out this link on Sharon Astyk’s blog for more information about cold weather crops and seed [...]
I still do order from Fedco, but maybe just my bad luck in variety selection has led to the problems I have had. The upside wasting two years on beets, summer squash,and some misc greens from them, has made me devote more of my growing space to seed saving of the varieties I want, and seeking other suppliers of certain varieties. Mistakes can happen in labeling and packaging, that is just the price we pay. However, I have to say quality of their roots, tubers and plants remains exceptionally good and the price cannot be beat.