I got my first ever Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Catalog in the mail a few weeks ago, and I've had a hard time putting it down. It's a gorgeous, loverly thing, filled with beautiful pictures of heirloom fruits, vegetables, and flowers - but the descriptions alone are enough to make you salivate. I swear I read every entry, poring over each category to pick THE seeds that were going to be fabulous in my garden this year.
We'll see - I'm not exactly an expert gardener. I haven't been a big seed starter up until now. I usually just get some already started little planties and stick them in the ground, hoping for the best. But this year, by golly, I am starting my garden from heirloom seeds. Choosing which ones, though was quite the process. I mean, there's got to be like, 300 varieties (okay, fact check - there are 175 - but it felt like 300) of just tomatoes. And they all have these tantalizing names like Missouri Pink Love Apple, and Cherokee Chocolate. How to decide?!! After much circling, and dog earing, and crossing out and recircling, I think I've finally got my crop. Here's what I finally decided to order:
One pack each:
- Snowball Self-Blanching Cauliflower
- Golden Bantam 8 Row Sweet Corn
- St. Valery Carrots
- Danvers 126 Half Long Carrots
- Cosmic Purple Carrots
- Amarillo Carrots
- Florida Market Eggplant
- Lincoln Sweet Peas
- Texas Early Grano 502 Onions
- Giant Noble Spinach
- Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin
- Crookneck - Early Golden Summer Squash
- Zucchini - Black Beauty
- Arkansas Traveler Tomato (Pink)
- Roma Tomato
- Tappy's Heritage Tomato (Red)
- Principe Borghese Tomato (Red - cherry variety)
- Amish Paste Tomato
- Siletz Tomato (Red - early crop)
- Big Month Tomato (Red)
- Chadwick Cherry Tomato (Red)
- Golden Sunray Tomato (Orange)
- Golden Monarch Tomato (Yellow)
- Yellow Pear Tomato
Holy goodness. I'm seriously craving a tomato sandwich just writing this list. Hopefully the seeds I've chosen will be happy in my garden. I probably do not need, nor shall I be able to grow 11 varieties of tomatoes (or 4 varieties of carrots for that matter), but I just couldn't narrow my list down any more. It was hard enough to whittle down the options once I had selected my 20 favorites. I tried to contain myself on the other veggies as well, settling on just those that we eat the most.
I placed my order online at Baker Creek's website, which has tons of resources and also some great information about Baker Creek founder Jere Gettle and his wife Emilee. Precious. Seriously. You can also order or download your own catalog there if you like. Oooh, and there's also information on their Garden Shows and Heritage Day Festivals happening in the Spring. Lordy, the place is adorable - we're already planning a trip.
Updates later when the seeds arrive - we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Starting from scratch
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4 comments:
I totally have that same catalog. Another gardener and I did some seed swapping/sharing on New Year's eve, though, so I won't be buying much this year, sadly.
Please, (PLEASE) do a review of these once summer starts! I love finding more out about the heirloom varieties.
I read about your seed swap, and was totally jealous - or would have been way more so if I didn't have my hands on the catalog. Think of all the money you saved by swapping!
I'll definitely review whatever grows - any insight into any of these varieties from you or your gardener friend?
I too have the Baker Creek Catalog and have read it, and reread it over and over. Between it and the Seed Savers Exchange catalog, I don't know how one can even begin to make choices!
I do know that I am going to try the Chines Red Noodle Long Bean from Bakers Creek. It looks beautiful and sounds yummy.
Don't worry about all those tomatoes. Last year I kept buying all these really cool heirloom tomato starts - when it came time to plant I had 18 plants! And I don't personally like tomatos! But, I had a blast growing them and sharing them with family.
Really emjoy your blog!
Lexa, those beans do look good! You'll have to let me know how they turn out. Once I get some basic stuff figured out I'd like to branch out into some more exotic varieties...
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