10 Best Seed Catalogs to Prepare for Spring

Sprouting SeedsIt’s that time again when you need to plan for your gardening season. What will you plant and what quality of seed will you use? Which important tips can make your garden even better than last year? These are all questions that can be answered by reading the 10 best seed catalogs.

Tips for Ordering Fruit and Vegetable Seeds

The key to any healthy garden is choosing the right kind of fruit and vegetable seeds. If you pick the wrong one, your plants are doomed from the start. Don’t worry though; we’ve compiled a list of tips to keep in mind when ordering fruit and vegetable seeds.

Many times when gardeners go to place their order for next year’s harvest, they turn to seed and plant catalogs. They look through each page, selecting different seed varieties to try. Besides a physical copy of a catalog, this can also be done online. In fact, we recommend you use Internet catalogs instead because you can typically find more information there on each kind, as well as other photos of the plants. Don’t base which seeds you buy strictly on pictures though. They can make a fruit or vegetable look a lot larger, better looking and more colorful than it really is.

Buying seeds from a catalog has a lot of benefits

One of the benefits of buying seeds from a catalog is that you’re able to choose from a more vast selection of varieties, brought to you by different seed companies. For instance, if you’re looking for a specific type of seed with disease resistance, colorful fruits, unique growth habits or special flavor, you usually have a better chance of finding it in a catalog than your local nursery. Also, ordering seeds through a catalog is often cheaper. You have the opportunity to shop around for the best price and buy in larger quantities, earning a discount. Before you buy anything though, take a look at your inventory from the previous year. If you stored the seeds properly, they can still germinate and grow them fine.

Buying seeds locally has other benefits

seed packetsBesides buying seeds from a catalog, look around for local or regional seed companies. Many of these companies have trial grounds and therefore grow new varieties before offering them to their customers. Since they’re located in your area, if the variety grows well for them, it should grow well in your backyard. Also, look into companies that provide smaller sized packets of seeds. This is great for those times when you just want to try out a new variety. They are less expensive and you’re never left with too many seeds that won’t fit in your garden.

Lastly, always make sure to buy seeds from companies that have signed the Safe Seed Pledge. This pledge states that a company will not knowingly buy or sell any seeds that have been genetically modified.

10 Best seed catalogs to help you get your garden started

Many of these catalogs offer you information and products that you cannot get in your own neighborhood. People who run these companies are usually passionate about their products, very family friendly and will go the extra mile to give you exceptional customer service. Here are the 10 best seed catalogs that you should add to your gardening library.

The Cook’s Garden

They provide you with 61 varieties of lettuce and 210 new plant varieties in their 2018 catalog. It is a vegetarian’s paradise. They also have a Garden Advice & How-to section on the website with valuable gardening tips. Free shipping on 3 or more seed packets.

Fedco Seeds

They are a cooperative that gives some of the profits back to the customers, so you would highly benefit as their member. However, non-members can order the products too. They have a great variety of products to choose from at great prices.

Nichols Garden Nursery

They have been in the seed and nursery business for over 65 years. Their purpose during these years has been to bring people closer to nature through gardening.

Peaceful Valley

Get everything you need in one place because they have it all. It’s perfect for organic farmers.

Redwood City Seeds

The best place for seeds for the hottest peppers, including Ghost Peppers, Hanaeros, Scotch Bonnets and Trinidad Scorpions. They also have rare Brazilian peppers seeds and other endangered cultivated plants.

Salt Springs Seeds

They specialize in heritage and heirloom open-pollinated and non-GMO seed varieties of vegetables and plants and can offer you 100 kinds of beans, 50 kinds of garlic and so much more.

Seed Savers Exchange

Their mission is to conserve and promote America’s culturally diverse but endangered garden and food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants. If you are looking for heirloom seeds, this is the place to get them. They are a nonprofit and ready to help save the planet.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

A cooperatively run business, they offer over 700 varieties of vegetable, flower, herb, grain and cover crop, open-pollinated, heirloom and traditional seeds. Over 60% of the varieties they offer are Certified Organic, and over 60% are grown by small farmers they know and contract with directly.

Tomato Growers Supply Co.

They have a huge variety of tomatoes and peppers that you can’t find any place else. All of their seeds come from natural hybrid or open-pollinated heirloom varieties. They do not sell any GMO’s or genetically engineered varieties.

Adaptive Seeds

They steward rare, diverse and resilient seed varieties for ecologically-minded farmers, gardeners, and seed savers. None of their seeds are proprietary hybrids (F1), patented, PVP, or genetically modified (GMO) and all of their seeds are grown without chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides.