Heirloom Seeds? Where?

[supersc]

I'd appreciate your advice on where to obtain a decent, family-sized variety storage of heirloom seeds.

[Toni]

Dang! I thought I had a slew of catalogs with heirloom seeds in them but can't find them. Nichols Garden Nursery http://nicholsgardennursery.com (http://www.nicholsgardennursery.com) and Seeds of Change http://www.seedsofchange.com are supposed to have some. http://www.heirloomseeds.com has them. I wish I could find my other catalogs. An internet search on heirloom seeds might find you something.

[prairiemom]

I'm assuming you want heirloom seeds so that you can save them from year to year? Then either heirloom or open-pollinated are the kind of seeds that you want. Both can be saved, the only difference is that heirloom are varieties that have been around for 75yrs or more.

The first one that everyone thinks about is Seed Savers. Their mission is to find, catalog and preserve heirloom seeds from around the world. They have saved many varieties from extinction. http://www.seedsavers.org/

For tomatoes, I like Totally Tomatoes. This is the largest selection of tomatoes and peppers anywhere. Most are hybrid, but they will tell you if they are OP or Heirloom. My favorites are Amish Paste, Brandywine (yellow and red) and Prudens Purple.

RHShumway is the parent company of Totally Tomatoes. Again, not everything is OP/Heirloom but they have most of the popular old-fashioned varieties. A good source of OP corn, cabbage and broccoli (very hard to find) http://www.rhshumway.com/

For Beans, I like Vermont Beans. Again, not all are OP/Heirloom but the variety is so good, you are sure to find the right heirloom/OP bean that you want: http://www.vermontbean.com/

Seeds of Change is the premier source of heirlooms: http://www.seedsofchange.com/

Territorial Seeds is my overall favorite catalog: http://www.territorialseed.com/

Kitchen Garden Seeds is kind of pricey but they have the harder to find varieties: http://www.kitchengardenseeds.com/

If you plan on storing heirloom seeds for some future day when you can't buy seeds/plants from usual sources, you might want to consider learning seed saving techniques. My first couple tries at saving seeds weren't too successful. And some plants require special treatment/planting/spacing/pollinating, etc in order to get true seeds. A good book that explains how to do all that (as well as the "shelf life" of each kind of seed) is Seed to Seed.

[Toni]

Thanks, prairiemom. You put in a couple of companies that I couldn't remember (mainly seeds of change). I have Seed to Seed. It's very detailed. I found seed saving to be a daunting task after reading it but if you have no other way to get food or you are a better gardener than me (not hard to do) it is definitely doable.

[prairiemom]

Yeah, well I'm hardly any good at it. :blush: Mostly I just save my tomato, pepper and flower seeds. Carrots, lettuce, Swiss chard, etc are biennials and I'm not sure how I would get them through a winter here in the upper Midwest, or even if I could. I've had a terrible problem with cross-pollination in my squash plants. If I really couldn't buy seeds, I'd have to learn how to prevent cross pollination. And maybe I'll just have to rely on my good friends who live in warmer climates to supply me with seed for the biennials. :smilewinkgrin: But for taste and variety you can't beat heirlooms.

I forgot the link to Totally Tomatoes: http://www.totallytomato.com/

[supersc]

Thanks for all the info... Some good food for thought as I expand my horizons.

[signseeker]

Not sure if you're in Utah, but I ran across this ad today for heirloom seeds all sealed ready for storage. She said they should last 8 yrs. if stored below 70* and if you freeze them, could last for 50+ years.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=218&ad=4743874&cat=61&lpid=