What Are Your Favourite Seed Catalogues?

Garden catalogues everywhere

It is that time of the year again – at least here in Seattle. The mail is flooded with seed catalogues and my email is alive with news on spring planting. There are so many options to choose from that it is hard to know where to begin. So how do we make the decisions?

If you can’t get outside yet here are a couple of websites that you might like to check out to at least give you the feel of being outside.  They are great planning tools.

BBC’s Virtual Garden – it has a fun 3D function on the site and is free

Kitchen Garden Planner – part of the Gardener’s Supply website which is one of my favourite places to look for seed starter supplies and self watering pots.  This is also free. I use it each year to help plan the vegetable garden, though it is a little limited on vegetable varieties to chose from. They also have some excellent garden how to information.

And if your looking for more information on how to go organic my Texas based friends love The Dirt Doctor – Howard Garrett

Plangarden.com This website has some great hints for gardening on it.  The garden design function costs $20/year

Of course this is also a great time to drool over all those wonderful photos in the seed catalogues that in your saner moments you know won’t grow in your climate zone but which you just can’t resist when it is too cold to grow anything anyway.

I always like to buy from those companies that specialize in heritage and organic seed like:

Seeds of Change

Seed Savers Exchange

Bountiful Gardens

Peaceful Valley Organic Seeds & Supplies

and a couple of new ones I heard about this year:

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

High Mowing Organic Seeds

For my Canadian friends

Richter’s seeds

West Coast Seeds

or those that are based in the local Pacific NW area

Territorial Seeds

Raintree Nursery

Nichol’s Garden Nursery – going virtual this year with only an online catalogue

Irish Eyes Garden Seeds in Ellensburg WA

Uprising Organic Seeds in Bellingham WA

Unfortunately I also cannot resist a couple of big company catalogues like the English classic  Thompson and Morgan and Park Seeds which have products I can’t seem to find anywhere else. And my favourite for lettuce and other salad greens The Cook’s Garden. I particularly love their Zen oriental green – it is mild in flavour and delicious in salads or cooked.