Maine Gardener: In which we catalog the garden catalogs

My rule has always been that people shouldn’t look at garden catalogs until the new year. The year coming to an end should be devoted to finishing autumn chores and enjoying the holidays.

I have to stop living in the past.

With supply chain issues and a shortage of everything, including seeds, you probably should have placed your seed orders by now. I admit I add to the problem: I made some early requests.

When the Fedco Trees, Shrubs and Perennials catalog came out, I immediately checked to see if it offered Red Astrachan apple trees. It was like that, so my wife, Nancy, and I had a rainy day browsing the pages, picking what we wanted and making our own order, including the Red Astrachan.

Since it has a lot of fun information, I’m going to spend some cool January hours reading other Fedco (seeds and supplies) and other catalogs regardless. But if you are very disappointed if the seeds or seedlings you want are sold, order them quickly!

Wood Prairie Farm, an organic farm in Aroostook County that specializes in potatoes, is attending the same old school as me—or maybe just experiencing pandemic delays. In mid-December, the farm notified its customers via email that it was working on its catalog, which will be mailed soon.

Sunflowers are among the plants that attract pollinators, according to field trials conducted by Wood Prairie Farm in Orostock County. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

The catalog will have a new section presenting useful organic flower seeds. The company conducted field trials to identify flowers that provide benefits to bees, non-bee pollinators, and other insects that attack predators of potatoes and other crops. The new section features 25 useful flowering plants, such as sunflower, zinnia and castoreum.

As every year, Wood Prairie has a variety of potatoes, also ‘Baltic Flower’, with red skin and golden flesh. Fedco is introducing the “Baltic Flower” for the first time, too.

This image is a composite design created over several years by members of the Fedco Catalog production team: Laura Childs, Elizabeth Smedberg, and Yvonne Montpelier. Originally, River Driver was a common property image of a drive with no background and no mountains. Montpellier turned tree trunks into potatoes. Seven years later, Smedberg joined the team, rediscovering the image and adding some background and moon look. This year, Childs completed the scene by adding life to the water and turning the photo into the catalog cover. Tom Atwell Maine Gardner, for example, appreciated teamwork. Covered by Fedco Seed & Supply Courtesy of Fedco

The catalog I spend the most time each year is Fedco Seeds & Supplies, because it is full of entertaining tales and lots of good information. I like the pen-and-ink drawings, and I particularly enjoyed moving the potatoes in the river on the cover.

This time around, I was pleased to find a list of about 50 seeds being produced within 100 miles of Fedco’s Clinton headquarters, and another 50 seeds within a 500-mile range. It also has supplier codes, with No. 1 being small-scale suppliers, including Fedco employees, and No. 5 being multinational companies involved in genetic engineering. Syngenta, the manufacturer of the neonicotinoid insecticide, has its own No. 6.

New Gloucester’s Pinetree Garden seeds are more visible than other local catalogs. Except for the cover, it’s printed on newsprint—like what you keep now if you get the Dead Tree edition of the Press Herald—and includes a clear, accurate description of each item, along with a photo.

In addition to flower and vegetable seeds and garden supplies, it has sections for containers and best for them, bee-friendly seeds and supplies, gifts, books, and — in a bit of a leap they’ve taken for years now — tea, knitting, and soap. We order from the catalogs I mention in this column almost every year, but Pinetree is our go-to when we find out we need something mid-season.

Old catalogs of selected Johnny’s seeds. Jeff Boland / Archive Photo Morning Sentinel

This year’s catalog of Johnny’s Selected Seeds has not yet appeared, but their website is easy to use. Johnny’s is a leading seed company, having provided numerous All-America Selection flowers and vegetables over the years. On the site, the homepage lists new varieties for 2022, about 223 items including vegetables, flowers, farm seeds, fruits, herbs, plants, organic tools, and supplies. The company is local – headquartered in Winslow. Another reason to shop there? It is owned by the employees.

Let me mention three out-of-state companies that Nancy and I use.

Old House Gardens, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, specializes in heirloom flower bulbs. We have a collection, of sorts, of antique lamp plants on our property, many of which came from the Old House. We visited the company a few years ago when our niece got married in Ann Arbor. It’s a small operation, based in a (relatively large) garage, and has less than 10 employees, all of whom are friendly and helpful. The company makes great bulbs for all seasons, many of which are produced by small farms across the country, including at least one from Maine.

We also buy from Kitchen Garden Seeds, which stock a good variety of items, especially flower bulbs. It is located in Connecticut, which is roughly local.

Dixondale Farms, an onion specialist from Texas, has a lot of good information, and I’ve been ordering onion plants from them for several years. This year, its catalog notes that its old cobra onions have been phased out, and Patterson replaced. I checked Fedco and Pinetree, and saw that they dropped a Cobra as well. I missed that, but fortunately we use Cipollini as the white goalkeeper.

Tom Atwell is a freelance horticultural writer in Cape Elizabeth. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

former

Related stories