Two years ago, I had to find new sources of seeds for my preferred vegetables after Stokes stopped selling small packets suitable for the home gardener in the USA. After two seasons of good and bad experience, I’ll share my findings with you.
After half a century of intensive year-round gardening, our soil is swarming with pathogens. The local fauna, both vertebrate and invertebrate, have discovered a reliable all-you-can-eat station. The abandonment of environment-unfriendly pesticides has left us with only resistant varieties and physical barriers as defences in the endless battle against pests and diseases.
Though we have settled on a couple of dozen varieties that do well in our garden, none of them can be found in the local garden centres either as packaged seeds or potted seedlings. Few of the online sources can supply more than three or four from our wish list, and, to avoid getting killed on shipping costs, I try to narrow down my ordering to as few as possible. As I explained before, each winter I prepare a spreadsheet matching supplier with variety which helps me to order efficiently. This year I was able to reduce the number to four, and the winner was Twilley’s, a company I had not used before, which supplied nine of the varieties on my list.
Twilley sells some 1400 varieties which they describe in a well-illustrated catalogue, available both by mail and online. Packet sizes are generous and prices are reasonable. Delivery was prompt and the packets were sturdy, made of metal foil rather than paper. One thing that I found very strange in 2023 is that they don’t provide Amazon-style online ordering. They will accept a telephone order, or you can mail them an order form, but you can’t use PayPal or Apple Pay.
Another source that I discovered only a couple of years ago is Holmes Seed. They also have a good selection of my favourites, and I’d have ordered more from them if I did not have seed left from last year. One thing I like especially is their packaging. The foil envelope needs to be cut open, but a Ziploc-type seal remains to protect the unused seeds from moisture. This would be especially good if I wanted to store them for more than one season. The packet could be kept in the freezer after adding a silica gel pack.
Stokes recommended that we switch to Territorial Seed when they ceased selling to home gardeners in the USA. Though Territorial has a big selection, they didn’t happen to supply the varieties we had ordered for years from Stokes. One good thing is that they sell seeds in quantities large enough for the enthusiast whose garden is larger than a postage stamp. Many of the seedsmen will charge several bucks for enough for one small planting and the next size up provides an industrial quantity. For example, Territorial sells peas in 3-ounce packages, enough for multiple plantings over two seasons.
Harris Seeds sells many interesting varieties, most of them in quantities suitable for the home gardener. Unfortunately, all of those on my wish list were available only in large packages containing far more than we could use. However, it’s certainly worth a trip to their website to see what is available.
Some of the companies I’ve recommended are family-owned and relatively small, but they are not the places to look for something unusual. Last year I was able to order asparagus pea seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds. I hadn’t grown them since Thomson & Morgan stopped selling in this country a decade ago. There are many small seedsmen where you can find something special but you can expect it to be expensive, sometimes 10 bucks or more for shipping and handling added to the price of one small packet. Imagine my surprise, then, when I ordered a single packet of cucumber seed from Jay Tracy’s, “The Cucumber Shop,” that I read about in a recent New York Times article. I expected there would be a rush on his small operation, but the highlighted variety, Carosello Leccese Striped, was still available. For $4.42 I received a generous packet of seeds which came by first-class postage with a handwritten address. As if that weren’t enough, it included a free package of heirloom tomato seeds.