Here we are, Linda on the left and Tania on the right, getting ready to order our seeds for the coming gardening season. We get together in January to order seeds so we can get an early start on the growing season. We start our tomatoes and peppers on the front porch in early March.

It used to be that you could order all the seeds you needed from one catalog, however, these days you need to go through many more. This year we had to go through 14 catalogs in order to find the variety of seeds we wanted to plant. We selected the catalogs that had the most seed varieties in the same catalog and we still had to use 4 different catalogs. In 2007 we couldn’t find seeds for a pie pumpkin. This year we found seeds for a pie pumpkin in, Johnny’s Select Seeds, and Jung Quality Seeds was the only catalog of the 14 that had mangel seeds. Mangles are very large beets that are very good for eating and also for storing in a root cellar over the winter. Farmers, my late husband included, also use them for winter cattle feed. When ordering seed for the short season climate you need to check the number of days to harvest so that you can select the variety that will ripen the earliest.

Following is a list of seed catalogs, Fedco Seeds, Seed Savers Exchange, Harris Seeds, Pinetree Garden Seeds, Burpee gardening, seeds, Plants, supplies, Gurnery’s, Seeds Of Change Certified Organic, Territorial Seed Co., The Cook’s Garden, Vermont Bean Seed Co., Totally Tomatoe’s, Park Seed Co., Henery Field’s Seed and Nursery Co. Thompson & Morgan, Miller Nursery, Michigan Bulb Company

Miller Nursery carries only strawberries, berry bushes, fruit and nut trees. If you order from one catalog you will get on a mailing list and will start receiving more catalogs, that’s how we managed to have so many different catalogs.