Seed catalogs

There's a special, splendid kind of torture a gardener experiences when the splashy seed catalogs full of lush pictures of perfect produce start piling up in the mailbox. Nothing insulates against a cold, gray morning better than a gardener's growing fantasies, fertilized by the promise of flowers that will make your eyes pop, tomatoes that will make your neighbors' mouths water, okra with pods that can grow three feet long and stay tender, a clematis that will grow 35 feet in a year. All things are possible in the throes of a February delirium.

Right now the bare branches of the trees allow us to admire the dramatic intricacy of arboreal sculpture. The silhouettes of the naked trees trace a lacy outline of the lay of the hills against the neon winter sunsets. Only now, while the weeds are planning this year's ambush, can you fully appreciate the enormity of the rocks that lay strewn beneath the trees. Now is the time for hiking without the threat of ticks. The ridge tops offer beautiful views of hollows that are usually hidden behind a profusion of green, red or orange, or brown.

There is plenty of beauty to be appreciated in the dormant season, but a gardener's heart longs for the chaotic explosion of green, the pops of electric reds, fluttering oranges, floods of yellow, purple, blue. Right now I'm anxiously anticipating the time to start my early cabbages and kales, mustards, lettuces, and soon after that, the tomatoes. I'm tingling with excitement to watch the determined taproots explode from tiny, dry seeds and dive into the dirt, to see the delicate cotyledons break through the surface of the soil. There is nothing so satisfying as see your squash and been plants double in size in a day.

Many seed catalogs that focus their offerings on hybrid varieties have begun featuring heirloom and open pollinated varieties. There are also a number of fantastic catalogs that focus exclusively on collecting, maintaining, and offering such varieties.

The Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog is as beautiful as it is informative. Its pages are filled glossy photographs so vivid you can almost smell the sunshine in the striped tomatoes. The descriptions for the varieties include stories about where the seeds were collected, from South America or India or Afghanistan. They have pink bananas, striped melons, red lettuce, green zinnias, and everything in between.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange also offers a fantastic collection of open pollinated varieties. Their description of the cucumber leaf sunflower they offer says that birds prefer the seeds this drought-tolerant, Gulf Coast native to other sunflower varieties. The catalog has great planting tips and directions. They offer a large collection of herbs, flowers, vegetables, potatoes, garlic, grains, and even cover crops.

Seed Savers Exchange maintains thousands of varieties of different food plants, ranging from grains like quinoa and amaranth to garden familiars like tomatoes and watermelons. They manage one of the largest seeds banks of its kind in the United States. They are able to maintain this level of diversity through participatory preservation. As stated on their website, seedsavers.org, “Each year thousands of seed varieties are exchanged among backyard preservationists through the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook for diverse reasons such as connecting to our garden heritage, finding varieties suited to a particular region, enjoying the diversity of heirloom varieties, and sourcing material to use in localized breeding projects.”

These are just a very few of the many fantastic seed companies fighting diligently to maintain our access to the genetic variety that generations of growers have cultivated. Many small seed companies in this country have gone the way of the small family farm and small family business; they have been bought out or bumped out by megalithic corporations.

There is a trend in agribusiness towards seeds that farmers cannot save from year to year, putting them at the mercy of the company that owns the seeds. There is another, more insidious trend toward the patenting of the genetic content of seeds.

Like open source software, which is offered free for public use and can be improved upon by subsequent innovation, open pollinated seeds offer genetic material to farmers and gardeners freely. They are legally free to make improvements to and selections from these varieties, which they can then offer back to the seed saving community.

Maintaining a robust supply of genetic information, or a variety of adaptations, makes for a resilient food supply. If you grow several bean varieties, one that does well in drought, one that tolerates hot and humid weather, and another that will flourish in cooler weather, you're more likely to have a good crop of beans, even if the weather isn't ideal that season. In contrast if you have 100 acres of plants with exactly the same genetics, if you encounter a condition to which one plant is susceptible, you're more likely to lose your whole crop.

The mind boggling diversity of open pollinated varieties will keep you reeling for weeks as you thumb through all the catalogs, trying to decide which Italian sweet pepper, French cucumber, or Russian tomato to try this year. No matter where you get your seeds, the beauty of spring in the garden is made of endless possibility, infinite potential, and the promise of sun drenched culinary delight.