Mail-Order Seeds

We've had modest veg gardens and usually pick up our seeds from the box stores but I'd like to get some mail-order seeds just for larger selection.

I've scoped out the GW and see horrible reviews on companies I'd requested catalogs of: Park Seeds being one. Reviewers buying spring seeds have been harsh, and sounds justly so.

Any experienced veg gardeners have a company they buy seeds from by mail they would just rave about?

I am so disappointed that there are companies dealing with gardeners would run their companies in such a way that they have more negative than positive AND neutral reviews combined. HOW do they stay in business?

Baker Creek, Tomatofest, Victory Seeds and SEARCH/Native Seeds have been very reliable for me. I think Baker Creek and Native Seeds are the only two of these that still give out catalogs and accept orders by mail. Quite a bit of people seem to have success with Territorial Seeds and Sandhill Preservation. They also still do mail order. I have never ordered from them. So, I cannot comment personally. There are many other reliable companies, but they are exclusively online.

thank you for the fast reply! I will GW those recommendations :)

Those are good sources of older open pollinated seed. I f you like more modern seeds, Twilley, Willhite, New England Seed, Johnny's. Territorial.

I've had good luck with Willhite Seed Co. here in TX. http://www.willhiteseed.com/

I think what you are seeing is the result of far more people looking to gardening. The orders coming in this year and last have swamped a lot of the seed companies. Their staff that was used to working at a semileisurely pace has had to pick it up. Their inventories have quickly been depleted and some, as a result of the horrid weather last summer have had some seed producing crop failures so real shortages have occured. I tend to read between the lines on seed order complaints.

I've been delighting in picking up vegetable and herb seed for 19 or 20 cents this spring ~ it makes me feel frugal. What unusual varieties are you shopping for?

I need to clarify what I meant when I said I read between the lines on Garden Watchdog. If you look specifically at the negative reviews, you will notice quite a few of those reviewers have only made one review. If you go to their subscriber page, you will see they signed up (no subscription) that same day or a day or two before. No participation in any of the forums or zip code reports or journals or... Now, I have to admit that when I joined DG, it took me a few months to stumble on the GW portion of this fine site. Makes me wonder how they got clued in to that specifically to slam a seed company. I am too skeptical ~ sorry.

I have been gardening for 30 years. My favorite seed sellers are Johnny's Selected Seeds, which is going more for hybrids these days, and Fedco Seeds, which has tons of OP heirloom type seeds as well as some good hybrids, potatoes, trees, etc.:

http://www.fedcoseeds.com/index.htm

I like Johnny's, Burpee, and Baker Creek, Nourse for my Asparagus and Berries. Ronniger for my Potatoes, and the Garlic Store.

I've ordered and been very pleased with Victory Seed Company, Diane's Seeds, Cherrygal.com, and Bunton's Seed Co. Most of those sell heirlooms & OP varieties.

Love the postings here! Thank-you!

Pod, good point on more folks gardening i.e. swamping in orders.

Tradewinds, Tomato Growers Supply, Totally tomatoes, Baker Creek, Botanical Intrests, Seed Savers Exchange, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Sandhill Preservation Center .

I've been ordering from Parks Seeds for many years and I've always been more than satisfied with them. Others I buy from are Burpee's, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Pinetree Seeds, Harris Seeds, Gurneys, Henry Fields. As far as live plants go, I usually stick with Wayside Gardens or White Flower Farm.

Stephanie I f you meet any watermelon growers who still grow the old Willhite cultivar Cletex/Spotted Watson I am looking for seeds.

I just checked out the wilhiteseed.com site, podster. Wow, their newsletter archive is a wealth of information. Great site. I'm confused that there are no prices next to the seeds when you go to shop, though? Do you know what that is about? Just curious. For right now, I'm just enjoying their articles.

You click on the selection button for different size packs to see the prices. I've ordered from Wilhite twice last year and couldn't be happier. They have a great selection, great prices and ship fast.

Lisa, click on the [please select] button on each vegetable listing. The seeds come in different size packages and the prices are right there.

LOL! Twiggy types faster than I do!

This message was edited Mar 4, 2010 12:20 PM

Wilhite's is located just a stone's throw away from me in Poolville! I've not dealt with them directly, but I have met several watermelon farmers around here who swear by Wilhite seeds!

For quality and quantity of seeds per pack, try Seeds from Italy at www.GrowItalian.com. For some plants and a more eclectic range of seeds, try the family-owned and -operated Nichols Garden Nursery at www.NicholsGardenNursery.com. Both companies have excellent products, as well as excellent, user-friendly customer service and reasonable shipping & handling charges.

Grow Italian has cool stuff, and the seed packets are very generous. This is my third year getting seeds from them. I'm trying radicchio. They have an incredible variety of them.

excellant recommendations on the Italian seeds, thank-you!

Although I'm fairly new to DG I have posted in other areas. However this is the first I've heard of "watch dog". I'd like to check it out if someone would help. As for seeds I've used Burpees, Parks, Jungs, Guerney's, Johnny's, etc. and I've always been satisfied with the results. Peace

If you go to the tabs at the top and click on "Products & Sources", it'll take you to a new page. Just click on "Garden Watchdog" and you'll be on your way!

Or, if you haven't got there yet, try this link. http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/ I know it took me a long time here to track it down. You can search by specific company name, alphabetically, etc.

Thanks msrobin and twiggybuds for the info on using the wilhite website!

welcome to DG :)

Welcome Frank65! I'm originally from Maine - born and raised...

Kelly

Thanks Steph.

I have a question. Didn't really want to start a whole new thread for it. So, I will ask it here.

Today, I recieved a supposedly lost seed order in the mail. This is a week after a recieving the replacement and over a month since the original one was sent out. According to the tracking info, the post offic of origin did not send it out until a month to the day after they recieved it. Talk about slow postal service.

This has only happpened to me once before 7 years ago. I feel absolutely terrible about this whole thing. I did send the company an e-mail offering to pay for the second package. What else can I do? Send it back?

I've had something like this happen more than once. Contact the company and explain what happened. They may ask you to send the seeds back and credit your account for the postage you spend (that's fair).

More likely, they will simply tell you to keep the extra seed and share or "plant a row for the hungry" if you have space.

I'd still take a copy of the tracking info, and the postage on the envelope, and send it to them so they can file a complaint with the post office if this gets to be an issue for them. It would be really nice if you could scan that info and include it in the original e-mail. I can scan anything at work so that's usually not a problem for me!

You may be suprised at what your extra efforts will bring.

Thank You hostamomma

It must be that particular post office, because the replacement package even took a few days to show up on the tracking info page. They must not take in and sort everything all in the same day. Though, they are supposed to do so. I assume that this package was put somewhere, forgotten about for awhile and just discovered this week.

Hopefully, the company gets back to me soon. I feel so dishonest having a package I didn't pay for.

Dl, you have nothing to feel guilty about. You emailed the company and I'm sure they appreciate that.

Something else to be aware of...we have received mail in the past that had been opened and then taped closed with no explanation, sometimes in a plastic sleeve, mail that had been sent to me with carefiully wrapped seeds inside that was received empty. Didn't know what to think about it, and I didn't call and complain every time, cause...well, things are just done differently out here in the country. Come to find out, a local carrier was caught opening mail and stealing gift cards, cash from birthday cards (you know, the ones grandparents send), small packages, etc. Point is, you need to file a complaint, or at least talk to the postmaster, if you get a damaged package or envelope, or something is taking too long to be delivered. I'm just saying...

DI - again you have nothing to feel guilty about. Just let the company know what happened and do your best to support their ability to file a complaint if needed - after all it's their livelyhood on the line.

msrobin - I know what you mean about a resident filing a complaint...for some reason after we filed a very legitimate complaint against our carrier our mailbox was damaged...this happened three more times (four total). When we took pictures to the post office to file our 4th complaint there was a new postmaster in charge who claimed none of the prior complaints were on file.

Do have to say we haven't had as many issues lately.

I got my packages from Willhite and Fedco this week. I am VERY impressed by the number of seeds Fedco gives for their very low prices!

I received my order from Baker's Creek in 6 days, in spite of the fact they said they were very busy and orders were taking about 2 weeks for delivery.

My order from Kitchen Garden Seeds arrived in 4 days.

With all this rain we are having - springs does seem like it's on its way, doesn't it!?! (Please say "yes"!)

For asian veggies you can't beat Kitazawa Seed Co. www.kitazawaseed.com. Prices are good, seed is great, shipping wonderful. They have allsorts of things that you can only find in the ethnic grocery stores if and only if the ship well from the asian country and you wouldn't know what they were if this wasn't your "thing" anyway. They even have rice seeds and sesame seed. They carry Shisigatani pumpkin which is a winter squash that is very hard to find, once you taste it you'll never go back to acorn. I got 5 off of one vine the other year and they kept right up until the spring on my kitchen counter. They are unbelievably sweet. They even have a cookbook in the back of their catalogue.

They have 13 different varieties of eggplant that are all chinese or japanese that I have never seen fresh in this country and both my husband and I grew up just outside of chinatown, him on the west coast me on the east.

You've got to check them out just for the fun.

I also like Cherry Gal, Baker Creek and Amish land

Yehudith

Thanks for that link, Yehudith! Interesting variety they have!

A thread close to my heart. I've been buying all my seed by mail for almost longer than I can remember (probably 15 years). Now I see that there are a bunch of new (to me) suppliers I have to check out.

I tend to stick with the larger suppliers. Here's my take:

Territorial: Broad selection of veg seeds; one of the best for garlic. OK for flowers. Good customer service. Fast delivery, but still waiting for a couple of BO items for this year's order.
Totally Tomatoes: A mind-blowing selection; also peppers.
Pinetree: Good veg selection; response time really slow as spring approaches.
Park: I haven't had the problems others have reported. More limited veg selection; Whoppers are inconsistent germinators.
Select Seeds-Antique Flowers has mostly OP, with some interesting selections. I used them for the first time this year.
Seeds of Change: These are all organic seeds. One of the only places I can find 'Mideast Prolific' cuke.
Johnny's: I've only bought garlic from them; they do very well in GW.

In most cases the seeds from all these sources have a good shelf life. Of course, some varieties need to be renewed each year. They also tend to be pricey. I'm old enough to remember the 10¢ seed pack.

Will

Select Seeds is marvelous, especially if you are into the real heirlooms, not the vintage from the 1950's, but the antique varieties. The people there are nice too.

Yehudith

OH MY Goodness I knew I shouldn't have opened this thread....

Now I won't get anything done today, cause I have to check out all of these new seeds sights to me......LOL

thanks y'all for enabling me to want to purchase more....

Janet