Choosing Garden Seed

Choosing garden seed is one of the first “garden chores” in the season, most of the time before the season even begins. In the mail in early December, along with the overachiever Christmas cards, sale fliers, and ever-present bills, come the seed catalogs for the following year. Oh the possibilities! Here’s how we sort through the overwhelm and choose our garden seed.

1st Step in Choosing Garden Seed: Study the Options

My first reaction is always, “YES, all of it! Let’s get everything!” I love the flower colors, the vines, the delicious looking vegies, the funny shaped gourds…Did you know you can grow pumpkins filled with seeds already shelled? That multi-colored corn can be dried and ground for cornmeal or popped for popcorn? How about the 17 pages of different tomatoes? There are heirloom and hybrid varieties, new hybrids that are crossed with heirlooms, tomatoes that are resistant to tomato ailments I didn’t even know existed. Don’t even get me started on the peppers!

Studying the options is so much fun! Here in the Frozen North, planning for the warmer months is a great thing to do from under a blanket after playing in the snow and working in the cold. No wonder I want everything. Then reality sets in and I begin the scientific process of elimination that I have honed over the years to arrive at the order that fits in the budgets of time, money, and space.

What do I have? What do I need?

The common sense order of our garden has always been to take care of our needs first. We get the vegetable seeds before we get the flower seeds. We get the old standbys that we know everyone will eat before we experiment with new vegies or new varieties.

I keep all my seed packets in boxes in a cool dry place. Most seeds will last longer than one season under those conditions. If I do use all the seeds in a packet, I usually leave the empty packet in the box until the next January. In January, I sort through those packets and take inventory of everything that is there.

Getting it all down on paper makes choosing garden seed easy and fun. Our Garden Journal has several sections besides garden journaling. The section called Seed Inventory has several pages for recording “Seeds in Inventory” and “Seeds Needed”. As I go through the seed packets in my boxes, I put each on either the in inventory list or the need list in my journal, depending on the amount of seed in the packet. The need list at this point are the things that I always plant. Packets that have enough seeds in them for this next season go on the have list. Packets that are empty are listed on the need list and then go into the garbage.

2nd Step in Choosing Garden Seed: Completing the “Need List”

We plant a variety of things like tomatoes, squash, and peppers. As I study those seed catalogs, I turn down pages of things that I find interesting. We usually plant the same number of plants every year but all the seeds don’t come out of the same packet, so I don’t have to replace all of our seed every year. That means I can budget the same amount of money, time and space each year and still have room in the budget to try something new, even if the something new is a different variety

Try Something New Every Year

One year, we tried growing dried beans. We left them on the plants until they were dried and when we harvested them, we had enough beans to make soup. Another year we grew blue corn. The kernels really were blue. We left the cobs on the plant until they were dry, picked the kernels off the cobs and ground them for blue cornbread. In both cases, we found that the time and space weren’t worth the effort so we still buy our dried beans and cornmeal just like most other folks.

The adventure was worth the effort though, because my little folks understood where more of their food came from. In some cases, the adventure has resulted in a love affair with a new vegie we didn’t know anything about before, like the year I accidently bought Kohlrabi and we found we liked it pickled. If we really don’t like it, we can be sure the chickens will anyway.

Choose Varieties That Will Grow in Your Area

One thing that I pay very close attention to is the number of days to maturity. This is an important number because if it doesn’t have time to get ripe, I have wasted my money, time and space. Our last average frost date is about the 15th of May and our first average frost is around the 26th of September. That gives us right around 115 frost free days. You can either google those 2 dates for your area or ask your friendly neighborhood extension office. Here is the link to the Montana Extension Service. Each state has one.

The last set of pages in the Garden Journal, Seed Inventory Section, are the “Dream Seeds” pages. This is a great place to start the list of new things to try. Like everything else, gardens evolve over several seasons. You never have to feel like you need to hurry with your garden adventures because the projects that didn’t happen this season can happen next season. Several seasons from now, the gardens that you build will need a makeover.

That is the purpose of the Dream Seeds pages. If budget allows this season, what would you try? As you plan future gardens, what plants would do really well in that space? Record them and they can become building blocks for future plans.

3rd Step in Choosing Garden Seed: Make Choices

Now that I have a list of everything that I need to buy, along with a list of things I would like to try, I start to juggle the numbers in order to stay within the money budget. In our home, the rule has always been needs before wants and food before flowers. Many of the catalogs have special offers. Free shipping on orders over $x or save $x on any order of $x or more. Check those carefully. Shipping costs are important because it has to be included in my budget. Most of the save $x on orders of $x or more do not include the shipping. I choose which catalogs to order from based on which of these offers will benefit me the most, how much they charge for shipping, and which ones carry the varieties I just cannot live without.

4th Step in Choosing Garden Seed: Order

My need page is the messiest in my journal. Next to each item, I put the price from each catalog that I have decided to possibly order from. I choose the lowest price of each item and put that item on the order for the corresponding catalog.

When I have done this with each item, I add up the order for each catalog, add in the required shipping and apply the offer. Did I fall short of the amount needed for free shipping? Is it cheaper to take something from another catalog and add it to that catalog or cheaper to change my order altogether?

Maybe I even change my mind and don’t order anything from that catalog at all. Maybe I put all my order on other catalog orders instead. Whenever I change something in my order, I add all the orders up again to see if I saved any money.

I could just throw out this whole step and just order all my seeds from the one catalog that looks the cheapest and carries almost everything I want. I could, but this is the part that makes it so I find the money I need for the seeds I really want not really need. Because I do it this way, I can have those expensive wave petunias in my deck boxes and still make sure I’m not cheating my family out of canned green beans or pickles or pimentos for Chicken a la King. To me, it is worth the time that this step takes. It’s better than finding $20 in your jeans when doing laundry (well, maybe not better but it ranks right up there)!

The Choosing Garden Seed Steps Again

Here are the steps that I use for narrowing down all my seed choices each year.

• Peruse the catalogs. Mark all the pages as if money, time and space were not an issue.
• Take inventory of current stock.
• Assess needs and wants. Decide on budgets of time, space and money.
• Starting with needs, make a list of desired items.
• Narrow down the catalogs. I base this on pricing, the varieties I want, shipping prices and special offers.
• Make needed adjustments to each order, including adding in the wants from the money just saved.
• Submit the order and the payment to each catalog and wait as patiently as possible for your orders to arrive.