Tuesday, January 29, 2008

finally they started coming....

What am I talking about? My seed catalogs!!! I requested at least 5 or 6 and had until this week only received 2. First I got the Burpee catalog. Plenty of pretty picture but they mainly carry hybrid and non open pollinated varieties. While I haven't completely made up my mind about hybrids I'm not sure I like the idea of messing with plant genetics. I sort of feel like we should let evolution run it course to make heartier, healthier, and better varieties.

Second catalog I received was seed savers. Seriously an awesome catalog with tons of information and pictures. Each variety has a short informative description about origin and characteristics. Never I have a seen some many types of tomatoes or melon or other veggies. So cool. I highly recommend requesting this one or at least browsing it online.

This week I have gotten 3 more catalogs. First Totally tomatoes, second seymour's selected seeds, and last baker creek heirloom seeds. Totally Tomatoes is basically all tomatoes and pepper. So awesome for a tomato lover like me....except eventually I will have to chose a few varieties. Seymour's is a flower seed catalog with beautiful flowers. Baker Creek is a smaller seed company out of Missouri that is family owned. They have an extremely thick catalog with tons of different types of heirloom plants.

Also I should note that seed catalogs can be quite amusing. The types often have crazy names like: mammoth melting sugar (sweet pea), sweet chocolate (brown sweet pepper), green zebra (tomato), mortgage lifter (tomato), and many many more.

For fun here are a few guess what type of veggie they are:

1. Arkansas traveler
2. Small shining light
3. Ram's Horn (Just for you Chris!)
4. Cosmic Purple

No cheating by looking them up on the internet. Oh and a hint is they are all common summer produce. Nothing weird like parsnips or rutabaga. Have fun!

2 comments:

Chris said...

Ahhhh shoot, I was going to guess Parsnips and rutabaga for the first two!

Here are my guesses:

1. Arkansas traveler = Lettuce
2. Small shining light = Cucumber
3. Ram's Horn = Squash
4. Cosmic Purple = Chili Pepper

How did I do?

Unknown said...

the small shining light is a melon. i think i killed one last year.

here are the rest of my guesses
arkansas traveler - bean
ram's horn ? gourd
cosmic purple - tomato