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Posts Tagged ‘plants’

Recently my friends have been asking me for a good place to buy organic and heirloom seeds and plants. I thought this was a great topic, so here are my favorite 7 suppliers.

Johnny Seeds Offers a wide selection of seeds and plants. They have heirloom, organic, fruit, herbs and vegetables for your garden. They have OMRI-approved pest and disease controls and fertilizers. This is one of the larger seed suppliers in the world, and they are employee owned.

Miller Nurseries -J.E. Miller, Dept 4102, 5060 West Lake Road, Canadaigua, NY, 14424- They have dozens of strawberries, raspberries, fruit, and shade trees. Over 60 varieties of apples, many old-fashioned “heirloom” apples. Winter hardy blueberries. 39 varieties of grapes, including wine making varieties. They have a wide variety of unique fruits such as Pawpaw, Persimmon, Kiwi, Honeyberry, Asian Pears, Cranberries and more.

Bountiful GardensBountiful Gardens sells untreated open-pollinated seed of heirloom quality for vegetables, herbs, flowers, grains, green manures, compost and carbon crops. Offering Bio-intensive and Grow Biointensive sustainable organic seed. Specialties: Rare and unusual varieties. Medicinal herbs. Super-nutrition varieties. You may be interested to know that Bountiful Gardens is a non-profit organization and a project of Ecology Action which does garden research and publishes many books, information sheets, and research papers, some in other languages. Ecology Action operates a research mini-farm in Willits, CA and promotes the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method of food production which teaches people in 130 countries around the world to grow food and build soil with less work, water, and energy by natural methods. Find out more at www.growbiointensive.org

Fedco Fedco Seeds, is an excellent source for cold-hardy seeds and plants especially adapted to the demanding Northeast climate. Each year they observe hundreds of varieties, selecting only the best for inclusion in their catalogs. Through their product lines and cultural hints, they encourage sustainable growing methods. They offer a large selection of certified organic cultivars and regional heirloom varieties. We buy products from all over the world. Fedco is a cooperative, one of the few seed companies so organized in the United States. Because they do not have an individual owner or beneficiary, profit is not their primary goal. Consumers own 60% of the cooperative and worker members 40%. Consumer and worker members share proportionately in the cooperative’s profits through their annual patronage dividends.

A Few Good Seeds Vegetable seeds,Fruit plants or seeds. Specialties: Heirloom Vegetables. All of their plants and seeds are grown without any chemical inputs. Their goal is to test and adapt vegetables for our regional climate and growing conditions.

Territorial Seed Company Currently they find themselves in good company “capital-O Organics”, excited about taking leadership in advising the evolution of organic agriculture from a movement into a mainstream market. There are 20 full-time and 25 seasonal employees locally, strategic alliances with universities and European plant breeders, and a zillion worms making compost and plant teas. They are experts in Organic and Biodynamic seeds and plants.

Willhite Seed They have over 400 varieties of seeds including watermelon, cataloupe, cucumber, bean, corn, okra, peas, squash etc. They have a wide selection of of unusual Indian seed.

Nearly Work-Free Vegetable Gardening
By Ian Pennington

Growing vegetables from your own garden is one of the best ways to provide your family with healthy and fresh produce. But starting a garden can be a time consuming and intimidating process, particularly for beginners. Fear of the amount of labor and time involved in planting and maintaining a garden keeps many would-be gardeners out of the garden and in the supermarket instead.

Much of this fear may be misplaced, however. There has been much experimentation in the gardening community in recent years aimed at developing innovative ways to reduce the amount of time and labor spent gardening, often with sensational results. Although there may be no such thing as completely work free vegetable gardening, there are definitely ways in which you are able to dramatically reduce the amount of labor and time you need to spend in your garden.

One of the best ways to lessen the work spent preparing and weeding your garden is through a gardening method known as “Lasagna Gardening” or “Sheet Mulching.” Lasagna gardening is a non-traditional, no-till method of gardening that relies on blanketing a garden plot with multiple layers of mulch obtained from locally available, and preferably organic, sources (such as weed clippings, chopped leaves, animal manure, compost, sawdust or seaweed). The lasagna gardening method greatly reduces the time and labor needed to prepare a new garden plot, and some gardeners report that they spend almost no time at all weeding a well-mulched lasagna garden. This may be as close to work free vegetable gardening as one can get.

Here are some additional suggestions to greatly reduce the amount of time and labor spent in your vegetable garden:

- Grow prolific vegetables. Vegetables like summer squash, pole green beans and indeterminate tomatoes produce large quantities of produce for extended periods during the summer. The amount of labor they require is very small in comparison to the harvest you will reap.
- Keep your garden small. It is easy to be overwhelmed by your garden, and many gardeners end up either producing much more than they can consume or giving up entirely. You will only need one or two zucchini or tomato plants to feed most families.
- Choose vegetables well suited for your climate. Although growing a long-season winter squash in Maine or keeping a heat-sensitive lettuce variety from bolting in Florida may be noteworthy accomplishments, they are also time-consuming projects. Stick to growing vegetables that are best suited to your region.
- Choose vegetable varieties that have a reputation of being easy to grow. Many seed catalogs will mark certain vegetable varieties as being especially easy to grow. Select these varieties if they are available.

By using gardening methods such as lasagna gardening and focusing on growing the most prolific, easy to grow vegetables for your region, you are on your way to nearly work free vegetable gardening.

Ian Pennington is an accomplished niche website developer and author.
To learn more about
Work Free Vegetable Gardening, please visit
Garden World Online for
current articles and discussions.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_Pennington
http://EzineArticles.com/?Nearly-Work-Free-Vegetable-Gardening&id=1746287

Seeds of Success
By Brian Pettinger

All good gardeners know that seeds are on your side they want to grow and thrive. Apart for some weedy exceptions that I will save until the end of this article seeds can be coaxed into blooming excess with only a little know how.

Help From the Seeds.

Every seed tells a story and you can learn to read that story by considering the parent plant and the seed itself. To set seed most plants need to be pollinated male to female and many plants are self-fertile. Having taken a deal of trouble to attract pollinators or pollination most plants package up the seeds and plan how to distribute them.

Berries and fruit have a soft or pithy outer case to help. Birds ingest elderberries and deposit the seed where they will.

Poppies have a pepperpot shaker type seed head that allows some ripe seed to be sprinkled each day over several days or weeks.

Aquilegia seed pods contort and twist to ping out seeds in a squirting motion so they travel a distance.

Dandelion seeds have feathery tufts to allow the wind to blow them where you don’t want them (but I said I would save these comments to the end)
So from these examples you can see seed pods protect and help distribution of the seed.

Seed Size and Features

Seeds vary in size and shape and many will become familiar to the regular gardener. A conker, pea or a grain sized Mesembryanthemum all have the same function to reproduce plants and maintain the survival of the species.

A good big one beats a good small one is a modern quote and in the vegetable garden leek and runner bean seeds are saved from good parent plants. Note it is the plant not necessarily the seed where size counts. Flower seeds should all be sown to get a choice of seedlings to plant out.

Some seeds have hard coats to protect them and legumes like Lupins or Sweetpeas may need the coat soaking in water or chipping or sanding the outer coat to allow moisture to start the germination phase.

Seeds from Alpines or bulbs generally need a period of cold so are sown in autumn or stratified in the fridge and brought into gentle heat in spring.

Special Treatment

Seeds are programmed to germinate when they expect conditions to suit. You can help provide the growing conditions they need.

Moisture or water is the first key ( so do not save seeds in damp conditions for later sowing they may have germinated and died before you get to sow them).

Temperature is the second issue as seeds are programmed to germinate when the seedling has a chance of survival. So tropical plants will need more warmth than say native Cornflowers.
Time for germination can vary from days for sprouting vegetable seeds to over a year for snowdrops, daphne or narcissus.

Some need light and to be uncovered like petunia and poppies whilst other need moist, dark conditions like cyclamen and begonia.

Conclusions

• Seeds want to be winners.
• You can select your own seed and grow your own winners.
• Seeds that are produced in great quantity are playing a percentage survival game. In most garden conditions you only need a percentage to survive and thrive anyway so don’t agonise over losses.
• Weeds spread unless you get to them before the seeds are distributed. Don’t compost weed seeds, the heat won’t always kill them.

http://gardenerstips.co.uk/blog/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Pettinger
http://EzineArticles.com/?Seeds-of-Success&id=1760333