SIL - Jan/Feb 2019

If rural postmen are paid by the pound
of delivered product — and that always
seems a good and fair thing to
me — our most loyal federal servant
would more than double his early-winter
take delivering seed catalogs while wearing
his insulated underwear.
Our most recent seed catalogs —
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Seed
Savers Exchange — recently showed up
packed so tightly in our puny plastic mailbox
that it took 10 minutes to find the water
bill. And as the new world rushes off to
research and buy all manner of products
online, the old-fashioned notion of sifting
through seed catalogs while sitting on the
living room couch has remained a staple
of my gardening happiness.
It also takes me back to my very early
youth when I would go door-to-door
selling flower and vegetable seeds to my
neighbors for maybe 15 cents a pack, me
getting to keep a nickel of that to fund my
future college education. Or an ice cream
cone.
The seed-sale game has changed a
bit. The Baker Creek catalog now comes
in 144 glossy pages, offering what seems
to be 1.2 million varieties of flowers, fruits
and vegetable seeds. I was prepared to
count them all, but I need to get this column
finished before the 2020 presidential
election.
The catalog descriptions were obviously
written by somebody locked into
a small, very oxygenated room with a
50-pound thesaurus. Those Baker descriptions
also covered a few gardening tools
sold on the catalog’s back page.
One is labeled the SERIOUS HAND
WEEDER (the capital letters are theirs).
The sales pitch said it could withstand the
rigor of hand-weeding over “four acres of
sweet potatoes” — which is not my first
choice for a backyard project.
Another pitch was for NUTSCENE
GARDEN TWINE, a “soft, pliable and
strong twine made in Scotland since 1922”
that apparently will not hurt the tender
feelings of any beets, carrots or endive
once carefully applied. Only $4.50 for two
spools of 26 meters each.
Finally, there was the COBRAHEAD
HAND HOE CDT101, the closest thing
to a universal hand tool that will “weed,
cultivate, scalp, dig, furrow, plant, transplant,
de-thatch, harvest” and perhaps
sing “Back Home Again in Indiana” for
only $25.95.
Caution, comes the HAND HOE
warning at the end of the catalog pitch,
“these things are sharp.”
The joy of the garden catalog, of
course, is you can sit in your warm living
room as 2 inches of partly cloudy inundates
the garden and wonder who came
up with all these plants, if not why?
Alphabetically speaking, Baker Seed
offers seeds for everything from amaranth
to zinnias. An early CAPITALIZED
favorite of mine — right there on page
12 — was the GOBBO DI NIZZIA CAR-
DOON from Italy, its broad white stalks to
be eaten fried, sautéed, pickled, in soups
or dipped in olive oil. Only $2.75 for 25
seeds. Bad breath extra.
Political correctness raised its head
on Page 13, with mention of the CHERO-
KEE TRAIL OF TEARS pole bean, a Tennessee
survivor of the Cherokee Indians
forced march out of their homelands to
Oklahoma by their federal government; a
journey, by the way, a lot of the Cherokees
didn’t survive.
Baker Creek offered more than 80
tomato cultivars, few of which you will
find at Kroger. My early favorite was the
MICRO TOM tomato. Only $5 for 10 seeds
and worth every half-dollar:
“Astounding! The world’s smallest
tomato plant, fit for a fairy garden, reaching
a mere 6-8” tall. Super productive little
plants are completely enveloped in bright
red, tasty 1 oz fruit. The tidy red plants
covered in red orbs make an eye-catching
basket or container plants.”
And then there was the ‘Golden
King of Siberia’ tomato. The first thought
was this is named for a country with a
20-minute summer and an average high
of 50 degrees, which may help explain
its yellow color, one-pound maximum
size and disease resistance. If that doesn’t
heat up your Tomato Jones, Baker’s also
offers the “Black Icicle” tomato from the
Ukraine. It has rich, earthy overtones and
could go great with vodka.
If Baker Creek doesn’t float your Siberian
canoe, spend a little time with the
Seed Savers Exchange catalog. It’s also 146
shiny pages, which seems like a little too
much of a coincidence.
Seed Savers, as the name implies, is
a little different. Its readers and members
make a point of swapping seeds, sharing
information and getting deeply into that
biodiversity, good stewardship thing —
which is good. Its huge Decorah, Iowa,
home farm maintains a collection of more
than 20,000 vegetable, herb and flower
varieties, which might take a whole lot
of COBRAHEAD HAND HOES to keep
clean.
Its “Rare Treasures,” offered up front
of pages 6 and 7, includes Ausilio Thin
Skin Italian Peppers, purple-red Dragon
Carrots, Five Color Silverbeet Swiss
Chard and Benary’s Giant Zienna. The
good thing about the latter is it only grows
3 to 4 feet tall, with flowers 4 to 5 inches
across. Or try all four in a salad.
Seeds Savers, alas, only had 73 kinds
It also takes me back to my very early youth when I
would go door-to-door selling flower and vegetable
seeds to my neighbors for maybe 15 cents a pack,
me getting to keep a nickel of that to fund my future
college education. Or an ice cream cone.
of tomatoes for sale, but also offered a
recipe for fried-green tomatoes, placing it
a notch or two above Baker Creek in our
kitchen.
It also offered the much-desired
“Japanese Trifele Black” tomato, which
also touches on world history as it’s actually
a Russian black tomato about the size
of a Bartlett Pear, a native of England.
It’s simple. Seed catalogs are a necessary
tool for winter survival, that dreaded
time between the end of the college football
season and the NCAA basketball tournament.
There’s so little time and so many
tomato plants. You need those seeds. Your
mailbox needs you. •
About the Author
Bob Hill owns Hidden Hill
Nursery and can be
reached at farmerbob@
hiddenhillnursery.com.
For more information,
including nursery hours
and event information, go
to www.hiddenhillnursery.
com
Jan/Feb 2019 • 11