Where should I get my seeds from?

Spring is coming and you’re probably thinking… Where should I get my seeds from?

It is a great question. However you want to phrase it: Where should I get my seeds from?  Where should I buy my seeds for my garden? Who has the best prices for garden seeds? Where to buy vegetable, flower or fruit seeds? They all pair down to the same result.  You’re planning your garden, and that’s a great thing! Planning ahead and setting a gardening strategy for your leaf babies is a great thing. What better time to do it than winter too?

So you’re wondering right now: Where should I get my seeds from? You’ve found a good way to help you decide.

In about a month, every store from the grocery to the dollar store will start putting up big displays of packets (if they haven’t started already). The garden catalogs ship in the winter time because they know how much thought you put into your garden. There are seed swaps sprouting in every town, and online, and there are personal sellers all over the internet. Of course you’re asking where’s the best place to buy seeds… We could tell you oooh ooh, just go and order from this or that catalog… But nope, we’re going for the “teach a man to fish, route” and help you make your own decision instead. And at the same time, maybe cut down a little of your searching for you.

 

First a few questions that you’ll need to think about before picking somewhere to buy seeds

• Are you looking for quantity of seeds, quality or both?
• Are you looking for exotic or run of the mill seeds?
• Do you care whether your seeds are Genetically Modified (GMO)?
• Do you use fertilizer and pesticides?

You’re probably right about to say ‘Hold up bub! I came here to find out where to buy seeds, not for the Spanish inquisition!” Well to be honest… NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION !!!

In all fairness though, what you get out of your decision is really what you put into it. Do you honestly expect a catalog to know that you had a white fly infestation last year or that the cultivar they sell aren’t recommended in your soil Ph? Of course not. So when those plants rot in the ground because of your poor planning don’t cry to me Argentina.

Now some recommendations

You could google all this yourself, but we saved you the trouble. Now, for most of this, we’ve not tried, nor are we endorsing any of these… We’re especially not getting paid from any of them… For reals! We’re just consolidating the top of each category for you so as to help your research. If we WERE getting paid, we’d be writing an honest balanced article and incorporating the product or service (so long as we didn’t hate the product, because Mom always said; “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything).

Also, these sites don’t (or at least not currently) refer any traffic to leafbabies.com.  While they could, and we’d be happy for them to do so, that’s not the purpose of this article.  This article is really for you, the gardener, who is now planning and trying to figure out where to get what they need for their gardening obsession. See, we’re still in this new-ish phase, where we’re not supporting retail directly and the only purpose for this blog to help you out and have something to do when we’re not gardening. So we can be real and tell it like it is. That said, lets have a quick look at whats out there.

Bulk seeds

For the answer to: Where to buy bulk seeds?

Mountain Valley Seed Co.

NESEED

Main Street Seed and Supply 

Urban Farmer 

High quality seeds

For the answer to: Where to buy the highest quality seeds?

 Johnny’s Selected Seeds

Park Seed Company

Harris Seeds

Exotic seeds

For the answer to: Where is the best place to buy exotic seeds?

SmartSeeed

Rarexoticseeds

seedman.com 

The banana tree 

GMO Seeds

For the answer to: Where should I buy Genetically Modified (GMO) seeds?

Whelp, Interestingly enough, the short answer is you can’t, at least not easily. The longer version depends on who you are and why you want to grow GMO based products. See the current producers of GMO products have heavy duty patents on them, on account of they spent a ton on making the plants resistant to… well.. whatever, and produce consistent…well… whatever… and they don’t want the environment proliferated with a product carelessly. Not to say you’re not careful, but they’re going to have rules on how and where you plant so they can make sure we’re not overrun with mutant tomatoes that were destined for ketchup bottles.
If you want ’em (for whatever reason, we don’t judge), you’re going to have to consult a seed dealer, and to be honest, we quit looking after the third google search page, so, you’re on your own man.

 

Organic seeds

And finally, for the answer to: Where should I buy organic or heirloom seeds?

Good news! This isn’t hard at all, in fact, all of the sources we listed previously sell non-gmo, organic seeds. So… ta-da!

Some more that specialize in organics…

Seed Savers Exchange

Heirloom seeds

Baker Creek Heirloom Seed

Other sources

Grandma and Grandpa were always in the garden, and they would always set aside some fruit and veggies “for next season” meaning, they rarely had to go out and buy new plants for their garden. They stored and dried some extras and used them for next year’s plantings. If someone brought them a fruit or veggie from the store as a hostess gift, they would politely prepare it and save the castings for the garden.

It’s really not such a big leap for us today. In fact most of the things you’ll find in the leafbabies garden came from the supermarket grocery shelf.  Avocados, beans, tomatoes, guava, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, potatoes… yep… all from the supermarket.

if you’re a “must have it right now” trees from supermarket vegetables are not likely going to be your thing on account of, it takes YEARS for trees to mature enough to bear fruit. Other veggies, like potatoes, beans, squash and cucumbers, just to name a few, can be started indoors and harvested in the same in just one season.

 

In summary…

Jeez! does this post ever end? OMG how long is this actually going to be?!?!

Yes, it ends, now, in fact, wishing you happy seed hunting and hoping that you’ve found what you’re looking for. If you didn’t tweet us or reply to this post, share your favorite and let the world know there’s plenty more out there!