04:57
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The closure of The Cottage Gardener contributes to my sense that there's a little pulling back and trimming the excess going on this year, with fewer things being listed as new. Still, there is lots of fabulous stuff out there, new and old.
Trends - I do see include an awful lot of people listing Garden and French sorrels (YAY GET SOME!). Ground cherries including Golden Berry continue to gather some speed. There are a number of (mostly mustard) greens advertised as having wasabi-like flavours. Purple amaranth is very "in"; purple and "odd" coloured vegetables in general, I would say. I'm seeing a lot of new varieties of lettuce.
As ever, don't forget to check Seeds of Diversity's Seed Catalogue Index if you are looking for something specific (and, in fact, if you are just browsing too).
A'Bunadh Seeds: Situated an hour from Edmonton, they supply seeds for short (zone 2a) Alberta seasons; 90 to 110 days. They have a surprisingly large and unusual collection! I like the looks of Pisarecka Zlutoluske yellow bean, Osgoode rutabaga, Feuer Kugel beets, and plenty of carrots. Lots of peas including Bill Jump, Hungarian Shelling, Mr Big, Top Pod, Knight, and more. An amazing selection of corn - I was going to say for so far north, but really, for anywhere - and numerous squash too, including locally adapted Lower Salmon River and Cindy Souper.
In addition to vegetable seeds they have some perennial fruit seeds, including Nanking cherry and Evans cherry. They have a large selection of rare potatoes, but they are not seed grade. Garlic, comfrey, and six kinds of Jerusalem artichokes all sold for spring planting.
AgroHaitai: The only Canadian source I know of for mostly Asian vegetables; they have a good reputation but most of their offerings are F1 hybrids. Interesting things I see include Yellow Stem Chinese celery, Dynasty Pak Choy (as little as 20 days to maturity!), Indian Mini bitter gourd (f1), Zou Sing luffa (f1, but they say not day-length sensitive), Black Champion eggplant, and You Fong Wong yardlong bean.
Annapolis Seeds: Now up to 600 varieties, all of which they grow or contract themselves. New things for this year include Scarlet Frills mustard (really gorgeous!), Little Leaf pickling cucumber (hard to find and recommended), Rainbow Lacinato kale, a mix of Sea Buckthorn seeds probably best suited to breeders, Black Beauty tomato, Lower Salmon River squash, Shosaku gobo (burdock), Japanese White eggplant, and Midnight Lightning zucchini. Lebanese Metki cucumber is actually a melon, but used as a cucumber.
Burt's Greenhouses: Mostly a nursery with ornamentals, Burt's also sells a good range of sweet potato slips. We got our Toka Toka Gold, Owairaka, and Purple sweet potatoes from them. They also have Cuban, Georgia Jet, and Tainung 65. Seems like a smaller selection than last year, but still good prices and the ability to buy in volume.
The Cottage Gardener: I was sad to discover that this excellent source of seeds is no more. They posted on Facebook:
"We are closing our (virtual) doors.
We remain absolutely passionate and committed to preserving rare and endangered heirloom seeds, but after 22 years of the daily grind of running a retail business we are ready to explore new ways of pursuing this. Passing on our seed saving knowledge will be an integral part of our future plans.
Many of our customers have been with us through our whole journey, while others have just recently discovered us - we thank all of you for your support in helping us do our bit to save genetic biodiversity. We'll let you know our future plans as they unfold - we may even pop up at a seed show or two :). "
Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes: For once I am not even going to mention varieties. Shipping costs for potatoes are brutal, but if you want to grow unusual seed potatoes, this is THE place to look and such is life. There is a very impressive selection and 6 mixed packages for the indecisive. Reliable and recommended. Many of our favourite potatoes first came from Eagle Creek.
Edible Antiques: Grown in Prince Edward county. Right off bat I see several classic native varieties being offered; Algonquin pumpkins, and Skunk and Deseronto Potato beans. Also Aladdin's Lamp cherry tomatoes, Liebenspfel and Lively Sweet Italian Orange peppers, and Eagle Pass okra.
Greta's Organic Gardens: This Ottawa seed-house has numerous interesting and unusual varieties. New this year are the lovely Red Savonese onion, Red Welsh bunching onion, Turnip Rooted chervil, Dishpan Cusha squash, Datterino tomato - combining compactness with indeterminacy, a hard combo to find - Everona tomatillo, and Stavros Greek pepper. There is an impressive number of tobacco varieties, if that's your bag. A large and very good selection overall. A good selection of watermelons includes Bozeman and Early Canada (which did very well for us when we grew it). Greta has an impressive array of unusual eggplants and 6 kinds of okra.
Harmonic Herbs: They specialize in medicinal herbs, and also have a small collection of grains and flowers. Being another Alberta company they have short season vegetables including their own earliest Norwesterlee tomato, Blush tomato, Purple Peacock broccoli, Broccoli Raab (rapini), and Palla Rossa radicchio,
Hawthorn Farm: Catalogue looks bigger and better than ever. I notice they now have a lot of seeds in bulk, so market gardeners and farmers take note. Sweet Reba acorn and Honeynut butternut squashes are Cornell releases. If you want to play around though, try the Lofthouse Landrace moschata squash. There are loads of tomatoes and lettuces. Best selection of zucchini around, including tried and true for us Tatume, Dark Green, Mutabile, and Ronde de Nice. Success PMR Straightneck looks like it might make a good substitute for the maddeningly unproductive Golden. Misato Rose winter radish looks lovely, as does Jing Orange okra. Get some Sorrel for wonderful spring greens. Only source I know for Iowne's True Blue, a local heritage corn. Glass Gem on the other hand is a wildly popular new (OP) variety and they have that too. I want to try April Green cabbage, so called for excellent storage properties. Chieftan is a long-time favourite Savoy.
Heritage Harvest Seed: A great selection of heirloom seeds, grown in Manitoba. If they can make it there, they can make it here! I have found a number of our best varieties here, including Gnadenfeld melon, January King cabbage, and a lot of our favourite peas. There are stupendous numbers of beans of every type here, including Auntie Wilder, Bis (Polish), Chevrier Verte, Drew's Dandy, Fort Portal Jade, and Ice (Crystal White Wax). I could go on and on, so I will just note they have large selections of beets, carrots, corn, cucumbers, grains, lettuce, melons, squash... they are the only Canadian source I know of for the rare and picky to grow but really delicious Amish Bottle onion.
Hope Seeds: This Nova Scotian company specializes in east-coast heirlooms including Marie Dugas Canadian Wild Goose, Goose Gullet, and Caribee beans; Ashworth corn; and Joan rutabaga. They have a good selection of Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes - Onaway, Bridget and Fianna are new names to me and sound quite interesting. They do have a few varieties of garlic available for spring planting, if you failed to get yours in during the fall.
Ferme Tournesol: Not yet updated for 2019. Not just seed producers, but vegetable breeders as well. Their own seeds include Arc-en-ciel tatsoi, Big Fat Jalapeño pepper, Winter Green brassica mix, and Carrot Bomb hot pepper. You can get Mosaic Mix beans, which is a mixture of all their breeding lines of bush beans - sounds like a lot of fun. They have their own landrace cucumber, as well as Dragon Egg Croatian cucumber. Sugar Magnolia snap pea and Early Moonbeam watermelon can be hard to find. Ho Chi Minh yellow cayenne, Georgia Flame, and Gord's Cherry Bomb, and Lemon Drop are some other unusual hot peppers they list.
Jardins de l'Écoumène: Site is in French. New offerings (nouveautés) include Brad's Atomic cherry tomato, Gogosar Bulgarian pepper, Agate edemame (soybean), concombre d'Antilles (West Indian gherkin), Tam Jalapeño and Thai hot peppers, and the oddly-named but tasty sounding Vegetarian hot peppers, also from the French Caribbean. They also have Toraji balloon flower, which most North Americans do not realize is a vegetable in addition to being a lovely garden perennial. At the moment there are a number of tomatoes, as well as Belle Isle cress and Iroquois White corn on sale at less than half price.
Mapple Farm: As ever, this is one of the few places to find sweet potato slips, and they have a good selection including best northern grower Georgia Jet, and the popular Beauregard. New (at least to my notice) are White Travis and Superior. Ginseng Red is recommended for French frying. They are, so far as I know, the only source of Ken Allen's book on growing sweet potatoes in the north, and if you want to have any success at growing them, the $25 is well worth spending.
They have a small collection of other carefully chosen items including Chinese Artichokes (crosnes; stachys affinis). Squash are a specialty, including Fisher's acorn (unique to them), Golden Hubbard, Honey Boat delicata, and the superb Gill's Golden Pippin acorn. Latah tomato and Parade cucumber are ideal for cooler climates. Sweet Orange II tomato is noted as new, but their Mystery Keeper tomato is tried and true.
Matchbox Garden Seed Co: Another Ontario company growing most of their own seed! Selection is not huge, and leans more to the best standards than the rare and exotic. Varieties are not marked as new so I will just mention a few that look good to me. Trionfo Violetto is an excellent purple pole bean. Long Purple Italian eggplant is a bit unusual. Astro arugula is recommended, Tadorna leeks look lovely. There are just 3 beets, but the best varieties in 3 colours. Baquieu and Gold Rush lettuces look promising. I haven't seen Capriglio Red and Capriglio Yellow peppers anywhere else.
Naramata Seed Company: Items not marked as new. Still, some eye-catching listings including Borlotto Lamon bean, Grampa Brown's Indian popcorn, Sand Mountain sorghum, Tante Alice cucumber, Wasabina mustard, and Baladi romaine lettuce from Syria. May Queen is a favourite lettuce for us. They have the excellent and hard-to-find Small Shining Light and Sweet Siberian watermelons. Many interesting hot peppers including a white Bolivian, Aribibi Gusano. Greek Sweet Red moschata squash sounds very intriguing. San Juanito tomatillo looks promising. Lots of tomatoes in every size and colour.
Norton Naturals: Not a seed company; they sell a selection of roots, mostly native but also crosnes, edible daylilies, and double Tiger lilies. Native plants include: Arrowhead, Camas (Quamash), Groundnuts, Hog Peanuts, 3 different Jerusalem artichokes, Spring Beauty, Meadow Garlic, and Ramps (Wild Leeks). In my experience, if you do not have the necessary fungus in the soil those last will not grow. Worth trying if you have a typical Ontario woodlot though. They sell Prairie Turnip as seeds - this is actually a tap-rooted legume, and it looks like it would also make an excellent ornamental. This was out of stock last year but this year they have it. They ship twice a year - next up in April.
OSC (Ontario Seed Company): A good source for open-pollinated classics at reasonable prices but most of their new offerings lean towards F1 hybrids. I'm noting that in particular most of their corn is treated, as far as I can tell with the notorious bee-killing neonicotinoids, so DO NOT GROW. (If you are a large enough grower you can request untreated seed.) All other seeds are not treated. They do not always identify F1 hybrids so do some research before you order.
New this year is "OSC Seeds International line" - some of them varieties they've had for a while, but a more cosmopolitan group than their usual. It includes Red Garnett amaranth, Wild Roquette, German Lutz beet, Green Punjab eggplant, Osaka Purple mustard, Early Purple Sprouting broccoli, Red Fire orach, and Fire Candle radish.
Potager Ornemental de Catherine: Site is in French. New offerings include Thai Lavender Frog Egg (!) eggplant, Kikuza moschata squash (cute!), Golden Child and Monte Gusto yellow wax beans, Oda pepper, Malaga (purple!) radish, and Allu Jola popping sorghum. In short, a place with some very unusual and exciting varieties.
Prairie Garden Seeds: The site is updated for 2019, but the new offerings aren't labelled as such and this list doesn't change a lot from year to year. However, they are the go-to source for many Canadian heirloom vegetables, and are particularly strong in tomatoes and beans, but also in grains - if you want small amounts of many historic Canadian wheats, or indeed all kinds of grains from all over the world, check here. If you want open-pollinated, untreated corn this is probably the place. Prices are very reasonable and amounts generous, but you cannot order online - you must send them an order form and a cheque. It's been well worth the trouble in my experience. I can't pick out varieties to mention - they have 133 kinds of beans, 42 different peas - a good list of peas is hard to find - 45 other pulses and legumes, and then there's everything else - lots of it - Jim specialized in Canadian-bred tomatoes for instance.
Richter's Herbs: says the herb of the year is agastache, which is actually a species of plant with numerous varieties in cultivation.As ever, they have the largest and most complete list of herbs I have seen anywhere. Seeds abound but they also have many things available as plants, including a whole lot of hops, 4 kinds of sea buckthorn, 16 types of garlic (not shipped until fall but order early, they say), and 10 kinds of figs. Not an edible in spite of the name, but I see they have Chocolate Cosmos seeds (at $10 per packet! Not cheap, but his used to be only available as a very hard-to-find clone and seeds will be rare for a while yet). I'm always banging on about Sorrel in the spring; grow your own Blonde de Lyon garden sorrel. In the realm of vegetable seeds: they have Sweet Purple and Jersey Giant asparagus; Hopi Blue, True Gold, and Spectrum Red Husk corn; the somewhat hard-to-find but excellent Muncher cucumber; Jicama, if you are prepared to baby it; Numane Japanese pickling melon; Molokhia (an Egyptian leafy green); and Lady Godiva pumpkin (grown for the "naked" seeds).
Salt Spring Seeds: Featured items this year include Golden Giant amaranth - it looks both beautiful and productive - Spello chick pea, Purple fava bean, Purple Peacock pole bean (we've grown it and can recommend it), Abundant (a more vigorous yet slow-bolting form of) Bloomsdale spinach, phacelia tanecetifolia green manure, and Summer pea, said to be quite heat-tolerant. Fothergill's Perpetual Spinach (a chard) is half price due to an enormous crop of seed. As ever, a wide range of legumes and grains. Other unusual items include Musgrave Munchie carrot, Darcy's Purple leeks, Meres salsify, and Delight bi-colour corn.
Semences du Portage: Site is in French. Nouveautés for this year include Brad's Atomic cherry tomato, Greek basil, Yellowstone carrots, Midori Giant edamame, and Bronco green beans. They have their own selection of Red Man onions. Scarlet Ohno turnips are hard to find. There are also quite a number of seed collections available.
la Société des Plantes: Site is in French. Emphasis is on permaculture, so a good number of perennial vegetables including mertensia maritima, camassia esculenta, turnip-rooted chervil, skirrets (chervis), crosnes, rumex scutatus French sorrel, and Ste Anne shallots, and the very rare blue-flowered salsify. Look for Noir Long de Pardailhan turnips, Branchu de L'Embarras spring (overwintering) kale, Black Russian fava beans, Green Jewel Lebanese summer squash, and Sonkatök Hungarian moschata squash.
Solana Seeds: When I checked their list of new items, right away my eye was caught by Brown Russian cucumbers, Kajari melon (really striking!), Explosive Ember and Purple Flash (ornamental) peppers. I started off sneering at Aji Delight - a heat-free baccatum pepper - but when they mentioned paprika, I thought, yes! A good sweet paprika pepper is hard to find. American Purple Top rutabaga sure looks like a rutabaga, but Brad's Atomic Grape tomato is amazeballs.
Sunshine Farm: Located in Kelowna, BC. Very heavy on the tomatoes and beans, but I note they have both Early Green and Thai Long Green eggplants. Alma Paprika (a personal favourite) pepper, but also Casa Aquaria, Chimayo, Fish, Ghost, Padron, Pasilla and Rocotillo, amongst others. Look for Strela, Lily's and Sweet Butter lettuces. I need to try Golden Purslane.
Tatiana's TOMATObase: With 1187 varieties of tomatoes listed, this is the place to look if you want a specific rare one. Most of her other listings seem to have been trimmed down, although she has increased her peppers with 59 varieties being available, including Aji Limon, Cambuci from Barbadoes and mentioned as a favourite, Chimayo, Cserko, De Bresse, Rabbit Mouth, and Rooster Spur... Oh how I wish I could grow them all!
Don't forget that Tatiana's TOMATObase is also a wiki with information about most of the tomatoes in existance. It's the first place I look whenever I hear of a new one.
Terra Edibles: was our original source for seeds when we first started gardening many years ago, and they are still going strong. They have many of our tried and true varieties, including the very hard-to-find but highly worth-while Spanish Skyscraper pea. Also the hard-to-find legume inoculant, available for a fairly short season in the spring, so check. They are strongest on beans and tomatoes, but they have an assortment of other vegetables as well. There is a small but good selection of melons including Charentais, Ginger's Pride, Montreal, Oka, Minnesota Midget, and Petit Gris de Rennes. Squash include Kakai, Galeux d'Eysines, Green Hokkaido, and Red Kuri.
Terre Promise: Site now has an English option, but it has some problems. Better to stick to the French. Look for Black Panther edamame, Grosse Blonde Paresseuse (Fat Lazy Blonde to you!) lettuce, Dutch Princess beans, Soissons Gros Blanc à Rame beans, Boston Marrow squash, and Morden Midget (not that small) eggplant.
They are strong on perennial (permaculture) items such as Persil de Mer (Sea Parsley), Catawissa walking onions, scorzonera, Chufa, Red (Blood) sorrel, and apios americana. In July Ste Anne shallots will be available.
Urban Harvest: A nice collection including new Medallion mache (corn salad), Diamond eggplant, Shishito and Fiarello Sweet peppers, Elephant Head amaranth (highly ornamental!), Tokyo Bekana greens, Tom Thumb lettuce (I recommend it!), Scarlet kale, and Sunrise Bumblebee cherry tomatoes. Not listed as new but still likely-looking are Shooting Star eggplant, Purple Sprouting broccoli, and Giallo de (sic) Italia yellow zucchini.
Urban Tomato: Not updated for 2019, but I would expect them to continue with their large selection of tomatoes and a small selection of other vegetables and flowers.
West Coast Seeds: Very much like a West Coast equivalent to William Dam, with similar strengths and weaknesses. In spite of their very large number of f1 hybrids (some of them dubiously claimed not be GMO) they have a good selection of really useful open-pollinated seeds as well.
I tripped over them last year after I posted when I was looking for as many open-pollinated varieties of cauliflower as I could find. They have 4 kinds, which given the prevalence of f1 hybrids in caulis is quite impressive. They list "Seeds to Watch for in 2019" including Kabuli chickpeas, Calypso slow-bolting cilantro, Yellow Wonder strawberries, Wasabi mustard, and Red Oxheart tomato. Other things that strike my eye include Matilda beans, Sayamusume soy beans, Winterkeeper Lutz beet, Natalino Romanesco and Summer Purple Sprouting broccoli. They have a quartet of open-pollinated radicchios that look lovely, as well as Puntarelle and Sugar Loaf chicories. Abundance kale, Alkindus lettuce, 6 types of quinoa, and Wasabi radish. Plenty of herbs and flowers, gardeners' tools, and a small but nice selection of potatoes rounds things out.
Wild Rose Heritage Seed Company: Not yet updated for 2019. They are located in Lethbridge, Alberta so you can expect seeds adapted to short seasons. My impression is of a conservative but sufficiently comprehensive range of heirloom seeds.
William Dam Seeds: I've spent the last 2 years complaining that almost everything new that they have is an F1 hybrid. And now this year, their only new vegetable that isn't one is Speedy bean - which admittedly sounds quite interesting. However, I'm willing to bet that the only reason it isn't a hybrid is because you can't (so far) do that with beans. They still have a number of open-pollinated standards but it looks like musical chairs is being played with them. Call out for Sumter pickling cucumbers which are the best pickling cukes we've ever grown, and we've grown quite a few.
Still a good place for other gardening equipment that can be hard to find - trays, netting and row covers, organic fertilizer, etc, and a very large selection of ornamentals.
Posted in: Ontario Food
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