Seed Companies, Ordering Seeds

There are tons of seed companies out there. I have found my favorites and continue to order from those year after year. Occasionally I will try a new seed company if I need a certain seed and my major seed companies don't carry it. What companies do I use?

• Stokes Seeds and Siegers (which is now part of Stokes Seeds). They have a good selection of tomato and pumpkin seeds and the shipping is reasonable. Stokes Seeds is my main supplier of seeds.

• Baker Rare Seeds. I like this company because of the unique varieties they carry. At my patch my tagline is that I grow 60 varieties of pumpkins and winter squash, I can find lots of unique varieties at this company. They are also the only company I have found to carry super hot peppers. I also love that they offer free shipping and their seed packages are pretty.

• Veseys. I don't use this company for very much, but they have one pumpkin that I absolutely need. The shipping is too much for me and I find the prices to be higher than else where (but you do need to do comparisons because I did find one tomato seed that was cheaper here).

All three companies have excellent germination rates, have online ordering platforms, and fast shipping.

I also order from two local seed companies in Manitoba: Lindenberg Seeds and T and T seeds. They have a couple of varieties that I have too have. Cool Breeze cucumbers are amazing and prolific, though it's a split on whether people like the spikey skin or not. Also finding a sweet/green pepper that performs well in Manitoba is challenging and they have a couple of varieties that they claim work well in the prairies.

My new seed company this year is Geo Seeds. The prices were very reasonable and since I have a market garden I need huge amounts of seeds and they have packets with huge amounts of seeds. The one downside is their catalogue is bare bones so if you don't know the botanical names you may be doing a ton of searches online.

(Originally posted Jan. 11 2021)