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When will you start ordering your seeds from catalogs?

14 years ago

When is the best time to order seeds from these flower catalogs to plant for Spring? Since I've never ordered seeds before,what is the turn around time that I should expect for deliveries?

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Comments (13)

token28001
14 years ago
I rarely order from mail catalogs. Unless, and I stress this, they have a very good coupon included. Last year Thompson and Morgan gave a coupon for $10. I was able to order 5 packs of seed and received a freebie. I only had to pay shipping. Their turnaround time was about 2 weeks.

I tend to just order online. There's usually a better selection and I can pay with a debit card.
dirtysc8
14 years ago
Pippi, I order my seeds online, too, but after studying mail order catalogs. Now is a great time to order, and the turnaround time is fairly quick. Later, as spring nears, more folks will be placing orders, and the orders won't arrive as quickly. If you plan on the order taking two weeks, you'll probably be pleasantly surprised.

Before you shell out any money, though, you might want to look over trade lists. Even if you haven't stockpiled your own collected seeds, some folks will offer seeds without trading.
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Gayle, I haven't had a lot of time to look through the seed catalogs yet.....too much holiday stuff going on.....but I have ordered a couple of tomato varieties from Burpee to add to my extensive collection of tomato seeds. (You can never have too many!) I do like Marianna's Peace quite a lot but it seems to taste better when grown in hotter, drier years. I don't grow snow peas here, mostly because we usually warm up really early here in southern Oklahoma and the weather seems to go from 'too hot' to 'too cold' overnight. I tend to prefer the spiney okra here because our large deer population LOVES okra, and the spines are my only hope for getting any okra for the humans at all. (All I want for Christmas is an 8' tall garden fence to replace my 4' tall fence!) However, Clemson Spineless is our favorite spineless okra. It is an oldie but a goodie. Baker Creek (www.rareseeds.com) offers a variety of heirloom okras also. The ONLY way I know to keep bermuda out of the asparagus bed is to absolutely remove ALL the bermuda, every single tiny shred of stolon, before planting and then remain hyper-vigilant forever after! Heavy, heavy mulching helps as does digging out any and every bit of bermuda grass as soon as it appears in the bed. Keeping a very heavily mulched pathway about 2' wide on all sides of the asparagus also helps.....the farther away you can keep the bermuda grass from the bed, the better! You have to keep the bermuda grass out of the aspagus bed because once the bermuda invades the bed, there is not much you can do except hand-dig it out of the bed, and that often damages the asparagus crowns and root system. Also, be sure to keep nearby bermuda from going to seed and sending those seeds into the asparagus bed to sprout. It was a combination of too cool, too rainy, too cloudy, etc. for many crops last year, and mostly likely, that was true of your squash and eggplants. Mine didn't perform well until late July to early August, and only then because the rains stopped here at that point and it did get hot and dry (finally!) in our part of the state. I'm hoping for hotter, drier weather this year so the veggie garden will thrive and produce like crazy. After Christmas, I hope to do some serious planning for the spring veggie garden. Dawn
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highalttransplant
14 years ago
For me, it's usually in January, when the snow is flying, and the holiday rush is over : ) As dirtysc8 said, if you wait until closer to spring, seed companies are busy, and it takes longer to get your order. Plus, a lot of my seeds are wintersown, so I need them as early as possible.

Bonnie
gardenweed_z6a
14 years ago
pippi21 - I've still got a lot of seeds I harvested from my own perennials this year. If you want some, they're yours for a SASBE. Email me and I'll email back a list of what I've got.
trudi_d
14 years ago
Better now than later. Do it as soon as you can, then later you can add in from trades or what you find in local store.

Remember, the economy has tanked, and because of it a lot of people are now growing a little salad and herb garden when they never did before. Last spring seed catalogues were swamped and it took nearly twice as long for most people to get their seeds. Hybrids run out faster than OPs because novice gardeners select hybrids because they take less care to maintain.

If you, or anyone else, are looking for tomatoes I can help with that--I've just enlarged my list to 150 varieties.

Here is a link that might be useful: Your Choice Tomato SASE
Pamchesbay
14 years ago
pippi - I'm ordering now. I ordered from Valueseeds 4-5 weeks ago. Last night, I checked the site again - they had so many seeds that were not available in November - 8 pages. I went a little crazy.

I have a question about how people keep track of their seeds but I'll make it into a post. Other people probably have the same questions.

I can vouch for Trudy's list of tomatoes - I doubt anyone has such variety except MAYBE an experimental agriculture station. Amazing!
girlgroupgirl
14 years ago
I am also ordering now, mostly via the internet because I have very few seed catalogs yet (especially for perennials, which is what I am ordering right now).
drippy
14 years ago
As soon as my kids stop spending my money. LOL :)
shinyalloy_5
14 years ago
oh, the shame. I promised myself I wasn't going to buy any seeds this season, only trades. I didn't even make it to solstice, I placed an order for 13 packs with valueseeds this week and have spent hours going over the links Trudi posted. It may be time for an intervention.

MARY
tiffy_z5_6_can
14 years ago
Right after I clean the car and finish vacuuming the couch in the livingroom today. :O)
diggerdee zone 6 CT
14 years ago
Oh, Drippy, if you wait for that, you may never get your seed order in!!

:)
Dee
drippy
14 years ago
Yeah, true story, Dee! I thought it might be different once they reached young adulthood. Silly me.

:)
Kim
hemnancy
14 years ago
I'm all done. I started researching in late summer and ordered seeds from several companies, they all came in like 2-3 days. I ordered in fall so I could start things then, hoping to get bloom early from some perennials.

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