I am a complete newbie to all this, but I ordered my seeds from Seeds Of Change, an organic catalog. They are based in New Mexico, but have growers in different places. They have mostly vegetables, but also fruit trees, herbs, and flowers. A number of their seeds are heirlooms. The flowers are not necessarily your usual annuals, but rather they are more along the lines of the ones described above by Spiritual Gardener. This is my first time planting seeds, but I am already pretty thrilled, as all my seeds germinated RIGHT AWAY. It may be due to the seed tray with plugs (which I also bought from SOC - they have a lot of great tools, etc.) of composted bark fiber. It also could be that their seeds are really fresh, because one row of plugs had seeds from Lowe's, and it's the only row that has not germinated. My SOC seeds are for Persian Carpet Zinnias, Sky Pink Campion, Ace of Spades Scabiosa, Maroon Coreopsis, Everlasting Starflower, Bachelor Buttons, Sweet Genovese Basil, Italian Parsley, Chives, and Tarragon. Their catalog has LOTS of different Sunflowers, but I have no scope for them. Anyway, so far so good...By the way, their website is www.seedsofchange.com.

They haven't been reviewed on the GW Rate and Review Vendor Forum. Another site has a review for them - 24 positive reviews and 2 negative. The two negative don't say anything about not receiving seeds and none of the reviews are recent. You can Google Garden Watchdog and it will come up. I'd book mark the site for future reference when ordering from new sites and also check the GW Rate and Review Vendor Forum. Good luck! Diana

Pinetree is a good one with mostly edibles, lots of selection with good prices. If you don't have very specific seeds in mind one of the cheapest ways to get lots of variety is Bakemom's newbie project on this forum. There are also sometimes newbie offers on the round robin and regular seed exchange forums requiring just the cost of postage. Some have people look at your want list to gift you specific seed, while others it is just a random selection sent. Another good option for more common varieties of both edibles and flowers are the super cheap seeds many stores start offering in late winter. The names change but I have seen them from "Valley Greene" or "American Seed". They are usually at Walmart, Walgreens, Dollar Stores, Menards, etc. Usually $1 for 10-20 packets, and the packets contain more than enough seed. Menards last year had the cheapest ones here at 20/$1 which let me stock up on things like radishes, lettuce, and zinnias. They are mostly the more common heirloom veggies and flowers, but you can't beat the price. I know you asked for seed company recommendations, but I thought I would just throw that out there for anyone interested. My first year wintersowing I carefully picked out and bought some seeds online and THEN did the newbie project. I actually got many of the same seeds I had purchased. The ones from the fellow gardeners not only had more seed in the packet, but better germination rates as well. So now I start the season with doing a couple of group swaps and then see if there are any special seeds I still want to buy.

Here's the updated availability list. Baptisia pendula BAPT-42 $5.00 Cheiranthus Cheiri Fair Lady Mix. (b,h) CHER-1FL.$2.00 Crambe cordifolia. (e,h) CRAM-6.: $3.00 Digitalis purpurea The Shirley. (a!,h) DIG-1S. Packet: $2.50 Empetrum nigrum. (b,g) EMPE-8.$3.00 Fallugia paradoxa. (b,g) FALL-4. Packet: $2.50 Glaucium flavum v. Aurantiacum GLAU-2A ---- 2.50 Kniphofia citrina. (50) KNIP-6. Packet: $2.50 Lespedeza bicolor LESP-2 $2.00 Mentzelia decapetala (giant evening star) MENZ-2 ----- $2.50 Penstemon virens "mat penstemon" PENS-198 --- $2.50 Petalostemon purpureum (purple prairie clover) PETA-19 ----$2.50 Sophora Davidii (c,h) SOPH-7. Packet: $2.50 Tradescantia ohiensis. (b,g) TRAD-18. $2.50 Tunica Saxifraga. (b,h) TUNI-22. Packet: $2.00 Veratrum nigrum. (c,h) VERA-17. Packet: $3.00 Xanthoceras sorbifolium. (e,g-h) XANTH-4. Packet: $3.00 - Bev