Bloody Hell, mxk3 - I would be ranting too. In fact, I am going to off on one on your behalf (can you feel the psychic waves of rage?)

The Johnny's really got me -- it added $4.00 to the cost of each seed packet. But, I am married to that particular butternut cultivar and the other places I ordered from don't have it, so I had to suck it up and pay it. I ordered a pack of sunflower seeds too -- if it weren't for that, the shipping would have cost more than the one pack of squash seeds :0( . No way does it cost $8.00 to ship one or even two packs of seeds, even with the cost of labor factored in -- it probably takes less than 3 minutes to pull 2 packs of seeds and slap the label on it, 5 tops.

I also understand your frustration. I have cancelled an order in-progress because of the shipping fees.

I also understand that there are certain seeds you want and can only be gotten from a certain place. Last year I tried to save shipping costs by ordering off Amazon. Not one seed was what it was suppose to be. Junk!

I guess I'll pay the shipping fees to get the proper seed, but it's too bad about the rip-off.

I really miss the days of active seed trading here. Everyone could keep a running record of the seeds they had and/or wanted, and others could search those records for seeds they wanted. There were multiple seed swaps throughout the year, especially right around now, as folks prepared for the next growing season and were clearing out their old seeds. It was a great community of gardeners sharing their bounty and passion. And all it cost was a SASBE and a bit of time, which we all spend pouring over catalogs, anyway.

Mxk3,

Can you save seeds from your plants this year for use in future years? That would save you this frustration, maybe.

I did find a trading group via the "Growing Tomatoes" forum, and I'm waiting for my seeds as we speak. It's probably part of the dreaded Facebook (or whatever it's called nowdays), but I just follow the link provided within the Gardenweb post, and avoid any further involvement. The folks there seem really fun and helpful.

Martha

Only works for open pollinated, that is, non hybrids. And if you're not planting a goodly number of plants, you're in danger of losing traits if seeds are coming from only one or two plants.

No question that seed-saving simply doesn't work for many of the preferred varieties, which are hybrids. Just because something tastes good doesn't mean you can procreate it by saving seeds. When it comes to forking over big bucks to the seed companies, the effort on hybridization is what you're often really paying for.

I hear your ranting and agree. I've gotten charged twice what the seed pack cost before so do what I can to reduce shipping costs by bundling orders with a couple of neighbors, but one stopped gardening so it's just two now.

Last year shipping from Jung seeds was zero because we spent $120. I also used Baker Creek Heirloom seeds with free shipping on any size order for seeds. Another I used last year was Totally Tomatoes with a flat rate of $5.95 for shipping, I'm in the process of ordering seeds but don't think I'll make $100 to get free shipping at Jung seeds this year.

Yea, the melon and the squash are hybrids -- seed won't come true to type. At least I can get a few years out of the seed packets.

Hi mxk3,

You can select and re-select the progeny of hybrids to get true breeding lines. That process is called dehybridization. I totally ignore the common warnings about saving seeds from hybrids and I routinely save seeds from hybrid zinnias. Sure, there is a lot of variation in hybrid progeny, but some of those variant specimens can actually be better than their commercial hybrid parents. I don't hesitate to make hybrids between hybrids. That gives me a lot of new zinnias that are not available from seed companies. A couple of examples are:

Saving seeds from hybrid squash would very likely give you some "different" squash. Maybe you would get a lot of culls. But it is possible that you might get some squash that you liked better than the commercial hybrid. Obviously, a lot of gardeners do not have the space or the inclination to be amateur plant breeders. But some might.

ZM

Since my beloved Sample Seeds folded when its owner died, I have no source for open pollinated seeds. Do you?

Yes, using seeds from hybrids might well produce better fruit then their parent plant, but they might just as well produce worse fruit. I've always wondered, though. If you plant seeds from a hybrid, and get a higher quality fruit, will seeds from those higher quality fruit make more of that higher quality fruit? That is, is the result open-pollinated? I suspect not, and if not, then it's not clear what the point is. Cultivar-wise, you're then at a dead-end. You can't preserve that higher quality fruit, and you're not doing any real hybridization, because you don't know how you got there, and you can't reproduce it.

Hello Dan,

" If you plant seeds from a hybrid, and get a higher quality fruit, will seeds from those higher quality fruit make more of that higher quality fruit? "

Typically, variations due to genetic recombinations of hybridized progeny can go in all directions, to worse, similar, and possibly even some further improvements. And another very important factor is your personal preferences. Different people like different things.

I happen to like these recombined zinnia specimens.

But you might not care for them at all. The same applies to genetic recombinations in squashes. (Or is the plural of squash also just squash?) Personal preferences can differ. When you are the amateur plant breeder, your preferences rule. You can decide the breeding strategy of which specimens to self, which to cross with each other, and which to throw on the compost pile. It is possible for a dehybridization to actually improve on the original hybrid, according to the tastes of the amateur plant breeder. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

ZM

OK, thanks. My point is that if you plant seeds coming from a hybrid and end up with some wonderful fruit, you're stuck. You don't have the ability to get more seeds for that wonderful fruit, and once you run out of those original seeds from the hybrid, you're unlikely to get that wonderful fruit again. That's because you're not really breeding. You don't have a map of how to get what you got.

One of the reasons for the big costs of shipping is that the post office doesn't allow shipping thick envelopes any longer. It used to be that you could ship first class and pay about half price per ounce for each ounce over the first ounce. Today you can't ship one packet of bean seeds via first class because depending on how much the seeds clump in the envelope you can go over the maximum thickness.

Today you can mail 9 ounces 1st class for $3.12; but if the envelope is over the thickness of a foam packing peanut you'd have to go Priority Mail for $9.40. And remember that most seed sellers are using padded envelopes which uses up most of the max thickness rule. The rule is there to make sure your envelope goes thru the cancelling machine.

The first class thickness limit is 1/4 inch. Except for maybe bean seeds, no way a seed protecting envelope needs to be that thick. One layer of 1/8" packing foam, plus an envelope and seeds will do the job adequately. You don't need two layers of foam for protection. That ought to be pretty obvious. One strategy might be to perforate the foam, and let the seeds slip into the holes. That would keep them from bunching.

Hello again, Dan,

" My point is that if you plant seeds coming from a hybrid and end up with some wonderful fruit, you're stuck. "

Maybe not. You could save all the seeds from that "wonderful fruit" and plant them next year and see what you get. Maybe one specimen would be even more wonderful.

ZM

Well, once you run out of seeds with that wonderful fruit, you're very unlikely to get THAT wonderful fruit again. Of course, you can always roll the dice and see what you get. But that's not breeding. That's just playing. Breeding is where you come up with something that you can reliably reproduce. That being said, it's always fun to play.

Hello Dan,

I do have fun "rolling the dice" and coming up with new zinnias.

I wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun.

ZM

Of course, when you're upset because shipping costs make a desired hybrid cultivar from a seed company pricey, it's hard to understand how pretending you're recovering that cultivar is going to make you feel any better. I can understand that if you go to Johnny's and say, "Hey, just surprise me!", gross shipping costs would be completely intolerable. But I guess playing with dice does save shipping costs, even if it's unlikely that you'll get what you want.

Very simply, if the goal is to get a particular hybrid cultivar, using saved seeds likely won't do it. If the goal is to play, then go for it!

Wait what? Samples Seeds is no more!?!?!

"Very simply, if the goal is to get a particular hybrid cultivar, using saved seeds likely won't do it. "

^^This. Why is why I suck it up and pay it.

Some hybrids do produce progeny very similar to the parent strain - it depends on what type of vegetable or ornamental (for instance, I've found that seed of ornamental peppers produces plants close to the original). Investigating open-pollinated types whose seed can be saved every year could also be worthwhile.

I gave up on ordering from Johnny's awhile back because of high shipping costs for seed compared to other sellers.

Territorial Seeds indicates open-pollinated varieties in their descriptions. I imagine OP's are widely available at other seed houses, too. I am under the impression heirloom varieties are always open pollinated - am I wrong in this? Select Seeds has a nice variety of unusual heirlooms.

Heirlooms are varieties that have been passed down for many generations (without hybridization). Open pollinated means that the seeds it produces bear the variety that produced them. So all heirlooms are open pollinated, but all open pollinated aren't necessarily heirlooms. Formally, there are rather few true heirlooms.

Daninthedirt,

Have you ever looked into Seed Saver's Exchange? It's an organization that has been around (I think) since the 1970s or before. Their goal is to preserve the diversity of garden seeds through sharing of heirloom varieties between like- minded gardeners. They have a catalog from which anyone can purchase seeds, which contains common favorites of various veggies and flowers. However, they also have a HUGE (I mean massive) catalog that is available to members and growers, that contains THOUSANDS of heirloom varieties of every type of garden plant you can imagine. So, your comment that there are "rather few true heirlooms" is a bit off the mark.

I am currently involved in a tomato seed swap on a different site, where they trade some hybrids, but the vast majority are open-pollinated and primarily heirloom varieties. There are so many varieties, I don't even bother to read the lists, because they become meaningless to me because of the sheer numbers. We're talking hundreds of varieties from a total of 15 or 20 gardeners. Of course, these particular gardeners have a specific interest in tomatoes, but even they complain that they have only scratched the surface of the varieties of tomatoes they wish they could grow.

I'm not for one moment trying to imply that heirlooms are better that hybrids, since science has advanced disease resistance and productivity, etc. But, if access to hybrids became limited due to expense or basic lack of availability, heirlooms have a proven track record, and new heirlooms (anf hybrids) can be created from our very own gardens, given enough time and careful selection of fruits from plants that carry desirable traits. It's not just "playing." It's how we initially developed the varieties we have today--including the hybrids.

Martha

I think Seed Saver's Exchange is just equating "open pollinated" with "heirloom". That's often casually done. As they say on their home page "At the heart of our organization is a seed bank that houses a collection of 20,000+ rare, open-pollinated varieties.". To the extent that they're rare, it's unlikely they've been passed down for generations. Many other purveyors have a large selection of them also, and they usually too call them all heirlooms.

https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/blog/difference-between-heirlooms-open-pollinated-and-hybrid-organic-seeds/

If you're selecting seeds from open-pollinated plants, and looking for better produce, that makes a lot of sense. If you're doing it from hybrids, that's just playing, because whatever you get won't be reproducible. It's a dead-end.

JLHudson seedsman sells a large variety of OP seeds. I sm often surprised to see varieties listed that I no idea were open pollinated. I still remember when they required payment by money order (they’ve never taken credit cards), but now they have embraced PayPal so it’s much easier to buy from them.

The USDA collection of tomatoes finds 10, 000 different tomato varieties. The search takes 20 -30 seconds to load and sometimes errors out during the DB search. The reason the search comes up with such an even number of items is because that's the maximum number in the option list that you can select.

Many of those tomatoes must be hybrids, I assume as they have numbers instead of names. But tomatoes do not cross very easily so I would guess that there are 1000's of open pollinated tomatoes and my guess is that many of them, if not most, are heirlooms.

I once tried to search the DB looking for a perfect pink tomato that my family had; and lost. I had to give up as I couldn't search the entire collection at one sitting and noticed that if you restart the search later you don't start at the same place in the collection and thus can never know if your just searching the same varieties again. This tomato was so pink that you could call it magenta and never had any cracks. It was slightly elongated about 4 inches long max and never had any white stem in the tomato. Was very meaty with small seed cavities.

Worth pointing out that many hybrids have sterile seeds. Flipping dice won't work that well if you don't have any numbers on them.

Do you want cheap seeds? Yesterday I bought a bunch of Valley Green Heirloom vegetable seeds from Menards on sale for 10 cents a pack, packed for 2023. The display rack is also full of common flower seeds, and all for 10 cents each. I've been buying these seeds for years with no problems at all but selection is limited so a good deal if you have a Menards near you.

This weekend I'll hit the seed displays at the local stores to look for the other seeds I want starting at $1.19 a pack and then I'll bite the bullet and order the $3 to $6 a pack seeds + shipping online I may need.

I think I'll do a RANT! Here in Minnesota all the vendors supplying seed displays are packed with short day onions with exception to Walla Walla. We need long day onions But they pack short day varieties like the 1015Y, Granex and grano 502, and a couple of red short day types. It's great for Dan and others in the south but not here. So here's my rant, people not knowing the difference buy and grow them and end up with ping pong size onions. Because of the disappointment of failure they never grow onions again until they learn what short and long day onions are. What are these seed companies thinking!

I think you can get American Seeds for four-packs-for-a-dollar at Dollar Tree stores, and also really cheap at Walmart. I've purchased some, and the germination seems fine.

Valley Green is what Amazon sells, but Kate in this thread says she had big problems with Amazon.

Speaking of local vendors not knowing what they're doing, we have a reputable nursery with a big seed collection that has NO MELON SEEDS. Duh? In the south??

Hi Kevin,

That is a good point you made about a person needing specifically long-day photoperiod onion seed when they live further North. When I lived in Maine (I went by the username MaineMan (MM) back then) that was a problem, but I had found an onion seed specialist that was photoperiod-aware and had a decent selection of long-day seeds. They could also ship seedlings in addition to seeds and would time their shipping date so that you would receive your seedlings when it was time to set them out in your area.

With our current access to the wonders of the Internet, we can do a search for long-day onion seed

(that is a link to a DuckDuckGo Internet search for long-day onion seeds for sale.)

ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

FYI Park Seed has an Amazon storefront with free shipping! Make sure the seller is JPPA (the parent company of Park) and while the selection is slightly smaller than on their website the seeds come directly from them. I’ve ordered Algarve seeds and some spinach I couldn’t find elsewhere that way. I believe the spinach was $2 more than on the website (much less than whatever it is they charge for shipping), but the beans were the exact same price.

I am also confused by Johnny’s shipping costs, especially given that they go up as you order more. It’s the reason I’ve yet to order from them, even though they have quite a few things I’d love to try. Over Black Friday many vendors were offering free shipping (not Johnny’s), so I got pretty much everything I wanted from Harris, Burpee and Seeds’n’Such.

Speaking of Burpee, I am also frustrated that the seeds they sell for $5-6 plus shipping on their website then often times show up at Home Depot for $1.99.

Not sure if this will work, but here’s a link to Park on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/ParkSeed/Homepage/page/F99DCE80-C764-4B75-A599-64B21D4D2E93

"Speaking of Burpee, I am also frustrated that the seeds they sell for $5-6 plus shipping on their website then often times show up at Home Depot for $1.99."

I won't order seeds from Burpee -- I've had one too many bad experiences with poor quality seed, including seeds that were broken in two when I received them (on more than one occasion). Off the rack they're fine, no problems (yet). Go figure.

We also got some bug-eaten pea seeds from Burpee, I probably should have complained to customer service about that, but there was too much other stuff going on at the time. I just really wanted to try their Brandy Boy hybrid, which isn’t available elsewhere.

No fan of Burpee here, their local seed stands lack their best cantloupe seed (Ambrosia) so they want you to order it via mail + shipping. Luckily one of my local nurseries does sell the Ambrosia transplants by early May. For a later crop I'll need to settle on planting another variety.....speaking of which I will now start a new thread for favorites....

Yes, same thing with Brandy Boy - not available anywhere other than the website. They do have “free shipping on seeds” offers every now and then (I believe they had one additional promotion like that since Black Friday), so I just wait for those. Their promotional emails aren’t TOO frequent and obnoxious.

I received an email from Eden Brothers for free shipping today, for anybody interested - they say to use code FREESHIPPING at checkout.

Yes, Sample Seeds is gone. Remy, the owner, died a couple of years ago from cancer.

When I grew more vegetables, I always participated in a local annual seed swap (Seedy Sunday) although I lost heart after rocking up with over a 100 sorted, packed and labelled flower seeds. A whole winter of sitting at the kitchen table with a magnifying glass and double pointed knitting pins...for every single pack to be ignored and unwanted. I took them away and scattered them the length of the road verges. Years later, the evidence is still to be seen, on the approach to Trumpington village hall but still.

I did, at least, come away with a bunch of Thomas Etty heritage seeds. My eldest has also turned into a vegetable purist so I make sneak trips to his patch and strew a few handfuls of limnanthes, hyssop and flax (because pollinators...and because I still hold the maternal thumbscrews (smirk).

Swapping plants and seeds is probably the best argument for allotment gardening. It mitigates all the other irritations of gardening on leased land with uncertain neighbours. And appeals to me generally impoverished cheapskate nature.

I avoid burgee seeds because of the low standards with their hybridization program. They continuously produce exclusive hybrids that should have been composted from the start, and pack them up to sell as "the best yet" and hype up the garbage. For tomatoes they produce these hybrid seeds and use key trigger words found in other popular tomato names to fool people (me included) thinking it's good and wonderful with pictures to prove it. The junk disappears on there website in a year or two because the bad reviews start to pour in.

fwiw, Gormet seeds international out of California is a scam. I called their phone number and you will get a message; "this mail box hasn't been set up yet". I found another number and the same thing. It's been like this for at least three years based on the reviews I found who lost their money and never got any seeds.

I was looking for a open pollinated long day onions seeds called Stuttgarter Riesen and found them at uprising seeds in Washington state. I wanted the seeds but most companies sell the sets.

When I see shipping costing almost as much as the product, I cancel before paying.

I ordered seeds from MIGardener earlier this week. Every pack is $2 and shipping was free. They don't have an exhaustive selection, but they have the basics for an excellent price.

I did grow their Aunt Ruby's German Green last summer, which all turned yellow. So, something was off. But, everything else was fine.

Martha

Reimer seeds is another one to stay far, far, away from. Poor germination, seed packets labeled incorrectly, non-existent customer service. They list an impressive variety of cultivars on their website but I suspect they actually have about 1/4 of the cultivars that they list and pawn off something else when someone orders the other 3/4. I got burnt once with a small order from them about 10 years ago...never again.

My dad used to order all of his seeds from Burpee back in the 70s and 80s when they were a quality company. I've never ordered anything from them but I've bought a few of their packets off the racks at HD. I'm not impressed with Gurney either. Back when I grew corn every year, I was tempted to try their 'Gotta have It' sweet corn but the price was ridiculous.

There are a lot more seeds in Burpee's seed packs that they ship to you opposed to what's in the racks at the store. However I seldom use them all. With peas I sow them all in a patch instead of in rows. I'd have to use multiple packs. And last year I grew lettuce in the spring and fall and emptied the seed pack on one variety.

Find thee your closest Seedy Saturday, and if it’s in a good hub, you will have seeds for days! Funny story. At my local Seedy Saturday early last month, one of my local gardening groups was sharing a table with a prominent seed vendor. I figured the seed vendor was selling seeds (as most of the vendors were)., so I really didn’t pay much attention as I didn’t want to buy anything. Anyway, I happened to be around towards the end when they were closing up, and started talking to the vendor and he said he was actually GIVING the seeds away (this really was not apparent from the display, and I think most attendees didn’t even realize that, so he had tons left over). So I suggested to him that if he wanted to get rid of his leftovers, he might want to give them to the garden club about 2 feet right beside him. And they were all giddy like they couldn’t have thought of this themselves after spending 5 hours with him at the same table! They said they could use them at their next meeting for their seed exchange. What’s even funnier, after I negotiated all this for them, they asked if I wouldn’t mind taking it home myself as they had so much to move already, and bring it to their next meeting. So I took the seed boxes, threw them in my bag and walked home. They were actually very light. Of course, after all my efforts, I made sure to take ALL the seeds I wanted from the lot, for myself and to share with my friends! But the garden club did receive the leftovers :-)

This was noted earlier, but re vegetable seeds, Baker Creek has free shipping. I just ordered one package of seeds from them. The price of the seeds was on the order of what everyone else charges. It came in a 1oz firm cardboard EasyPost envelope, postage priced at $0.60. Goodness knows how others charge far more than that for shipping a lightweight seed envelope. Probably takes someone half a minute to package, seal, and label. You could fit a lot more seed packets in that cardboard envelope.

I ordered three seed packets from Baker Creek last night and they already sent me shipping information. My seeds were $3 per packet and, as stated above, shipping is free. i think MIGardener also ships free if you spend $12 or more.

@daninthedirt (USDA 8b, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa) and @lovemycorgi z5b SE michigan Thanks for the mention of Baker Creek! I wasn't familiar with them but just placed a small order.