Submitted PhotoBi-colored azalea flowers.

We are a week into March and last weekend experienced some of our coldest winter weather. We have still not had a killing freeze but the frost last weekend did nibble some plants back a lot.

A gardener has requested telephone numbers, addresses and web addresses of gardening catalogs we discussed. 

Wayside Gardens is one of the best catalogs and they put out several each year. The catalogs are seasonal and each is devoted to different types of plants. The catalogs they publish are beautiful; they have close-ups of many plants, excellent descriptions, often growing tips and other helpful information. 

They offer some unusual plants that are difficult to find in other catalogs, the plants are grouped according to genus and there is information that is just fun to read. This is a great catalog for plant lovers; it is as enjoyable to read as a novel. Toll-free number is 1-(800) 845-1123. The website is WaysideGardens.com.

White Flower Farm has a very good catalog. They also publish more than one book per year, seasonal catalogs are sent at the proper time to plant perennials or bulbs or annuals or shrubs and trees.  

Photos are excellent and they furnish a lot of information on each plant they sell. Their plants are expensive, much more so than local nurseries, but they are high quality and they are guaranteed to live. Their toll-free telephone number is 1-(800) 503-9624. 

Their website is at www.whiteflowerfarm.com. White Flower Farms offers a yellow-flowering Japanese magnolia, it is described as a four-foot bare-root plant and is $50. They have many unusual species and if you are like me you will want one of everything you see.

The Good Seed catalog by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds is a pleasure to look at and very informative to read. Extra background information about many of the vegetables and some flowers; historical information about the many species of vegetables is very interesting. 

They offer different and unusual species not found other places. Their seeds are GMO free (genetically modified organism). This interesting catalog offers black corn, blue corn, green corn, strawberry popcorn and a recent introduction called “Glass Gem” that comes in translucent kernels of many colors; the kernels of corn are said to look like rows of glass beads. 

They offer 18 different types of eggplants; purple eggplants, pale purple and white eggplants, smooth ivory white eggplants, green, red and red and orange, like a half-ripe tomato. The seeds cost roughly around $3 a pack. The catalog offers 16 types of lettuce and six types of kale seed. Pepper seed must be popular as there are 38 species offered for sale.

Peppers in every color of the rainbow, all shapes and sizes, if it is a hot pepper the information gives the heat rating in Scoville units.

Tomato seeds come in over 70 species; these are not hybrids, and they will return true to the parent if you save seed. They have white tomatoes, blue tomatoes, black, orange, green, bicolor tomatoes, red ones, very dark red ones, orange tomatoes, pink tomatoes, green tomatoes, whatever you want in a tomato, I think you can find it in this seed catalog. 

Twenty-one types of melons with flesh in pink, red, yellow, green and white. 

Radishes are well represented with 22 species with a wide range of colors; red, pink, white (a Daikon) that can get up to 100 pounds. Although most are around 30 pounds.

The herb section is extensive and the greens section is very well represented by greens from all over the planet. The flowers offered are not as extensive but they are unique in that they are not hybrids and not GMO. 

These are old-timey species like the ones your grandmother and great-grandmother grew in their gardens. Some types of seed will reseed themselves each year and a fresh crop of seedlings will come up the following spring. They will be true to the parent as they have not been crossed with an outline genetic pattern, they are not hybrids. 

The phone number is 1-(417) 924-8917 and their webpage is www.rareseeds.com.

The company Thompson & Morgan is the oldest continuously operating seed company that I’m aware of. It is based out of England and has the largest collection of seeds and plants I have ever seen anywhere in a catalog. 

They offer seed of angel trumpets in five different colors, they have such an extensive selection it is hard to decide what to buy when ordering from Thompson & Morgan. They have many unusual plants that you can’t find anywhere else. 

Catalog pictures are smaller, most of them are about 3″ by 3″ or 3″ by 4″ but you can certainly tell what you’re viewing. Thompson and Morgan gives a smaller description of each plant but they also have many different types of plants such as burgundy carrots,  yellow carrots, white carrots, pink carrots and deep orange carrots, there is such variety in what is available today compared to what there was 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. 

Their collection of amaranthus is fascinating. I’ve always wanted to grow some of the ponytail kind with the long, long clusters stringing down. 

They buy plants from all over the world so this is where you might likely see things you have not seen before, what may be a weed to us may be a highly prized plant halfway around the world. 

I saw two passion flower vines offered for sale for $13 or $14, locally they come up in the edges of corn fields and bloom all summer and fall and are considered a weed. Monarch butterflies search for them as a host plant to lay their eggs on. The little caterpillars will not eat anything other than milkweed. 

The milkweed has a mild poison in it and that discourages birds from eating the caterpillars. The poison does not hurt the caterpillars, it just protects them from predators. 

As you browse through T&M’s catalog, you will see seeds from all over the world, plants you have most likely not seen before and they will be unique in your garden.

The company is based in England and has been in business since 1855. They only sell GMO-free seed and plants. I can’t find an International phone number. The website is thompkins-morgan.com.

One good catalog is Sow True Seed, they sell only GMO-free seeds also. Most seed companies do sell hybrids and do sell GMO seed. They have an extensive vegetable seed section with all of the usual multicolored vegetables, some odd and unusual ones and the tried-and-true ones. 

They sell a limited number of flower seed but the flower seed are not hybrids, they are the type that will reseed and come back the following year unless you’ve allowed the seedlings to be overgrown by weeds or some such natural force. 

They have several potato varieties, white French fingerling, red thumb fingerling and Australian crescent whites. They sell potatoes, garlic and onion plants by the pound. A pound of shallots is $10 and you have the choice between French red and Dutch yellow. 

There is essential advice given for almost every vegetable sold in this book. Sweet potatoes are sold as slips: 12 slips for $14 and 50 slips are $35, they have Beauregard, Burgundy I, Nancy Hall and Murasaki.

The phone number for Sow True Seeds is (828) 254-0708. Their website is www.sowtrueseed.com.

Burpee is the last catalog we will talk about. Burpee mainly sells seed, they sell more flower seed than vegetable seed. The company also sells fruit trees, berry bushes and a limited number of perennial plants. At $14-$16 for each perennial and no size of shipping plants given, starting from scratch can get very expensive. 

Burpee is an old company and produced the first white marigold. They offered $10,000 to the gardener who could produce the first white marigold flower and that was accomplished two or three  decades  ago. 

I have seen one of their massive test gardens in Lompoc, Calif. The fields of flowers stretched a couple of miles along the road and the colors were intense. 

Burpee also sells many gardening tools, containers, greenhouses, starter kits, plant protection covers, grow racks with lights, cold frames, ground cover fabrics, raised planting beds, composters, plant markers, rain barrels, fertilizers, protective bird nets, trellises and custom fencing for plant support. 

Their website offers how-to videos as well as additional plants and seed. The catalog has 56 pages of flowers and seed and over 80 pages of vegetables, herbs and fruit bearing plants. The photos are excellent in bright colors and close-ups of the flowers or plants. 

Phone number is 1-(800) 888 -1447 and the website is www.burpee.com. 

You can Google gardening catalogs and there will be dozens and dozens available to order. Many specialty catalogs that focus on one genus or a group of plants such as tropical or shade-loving or cacti or heat-tolerant can be found. 

I have rambled on too long and am out of space. See you next week.

 

Susan Grooms lives and gardens in South Georgia.