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"Why I Keep Coming Back To Seed Catalogs"

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In the middle of the unforgiving Canadian winter, there’s one thing that brings me spring-like cheer: seed catalogs. 

I’ve been a seed catalog enthusiast for as long as I can remember. As a child growing up on Cape Breton Island along Canada’s east coast, it felt luxurious that a company would send you a thick, glossy catalog (for free!) and I treasured my time poring over the colorful pages. The cheerful plant names, such as “Easter Egg Radishes” and “Candy Cane Peppers,” were intoxicating and heartening. I’ve kept up my catalog devotion ever since. 

I track my ideas in a gardening notebook that I’ve had for nearly twenty years (compete with grid paper to plan out my plots, row by row). When I’m feeling ambitious, I break out my online spreadsheets. Catalog pages get torn up and pasted in my notebook and I send photos to friends asking for their opinion. Sure, last year’s rose bushes didn’t make it and there’s serious evidence that I’m destined to never grow potatoes. I’m in a never-ending battle with rabbits, Japanese beetles and a family of voles obsessed with my strawberry patch. My weeding skills are abysmal. But the catalog doesn’t know any of that. 

I’m not alone in my passion; for catalog devotees, the planning matters as much as the planting. “I wish I had room to grow all the things [I see in the catalog]. I get inspired to try new varieties each season,” says Tracy Noble-Botting, a home gardener in Ottawa, ON. Even for home gardeners in warmer climates, such as Gray Chapman, in Atlanta, GA, catalogs still offer a respite from a dreary winter. “Flipping through a thick catalog of heirloom flowers and veggies is a lovely antidote [to the gray weather],” Chapman writes in an email. “It’s not just the obvious pleasure of seeing all that color, either; it’s imagining all the possibilities in my own garden and getting excited about the promise of what could be.”

 

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It’s been the harbinger of Spring for so many years hasn’t it . Seed , Gardening and Poultry Catalogs. Only one i got this year Shumways .

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Must be they’re cutting costs by not sending them out.

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I got Baker Creek and a few others. I got another one within the last week. I only remember Baker Creek because that is where I bought all my seeds at. 

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