The Pinnacle of Seed Catalogs

Living where I do, I can walk over to a place I fondly call "the Hort" (Berkeley Horticultural Nursery) any time of the year and buy starts of all the vegetables that are seasonally ready for planting here in the San Francisco's East Bay.

But, my heart still skipped a beat when I saw the Seed Savers Exchange 2010 Catalog of Heirloom Seeds, Books and Gifts in my mailbox this week. First: it is stunning. The cover features a crate of many varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

And then, when you open it up, you get 97 pages of full color photographs and detailed, useful descriptions of hundreds of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Just look at a few of the wonderful names:

• Long Red Florence (onion)
• Bloody Butcher (corn)
• Amish Deer Tongue (lettuce)
• Bulgarian Carrot (pepper)
• Ten Commandments (gourd)
• Envy (soybean)
• Long Island Cheese (squash)
• Nebraska Wedding (tomato)
• Small Shining Light (watermelon)

The descriptions for each seed include where it came from (including if it was sourced by a member of the Exchange) and recommended best uses. Last year, I bought the Hutterite Soup Bean seeds, and, now that I have grown them and cooked with them, I can attest to the fact that they have performed as advertised here: "One of the best heirloom varieties for making soup. Beans soak up water well and cook very quickly. Makes a truly excellent creamy white soup."

In the middle of the catalog, you can read about Heritage Farm, in Decorah, Iowa, where the folks who started Seed Savers Exchange make their home, and the Exchange has its operations. By the time I get to this part of the catalog, I am half in love with these people, and I start imagining spending my summer vacation attending the Annual Meeting. This seed catalog is a powerful thing.

Of course, I've been feeling rather well disposed toward Iowa lately, what with the way things have been going down at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in our fair State of California... Maybe a whole lot of us ought to spend our tourist dollars in the Hawkeye State. What do you think?

If you want to get on this wacky bandwagon, buy some seeds, or just look at incredibly lovely pictures, you can download your very own copy of the catalog. You have now had fair warning of its potency.