Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Seed Catalog Personalities
Can seed catalogs have personalities? Do you buy from a particular company because you like the catalog?
I started this post over a week ago. I was going to write a comparison of a few seed catalogs, but it turned into a cranky rant against one company's glossy catalog. I tried to rewrite the post in milder language, but found I was still cranky. It's just that this catalog was an old reliable - probably the one thing that got me interested in gardening more than any other - and now I don't like it much any more. I feel it doesn't respect me. That it thinks all it has to do is show me some pretty pictures and I'll go chasing them, credit card in hand. Well, it's wrong. I've found other seed catalogs I like much better. They inform me. They entertain me. They like gardening and I think they like me.
The one with no pictures is one of my favorites.
Labels: catalogs
5 Comments:
Entangled: That made me laugh! I know what you mean. Sometimes the picture is so enlarged of the flower that you don't realize the flower is the size of a grain of rice and there are only two of them on a plant! I do like pictures though. They help! I hope you are not cranky anymore and thanks for the picture ID on my site! Leucodendron!
Layanee: I actually like pictures too, but every time I picked up this catalog I just got annoyed with it. I'm somewhat less cranky now, but I need another cup of tea ;-) Glad I could make you laugh!
I could go on a rant about some catalogues - in my early gardening days, I had several disappointments when I discovered that the flowers in the pictures didn't match the size of the actual flowers.
One of my favourite catalogues is gardensnorth.com - now they have small photographs, but they usually tell where a plant originates and some helpful information. Their seeds have had the highest germinating rate as well.
We've all been seduced at times by pretty pictures, that's for sure. What I want to know is if others are finding the price of seeds really high this year. I've been looking at a couple of Canadian catalogues, more for entertainment than serious purchases, and have laughed out loud at some of them.
Kate: It sounds like gardensnorth.com is my kind of catalog. I'll check it out - thanks!
Jodi: Hmmm, I hadn't compared seed prices to last year, but I suppose they're going up along with everything else. I haven't started looking seriously at plants yet (as opposed to seed) - I expect I'm in for a shock when I tally up my wish lists.
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