Oct 14, 2025
do not taste plants if you don't know what they are
do not identify a fruit as edible just because it tastes sweet
hope you didn't eat any fucking seeds, bro
seen from Argentina
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Netherlands
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Brazil
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
do not taste plants if you don't know what they are
do not identify a fruit as edible just because it tastes sweet
hope you didn't eat any fucking seeds, bro
Requisite Yearly We Do Not Buy from Baker Creek post
It's seed catalog time! One of my favorite times of year, honestly. While my garden mostly sleeps, full of dry leaves and fluffed-up birds and cold breezes, I'm indoors contemplating tomato varieties and telling myself that *this* will at last be the year I get the peas in on time.
As it is that appointed time, my usual yearly reminder: don't buy from Baker Creek!
Baker Creek are racist, fascist assholes! They intended to platform Cliven Bundy at their yearly conference, and Native seedkeepers have said that Baker Creek stole from them (and sell the product of that theft). They did a For Ukraine fundraiser that actually went to a far-right Ukrainian organization invested in obliterating LGBT rights.
Baker Creek might have some fun varieties of seed, but I can very nearly guarantee that if you see something there you want, I can find it or an analogue for you somewhere else.
Here's a selection of seed companies I personally have bought from, or people I trust have recommended; there will be a secondary and possibly tertiary reblog, since Tumblr only allows me to do ten links at once. If there's a company you've bought from and liked, please leave a review for them in the comments! What did you get, what did you like, how was the germination? Native Seed Companies: (please, please feel free to add more in comments to this post)
Discover unique heirloom and non-GMO seeds at Alliance of Native Seedkeepers. As a Native American-led store, we specialize in over 1,500 va
Native Seeds Search is a non-profit that conserves and sells heirloom seeds, foods and Native American art and jewelry from the Southwest. W
Companies Specializing in Native Pollinator Plants and Seed:
Butterfly Plants and Seeds for your garden by Joyful Butterfly, native, always safe for all pollinators! Attract butterflies. Shop Now!
New to me last year, but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED seed preservation company (they have an incredible selection! My 2023 germination of their seed was like 98%! But they only accept paper order forms):
Heirloom seeds, organic sweet potato slips and heritage poultry. Sandhill Preservation Center has over 2500 varities to choose from.
Cool weird nightshades, I got a bunch of dwarf tomato seeds from them last year and THEY didn't suffer from peppergate because they're a small company that does a lot of their own seed:
Many new Heirloom Vegetable Seeds are available: Tomatoes, Peppers, Kohlrabi, Pumpkin, Lettuce, Cabbage, Corn, Beet, Herbs, Carrot, Onion, B
A list of ten more companies or so, which I buy from every year, will follow in a reblog in about two minutes; please share that one instead of this one.
In exchange for more zinnias than she can carry, a small farm friend just gave me nine dozen fresh eggs.
SO MANY EGGPLANTS
I have enough to make WHATEVER DISH I WANT. Hóngshāo qiézǐ? Tortang talong? Last week I made this eggplant with Thai basil recipe from Woks of Life, and I'm craving it again already.
After three years in a row of really struggling to make eggplant work, I'm thrilled to have finally figured out how to keep it happy in my garden. I picked more eggplants today than I've gotten in any two other entire years. I'm so happy!
I can't find my garden notebook anywhere, and stuff *must* get into the ground, it's so late but the weather has been viciously unreliable. I have most of what I need to know--all I'm really missing are my notes on the tomatoes.
Unfortunately, that means that either I 1) plant out one of the two trays I have (36 plants? 48?) and just *hope* there's enough canning tomatoes in there or
2) plant 72 tomatoes in my garden. Eighty? A hundred? It's somewhere under a hundred and fifteen, anyway. For two people.
Posts on Reddit, Bluesky, FB, multiple small forums and the individual warnings of people I trust: "So...in, like. Six months, max? There are going to be food troubles in the US. The zerg rush of tariffs, assaults on the people who harvest all our agricultural product, climate change bringing drought, flood, and a 'fire season' that lasts all year all combine into a Voltron of food insecurity suck, and it's bearing down on your neighborhood."
Me: *Sigh* "Okay. I guess I am growing sweet potatoes this year. And a lot more beans. I have to get the back beds in anyway. I can triple the squash, those'll keep well. Maybe parsnips? I'll grab a bunch of Japanese sweet potatoes from the Asian grocer tomorrow, and start them propagating slips in water."
The Grocer: possesses only a small selection of underwhelming and diseased-looking tubers
Me: "Fffffffuuuck. I am going to have to buy sweet potato slips? From where? Everybody only sells the orange ones. I hate orange sweet potatoes."
Sand Hill Preservation Center:
Sand Hill Preservation Center has the largest selection of sweet potato slips I have ever seen in my life. More than two hundred orange, gold, white, and purple sweet potato varieties.
This is in ADDITION to the startling number of varieties of heirloom seed they carry. And their measurements are generous; I bought some rare sunflowers from them last year, and the packet came stuffed so full that it broke.
The "downside" is that they operate on paper. While their catalog is up online at the link, you can only make an order by printing out their order form, filling it out with a pen, and sending it through the mail along with a check or money order made out to them. I'm pretty sure that this is to keep them from being overwhelmed with orders; 'cause if they had a web shop, EVERYONE would buy from them.
This is a volunteer echinacea! Throwing pastel flowers! The old owner had one or two hybrids, and for five years I've been encouraging the native Echinacea purpurea-- they hybridized, and it's surprised me with this lovely thing. I hope it's a stable cross.
Me, cheerily: "So I want to get the clematis into the ground today, it's going to go up on either side of the walk, pretty close to the front of the yard." The MFH: "On what?" Me: "Those skinny remesh strip arches that I was working on last year!" The MFH: "The floppy ones?" Me: "Yeah!" The MFH, wincing: "In the front yard?"
In possibly related news I guess I'm making a couple of garden obelisks