A confession: Seeds and neighbors

Hi. I’m Mechel and I’m a seed addict.

There, I said it.

I love seeds for the potential they hold in their tiny DNA packed shells. The problem is those darn seed catalogs. I love them and hate them. I get sucked in with the glorious photos and the hope that I too can grow them.

The first problem I face with the photos is scale. I can’t tell how big or small the fruit/vegetable/flower will end up being. Some really cute peppers I grew last year were about the size of my baby granddaughter’s fist. They were darling, but not practical and not worth the effort and space they occupied in the garden. My memory is going. It must be, because I keep ordering new seeds and find that I already ordered one or another so I end up with too many.

This brings in the need for good neighbors. Seed packets always have more seeds than one gardener needs so get together and make a plan, split the cost and share the package. I decided that this year I need to start keeping better records. The home gardener should keep a notebook detailing the seeds and plants ordered, from whom they were purchased and when they should arrive. Sometimes the gardener or farmer (talking about myself here) will place orders in the fall for bare-root plants that surprise them when they arrive on the doorstep one fine spring morning. Growers don’t ship until it’s time to plant them. They know us well. That’s another good reason to keep records.

A calendar is quite handy to note dates that plants emerge from their long sleep, dates you’ve planted seeds, dates you harvested and dates you order. As a flower farmer, I have to order my bulbs for the next year right after I harvest the bulbs in the current year. That requires some planning but it’s not much different for the home gardener. Record keeping is essential. I write everything down now. Did I mention my memory is fading?

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Editor’s note: Mechel Wall is owner and operator of both The Cottage Flower Shop and Wallflower Farm. She can be contacted at blooms@ wallflowerfarm.net.