The holidays are upon us and we are waiting for spring to begin. I was lucky to find my Baker’s Seed Catalog filling my mind with horticultural joy. The Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Catalog is more like a magazine than a seed catalog. The 132 book coloring pages catalog is released to over 250,000 gardeners every year.
The catalog is filled with magnificent photographs of heirloom herbs and flowers printed on glossy paper worthy of hanging and hanging in the home. . Pictures of Jeer and Emilee Gettle and daughter Sasha are scattered throughout the catalog along with clips from the likes of Martin Luther King, Thomas Jefferson, Andy Rooney and the Bible.
I love the text from Mark Twain featured under a photo of a mountain man holding a basket of melons that reads; “The true role of the southern melon is separate and should not be mentioned with the common ones. The chief of the delicacies of this world, the king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what it is. Angels eat it.”
Watermelon seeds are prominent among the 1,400 different heirloom varieties and hard to find seeds in the catalog. Baker’s Creek Seed offers 45 varieties of watermelon in colors ranging from red to pink, orange, yellow and even white. Old time varieties such as Black Cream Ice Cream from the 19th century are available alongside melons from around. the world of Katanya, a small sweet watermelon from Russia.
The company offers an amazing 227 varieties of tomatoes including 63 red, 24 yellow, 15 white, 23 striped, 30 purple, 41 pink, 17 golden, and 14 green. Heirloom tomatoes include Weissbehaarte, a rare, ancient German miniature white cherry type tomato true Black Brandywine from 1920 Tarentum.
Jeer and Emily Gettle have been called “Evangelists of by the New York Times and Jeer has been featured in a catalog of scandals across Belize Pink Heart Tomatoes on one of his seed-finding forays around the world. “> we looked at the farmers. market on the bank of the town; we stopped and I was in vegetable heaven!
Seeds from that trip to Belize along with seeds from other Jeer expeditions are available from the catalog or online at www.rareseeds.com. Browsing the catalog from the Baker’s Creek Association is the perfect winter activity.
