Circle M Farm

My name is Kriss Marion. And I’m an addict.

For months now I’ve been stashing garden catalogs in a basket behind the gold velvet couch in my living room – hiding them from myself. Out of sight, out of mind. Since the relentless wave of shiny-paged portfolios started invading my house in October, I’ve been trying to hold back the inevitable orgy of ordering that’ll happen once I open myself to the delights of these dangerous publications. And I’ve been good.

Except for just once this season, I’ve been good. Just before the holidays, I received a tantalizing Vermont Bean Seed Company catalog I simply could not resist. First of all, beans, both bush and pole, were stand-out performers in my gardens all summer and fall, and their taste and crunch is still so much with me that the very name of the catalog got my juices running. In spite of the fact that I’d stoically hidden every other catalog that’s crossed my doorstep without looking in it, I allowed myself the small pleasure of peeking inside this one and that’s where I really went astray. Royal Purple! Dragon Tongue! Pencil Pod! Scarlet Runner! Dixie Speckled Butter Lima! Fava Broad Windsor! Flagrano Shell! Lina Cisco’s Bird Egg! I got all of those and more, most in the largest 1/2 pound size. But I also ordered my teenage son, Jake, a Mushroom Growing Kit from the catalog for Christmas, and so I felt justified in placing the order.

Why should a CSA farmer wish to deny herself the supreme satisfaction of purchasing seeds? Well, the thing is, even though I grow vegetables for a living, I have no business buying seeds because I’ve got hundreds of packages already – stored in Rubbermaids under my bed, tossed in milk crates in the garage, scattered on shelves in the garden shed and laying at the bottom of the canvas totes in which I carry tools out to the garden. By the middle of the growing season, all of my nicely organized boxes of seeds planted, those waiting for the right time, and those in line for re-planting begin to get more and more disheveled as the tasks of weeding and harvesting mount higher and higher. Finally by September, stacks of half-used seed packages are left wherever there is room to set them amidst the canning jars, stored squash and drying herbs that spill out of the sheds and into the house come fall. Until I get all of those packages gathered up into one place and neatly arranged again into boxes by variety and planting time, I need to keep my nose clean by keeping it out of the catalogs.

Here’s where the addiction comes in – for me, to see a plant is to love a plant. And that includes seeing by reading. So when I see a variety I like in someone else’s garden or a catalog picture or even when I read a description of its virtues, I’m pretty much overwhelmed by the need to grow it. At the time, though, the impulse doesn’t feel like obsession at all. When I’m surrounded by a fan of open seed catalogs it seems absolutely practical to order hundreds of dollars of seeds at a time and I can make that call or hit that button in a shockingly cool and collected manner. This is why market farming is the perfect profession for me! At least it could be, if I could restrict my purchases to those seeds I don’t already own. But I’m certainly not alone in my profligate habits when it comes to seed seeking.

“We gardeners,” writes best-selling author Michael Pollan in his little-known first book, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, “have always had trouble heeding Henry Ward Beecher’s sound nineteenth-century advice, that we not be ‘made wild by pompous catalogs from florists and seedsmen.’ In a few months, summer will pass judgment on the merit, or folly, of our January schemes, but right now anything seems possible.” So true, so true! Last winter at this time, I not only ordered thousands of seeds, but in my exuberance I picked up a Murray McMurray Poultry catalog that was mixed in with the rest, and went on to order 50 meat roosters, 15 Arucana hens, 6 cayuga ducks and a dozen turkeys, all of which had to be started in the house under heat lamps. What could I have been thinking?

One strategy for temperance I’ve taken up lately is to allow myself to actually shop from a very few garden catalogs. That means that some, pretty as they are, get thrown immediately upon receipt into the paper recycling bin. Some I keep for the excellent horticultural information they provide – Johnny’s Seeds for vegetables, White Flower Farm for perennials, Fedco Trees for fruit. Some I keep for beauty and inspiration – I love R.H. Shumway’s old-fashioned black-and-white etchings and Landreth’s colorful cornucopia. I still have covers I saved every year from the old Shepherd’s Garden Seeds catalogs. (This catalog has since disappeared under the ownership of White Flower Farm, but Renee’s Garden Seeds now features the same seed-buyer and the same art.) Finally, I keep a few more to peruse – mostly organic, mostly heirloom, mostly on the small side – like Seeds of Change, Baker Creek, Sand Hill Preservation and my latest favorite: The Redwood City Seed Company Catalog of Ecoseeds (I’ve grown their red okra, kumi kumi squash and some Incan parching corn that grew to be 25-feet tall and drew visits from neighbors.)

This luscious squash is pictured in Fedco online this year.

Last year, I actually only bought seeds from Johnny’s. This saved me the time of comparing prices, the temptation of buying subtle variations, and the cost of shipping from several places. This year, I’ll only buy from Fedco. Of course, I’ve already breached my own rule with the Christmas order from Vermont Bean Seed. Oh, and since we’re going to finally start a berry patch on the place this year, I’ll simply have to place an order with Miller Nurseries. So much for rules…

Probably the best strategy to use is the one experts advocate to save money while food shopping: “Make a list of what you need, and only buy those items. Don’t even walk down an aisle unless it has one of the items you need, and avoid the endcaps where specials are featured.” Well, I’m pretty lousy at this in the grocery store, and I certainly don’t do this while seed shopping. Wandering through piles of catalogs in the winter is one of the few things that gets a gardener through the dormant season. And those enticing front and back cover spreads of new introductions! But if I can at least hold myself back from cracking open their pages until I inventory the seeds I already have, I think I’ll do I decent job of keeping irresponsible purchases in check. Now I just have to clear Christmas wrap and tree lights to uncover the piles of seed packets underneath, and then I’ll allow myself to bring that wonderful, dangerous basket out from behind the couch.