Sustainable Seed Co.

Wheat, rye and triticale, montage of pictures from the USDA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Alright, the first website I bookmarked from my podcast show notes is for the Sustainable Seed Company.

The actual link I followed is to the quinoa page. This link is in relation to some seed varieties mentioned on the podcast. So when I decided to read the rest of the site’s seed varieties, I discovered several useful pieces of information, about the seed varieties as well as discovering additional valuable information.

Wit this post I will be chronicling my discoveries.

Moving back on the site by one level, took me to the Heirloom Grains page. The page lists Amaranth, Barley, Bread Poppy, Buckwheat, Flax, Millet, Oat, Quinoa, Rye, Sorghum, Spelt, Triticale, and Wheat. Many of the categories list almost extinct varieties, and I plan on ordering a few of them since this seed grower is in souther California which has similar harsh climate as I do here at my urban home stead.

After reading about the grains a bit, I moved on to the vegetables. They carry Artichoke, Asparagus, among others. On the asparagus page I noticed an old seed catalog page thumbnail was used to enhance the page content. This intrigued me, but it was too small to make out much useful information. I moved on to the Bean page, which also showed a thumbnail image. Moving on to the Beet page the thumbnail was of an old, old seed packets of beet seed. It was by a seed company called Maule, the seed packet said Maule’s Blood Turnip Beet, so I reached via Google for Maule’s seed, and I get a hit with the Internet Archive for a PDF of a 1946 catalog, which I promptly downloaded.

This spurred me on to continue to look at all the categories on the site to find more references to old catalogs. I moved on to the Broccoli pagem and the thumbnail there showed Johnson E. Stokes Garden and Farm Manuals, and one of the Google search results points me to the USDA’s NAL Image Collection of old catalogs. This page mentions that all the images are from the Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection. This second page lists 4 PDFs of old seed catalogs.

Moving on to the remaining main pages of the site I am researching all thumbnails and see if I can find any more PDFs of the catalogs and will list them below.

Lastly, I noticed some useful information regarding techniques or seed information I didn’t know, and will document in separate posts.

Related articles

• Heirloom, Organic & Hybrid. Knowing the Difference (farmfoodieandfitness.com)
• More seed-vending machines for city (thehindu.com)
• Seed Catalogs – The Gardener’s Winter Pastime (rubylane.com)
• Starting Seeds and Transplanting: A Beginning Farmer/Gardener Guide to Growing Healthy, Organic Plants from the Kerr Center (slideshare.net)