Owens Corning

National Gardening Association Seed Catalog Survey

By Warren Schultz

This is the time of year when the mail carrier becomes our best friend (or worst enemy). We spend hours at the window, looking for the red, white and blue truck. We pace the room. Jump up from our chairs at the sound of an approaching vehicle. Walk out to the mailbox three or four times each day before noon.

It's not a tax refund we're expecting. Or notification from Ed McMahon that we've won a check that dwarfs the national deficit. It's seed catalogs and seeds we're waiting for.

The holidays are over. It's time to think gardening again. For us, these seed catalogs bring more excitement than all the glossy pages of woodsy clothing or computer software. They're a sign that maybe we've turned a corner. Instead of a whiff of perfume, the pages seem to carry the scent of a spring shower.

There's a pragmatic side to our impatience, too. This is time- sensitive material. You can't get early tomatoes if you order the seeds late. As gardeners -- especially southern gardeners where the season starts early -- we're dependent on fast service from the seed companies.

By now, we all know from personal experience which seed companies are fast and which are slow. But last year we at National Gardening decided to confirm our suspicions by checking the performance of several seed companies in a blind test.

We chose eight companies, generally large, national companies, with a couple of smaller ones for comparison. Early in December of 1991, we asked eight gardeners located around the country to send postcards to the companies, requesting catalogs. The testers counted the days it took for the catalog to arrive, then ordered the seed we specified and counted the days until it appeared at the doorstep. Our testers then rated the quality of the variety information and planting instructions included with each order.

It took longer than expected for most companies to send out their catalogs. We suspect that's because most didn't have them back from the printers until after Christmas. But we purposely ordered early. We wanted to push the envelope, to see how fast we could get seeds from the new catalogs into our testers' hands.

Once the catalogs arrived, the real race was on. Seeds began to arrive within nine days. And they kept trickling in for another month and a half. The fastest company across the board was Johnny's Selected Seeds, with an average time from order to receipt of seeds of just under twelve days. The slowest company was Seeds Blum at an incredible 53 days. And three of the eight who ordered seed from this company still hadn't received it by the time the test concluded. Most of the other companies' response times were bunched in the middle (the average was about 16 days).

Of course, there's more to service than speed. Once the seeds are in our hands, we all need some help figuring out what the heck to do with those little things. So we had the testers report on the quantity and quality of information included with each order.

Three companies -- Johnny's Selected Seeds, Stokes Seeds Inc. and W. Atlee Burpee & Co. -- received very high marks for their packet protocol. Testers appreciated that instructions, sometimes regionally based, were included right on the pack. Park Seed Co., Gurney's Seed & Nursery Co. and Thompson & Morgan all included booklets of growing information that testers found useful.

Here's a sampling of the reports on each company:

Johnny's Selected Seeds: well-organized catalog; excellent instructions on packet; loved the resealable flap.

Stokes Seeds Inc.: great information on packet; very thorough details on harvesting and freezing; includes regional guidelines; handling fee seems pricey.

W. Atlee Burpee & Co.: good all-around information on packet; good value in seed.

Harris Seeds: very detailed information in catalog, but not on packet.

Gurney's Seed & Nursery Co.: included booklet on planting, some say more, some say less detailed than others; hard-to-find items in catalog.

Thompson & Morgan, Inc.: no (germination test) date printed on seed pack; growing diary on some packets; booklet included but some said not useful.

Park Seed Co.: excellent booklet; seed packet hard to use, seeds stick to insides; no dates on packet.

Seeds Blum: no instructions on packet; catalog full of information, but hard to read; most comments were about poor service; seeds sent late or not at all.

Over the course of the year we received several complaints about Seeds Blum. Subscribers reported that they had not received seed orders, although their checks had been cashed. In fact, of the eight people who participated in our test, two never received the seeds they had paid for. Their letters to the company were not acknowledged.

I tracked down Jan Blum, who expressed surprise that some customers had not received their seeds, and that those who did received them so late. But she admitted that the company had problems keeping up with orders last year.

Seeds Blum is still in business, though they stopped answering their phone in March and closed down the office in June due to a family health crisis. Jan Blum admits that they were swamped, largely because of employee and computer problems. The business has grown too much over the years, she says. She's trying to shrink it by halting phone orders and raising prices. Blum is reluctant to promise that service will be any quicker in 1993. But she says, "I hope to get all orders processed within four weeks."

For the future, she encourages people to order in the off- season. Don't wait 'til January or February -- order in the fall. Seed ordered then really won't be any less fresh than that ordered in the spring, she says.

That's good advice ... for next year. In the meantime, as a result of the complaints from our readers, we've stopped listing Seeds Blum as a source. If you like their offerings and appreciate their efforts to offer rare, open-pollinated varieties, order at your own risk.

We realize we may have neglected your favorite company in our survey. (Even though they weren't on the ballot, we heard good things about Abundant Life Seed Foundation, Pinetree Garden Seeds, R.H. Shumway's and Nichols Garden Nursery, for instance.) If there are any you're especially pleased (or displeased) with, we'd like to hear from you.

Provided by NGA
Reprinted with permission HouseNet, Inc.

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