POTS & PLANTS

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Good gardening begins with a good seed catalogue. Our man in the garden recommends West Coast Seeds.

IT’S MARCH - AND SEED STARTING TIME!

By Peter W. Gribble

In my early years at the garden center, I was given the task of ordering the seeds for the following year. Instructed to follow more or less the previous year’s order, this wasn’t difficult but it allowed me the immense pleasure of browsing the latest seed catalogues and dreaming of hectares despite the 9 by 5-foot balcony I gardened on at the time.

Ordering started in September for some seed companies. The UK’s Sutton Seed order had to be in by mid-October at the latest when it was sent to a Toronto ordering warehouse and combined with all the other orders in Canada to take advantage of the bulk discount. The main shipment of Sutton’s blue packages arrived in March with additional smaller shipments coming throughout the spring months.

Having placed all the orders, I filled the racks. Other companies provided limited choices to order from: Half a rack; full rack; flowers; vegetables or all of the above. Their shrink-wrapped racks (say that ten times quickly) would arrive as early as December (Mr. Fothergill’s was usually first) pre-filled with their packages which upon setting up and unwrapping were ready to go.

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Little green sprouts — a promise of spring, and a bountiful harvest to come.

As packages sold out I would reorder and restock as necessary. Many companies did not provide the re-order option. Once the seeds were gone that was it for the season.

The Sutton catalogue had a page devoted to baby vegetable seeds, “a distinctively ‘up-market’ range commanding very high prices at the supermarket.” The seeds were the answer for chefs and shoppers to save money by growing these little exotics themselves.

This was during the then-latest incarnation of nouvelle cuisine with its emphasis on presentation. High-end restaurants aimed to have their small round of pan-fried foie gras artistically surrounded by cauliflowers the size of tennis balls, baby carrots the length of your thumb and Brussels sprouts the size of your thumbnail. Buying them at BC markets was impossible; growing them was a snap. They were quick to mature, took up little space, were easily grown in pots, and were perfect for the balcony. In tight tidy rows, they made a fairy garden hobby farm of nouvelle cuisine veggies.

The first packages to sell out were for the baby corn called Minipop, the ears of which were to be harvested just as the tassels began to show prior to pollination. The longest ears were a whopping 5 inches (12.5cm.) long.

Sadly, the purchasing house in Toronto closed many years ago and Sutton Seeds have been hard to find since. Their website, as of this writing, declares, “Sorry, this catalogue is no longer available.” 

For those who seek veggies for the balcony and patio, fear not! One company I saw develop and expand over the years was West Coast Seeds. From the beginning, their philosophy was to promote ethical gardening. They have succeeded beautifully by selling their own field-tested, non-chemically treated, non-GMO (not genetically modified) seeds for organic growing.  

As proof of this, featured in their seed racks are free copies of their West Coast Seeds Gardening Guide, an informative catalogue and reference helpful to beginner and expert. The Guide is updated every year and a secondary smaller publication (also free) comes out in the summer for summer and fall plantings aimed at winter harvests.

West Coast Seeds has also long had a deep commitment to the community, helping schools, charities and other non-profit organizations through fundraising programs, and seed and food bank donations to teach the principles of sustainable gardening. Every year they donate the harvest from their trial gardens to the local food banks, which last year was approximately 7,000 lbs. of vegetables. Their donation partners do the same in this remarkable philosophy to “help repair the world.”

During the pandemic they committed 100 percent of the proceeds of their Cosmo flower seed blend, “Dr. Bonnie Henry Pollinator Blend” (FL3909, page 95 in the guide) to Dr. Henry’s charity of choice: Food Banks Canada. This currently amounts to $150,000. The donation will be made to the region where the purchase was made. Astonishing what a single package of flower seed can do, even before it has been opened and planted.

I had never been to West Coast Seeds’ facilities in Delta before and last month arranged to have a tour of the store, warehouse and trial gardens. A friend and gardening colleague and I drove down and met our guide, Aaron Saks, the Director of Finances. 

Admittedly, February is a quiet month to visit but already their planting and production teams are getting ready. The seed vault is a thick-walled room within a room kept at a constant cool and dry state for the seeds.

“Collecting some of our seeds is not always a quick process,” said Aaron. “Carrots, for example, don’t go to seed until the second year.”

Some seeds for the trial garden are first started in the long spacious greenhouse. Others wait for temperatures to warm outside before being direct sown in the garden beds. Aaron said one of the best times to visit is in early May for their annual seedling sale. Unfortunately, last year it was cancelled due to the pandemic and it has not yet been decided whether it will go ahead this year. Case numbers plus the vaccine rollout will tell.

Outside, each staff member who wants to has their own raised garden bed to grow their favourites or experiment with new varieties. Most plots were in various stages of dormancy, but two were impressively lush with brassicas (kales, cabbages and broccoli.) Beyond, there were individual stretches of lawn-mower-wide lawn alternatives from bee turf for pollinators to chafer beetle-resistant lawn blend.

We thanked Aaron for the tour and drove to the retail store where they have a range of garden accessories as well as their seed racks.

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You don’t need a lot of wide-open spaces to grow a tasty crop.

For the West End, the closest West Coast Seed rack appears to be at Choices Market in Yaletown, (corner of Davie and Richards Streets). The West Coast Seed website is easily navigable, highly informative and if Choices is out of the Guide, it’s available free from the website in a downloadable PDF.

For the one-bedroom apartment and small balcony, there is an acre’s worth of choice if you have six to eight hours of sun. I have managed with as little as four hours, but the yield is smaller. On their website, click on “Resources” at the top then go to their Garden Wisdom Blog where there are articles on instructions for starting, rooftop gardening, commit-to-grow projects and others. The one you’ll want to look at first is on the fourth page of Resources: Mark MacDonald’s great blog Growing Food in Containers which has your list of suitable starter plants.

However, if your One-bedroom Farm, Inc. doesn’t have a balcony, your countertop is your acreage. I have happily grown a constant year-round supply of fresh, nutritious sprouts on my kitchen counter. West Coast Seeds sells a wide variety of seed packages of single varieties of sprouts or blends as well as several kinds of sprouters.

Remember, don’t overbuy. With a few pots in a confined space, one package of seeds may be far more than you need. As with food, don’t waste your seeds. You can share or save them in a dark, cool dry place for next year.

George Santayana once wrote, “There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.” Savoring the taste of your seed-grown vegetable from a balcony pot or a fresh crunchy sprout you’ve germinated in a jar, is sure to enhance the interval.