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Vegetable-Seed & Fruit/Berry Sellers On The Web
While this page does not pretend to be a complete list of all seedsmen in the world, or the United States, or on the internet, or anywhere, it is—we think—a very useful one-stop resource for the home edibles gardener. One feature that helps make it useful is that rather than list every on-line vendor we could locate—just to prove that we can use a search engine as well as the next person—we have tried to make this a sizeable but still select list.
One thing that has helped tremendously is the useful Garden Watchdog (which we shall refer to hereafter as just GW), a feature of the “Dave’s Garden” web site and the direct successor to the old “Plants By Mail FAQ” lists. GW is a place where customers freely air their comments, positive and negative (sometimes very much so) about home-gardening seedsmen and nurseries. While it is not necessarily the final word, we find that its cumulative ratings pretty well agree with our own experiences and readings elsewhere. If you are thinking of buying seeds or plants from this or that vendor, always take a look at GW first, and possibly save yourself some grief. The only thing to beware is that the ratings (given as counts of positive, neutral, or negative) can be deceptive if the number of comments is very small—especially if there is only one comment; but with so very many seedsmen and nurseries to choose from in the world, sticking to those with perfect or very high GW ratings does not by any means cramp anyone’s choices.
Because we are, as described elsewhere on this site, in the “Pacific Northwest” (actually eastern Washington), we have now also included a special subsection of our full lists, that subsection being Regional seedsmen and nurseries (including both truly regional suppliers plus some outside our region whose climates seem to approximate ours). It is not so much that a local or regional supplier will necessarily have better materials than someone on, for example, the other coast; rather, it is that you have a somewhat better chance that the particular varieties they sell are appropriate for your area, because it is also their area (a point of especial significance for perennial plants like fruit trees, berry bushes, and suchlike). It is also the case that live plants, such as herbs, trees, and berries, will have a significantly shorter (and better determined) shipping time when they are coming from only a short ways off. And of course there’s the old-fashioned virtue of “buying locally.”
And further down this page is a list of yet more listing sites (sites besides this one that list seedsmen, that is).
Unless otherwise noted, all our lists of suppliers are simply alphabetical.
Some of the seedsmen listed below carry a full spectrum of seeds, but we list them here because they have one or more specialties.
Particular Vegetables
Asparagus: Nourse Farms: hybrid all-male asparagus. They are a Garden Watchdog Top-30 retailer, which means a lot.
Cucumbers: Cucumber Shop: large selection of all-OP cucumber varieties, many quite scarce and some unique in the U.S. market.
Garlic: Filaree Farm: our source; organic seed garlics from a famous grower [regional]
Garlic: The Garlic Store: another well-rated supplier (in Colorado).
Garlic: Gourmet Garlic Gardens: yet another well-rated supplier (in Texas)
(See also the list at The Garlic Seed Foundation.)
Lettuce: Johnny’s Selected Seeds: although a general seedsman, has an unusually broad selection of lettuces and greens (in Maine).
Onions, Leeks, and Shallots: Dixondale Farms: a respected family business, over a century old.
Peppers: ChilePlants: (plants only, no seeds) claims to have the “World’s Largest Selection of Chile & Sweet Pepper Plants”.
Peppers: Tomato Growers Supply Co.: despite the name, peppers, too; an outrageously commercial site, and very heavy on hybrids, but they do have a huge selection.
Peppers: The Pepper Gal [a Facebook page]: good selection, often recommended.
Peppers: Redwood City Seed: Craig Dremman is a famed pioneer pepper expert; this idiosyncratic site, which has more than just peppers, is fun to explore.
Peppers: The Chile Woman: (plants only, no seeds) hot and sweet types; she includes a long, useful list of other pepper-seed vendors on her site.
Potatoes: Wood Prairie Farm: A family farm in Maine.
Potatoes: Mythic Farm [not rated in Garden Watchdog]: “double-certified” (certified Organic by MOSA and inspected and certified by the Wisconsin Seed Potato Certification Program) seed potatoes.
Tomatoes: TomatoFest: heirloom types; they sell “only Certified Organic, open-pollinated tomato seeds”.
Oddities: Cultivariable: exploring unusual specialty vegetables—notably ulluco, mashua, yacon, oca, and Andean potato, but others, too—suited to the Pacific Northwest
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Herbs
The 800-pound gorilla of herbalists, whose name you are bound to run into if you research herb seed or plant buying, is Richter’s Herbs, a huge Canadian specialist. Regrettably, their net GW rating is not good, and—judging from the posts there, including some from obviously expert herbalists—probably with good cause; too bad.
There are many, many herb vendors all with high GW ratings, so it is hard to pick out some few. One can always review the current GW list of vendors specializing in herb plants (89 found as we type this), arranged in descending order of net rating; but here are a few names one often encounters in articles.
This is a list culled from that GW list; we omitted sites with underwhelming ratings (to us, anything under 85% positives); sites with good numbers but numbers based on a small sample size; and, of course, sites that have been closed down. We worked from the top down, but GW does not have them in strict ratings order, so we may have missed some that would qualify, but these should be enough to get you going.
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Fruits & Berries
As with herbs, there are seemingly countless numbers of nurseries, even restricting the list to those with perfect or near-perfect records at GW. Just within Washington State, there are well over a dozen with 100% ratings, though most on the west side of the mountains. As noted earlier, when buying live plants, it is best to buy as locally as possible, both to get plants accomodated to your climate and also simply to reduce the transit time between the vendor and you.
In the list below, we have focussed on regional nurseries (our region, that is) and a few very well-known and well-liked houses in similar (or worse) climates elsewhere. Because of that focus, this is just a microscopic sampling of the many fine mail-order hardy-fruit nurseries around—you can see a long list (90 as we type this) at Garden Watchdog; you should also review the useful list of GW-rated nurseries on the linked Houzz thread.
St. Lawrence Nurseries - fruit & nut trees, berry plants - respected old nursery, in a really cold climate, so all their plants are very cold-hardy, to occasional -50°F! (Potsdam, NY).
Nourse Farms: berry plants (& asparagus) - excellent reputation; serves both commercial growers and home gardeners (Whately, MA)
C & O Nursery: fruit trees - old, respected house; like Van Well, commercial but will deal with home growers. (Wenatchee, WA) [regional]
Grandpa’s Orchard: fruit trees - (Coloma, MI)
Van Well Nursery: fruit trees - a commercial orchard supplier, but will ship even single trees. (Wenatchee, WA) [regional]
Willow Drive Nursery [no GW rating]: fruit trees - very little info available, but apparently a significant regional player; founded 1992. (Ephrata, WA) [regional]
Fedco Trees - fruit & nut trees, berry plants - you can scarcely go wrong with anything associated with Fedco; also, they are a northerly supplier. (Clinton, ME)
Indiana Berry & Plant Co.: berry plants - serves both commercial growers and home gardeners - (Plymouth, IN)
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Mushrooms
Not enough gardeners trouble to grow this important food, but instead settle for the few—and often old and dry—types available at their local supermarket. They’re really rather easy to do, and most vendors explain the whole thing very clearly—so now you can have those expensive, exotic types more often. For these—considering how they are grown—regionality is immaterial.
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Exotics
These are houses that specialize in either plants for exotic climates, or rarities, or both. In our region, and most of North America, tropicals will require very special protected growing conditions, typically a greenhouse.
There are, as usual, many highly regarded houses. Rather than try to extract a list here—because there are not going to be any regional suppliers—we simply link you to two GW searches, each sorted by rating: one is a search for suppliers with the word “exotic” in their names and the other is for suppliers with the word “tropical” in their names (both sorted by GW rank).
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Gardening Equipment & Supplies
With garden tools—as with so many things—it pays to spend a little more and get top quality that will make your tasks easier and last far longer than cheap stuff ever does. The English Bulldog line is always highly praised, but there are other good ones, too. For pruners and like items, Swiss maker Felco is much admired.
For items where a particular brand is not critical, you should always start with local sources—even (perhaps especially) your neighborhood hardware store. Or, if a brand is critical, see if a local retailer can obtain it for you. Dealing locally is wise for many reasons. For mail order, there are, among many, many others, these (all well rated on GW):
Gardener’s Supply Co.
Lee Valley Tools - a Canadian firm now also in the U.S.
Frostproof Growers - so-called because located in the town of Frostproof, Florida.
The Growers Solution
ACF Greenhouses - reported to have very good prices and service (obviously, for greenhouse materials and supplies).
Hummert International - commercial supplier, but apparently sells at retail, too.
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Seeds From Elsewhere
Sellers in one country will often have varieties rarely or never seen in another. Here are a few sellers who specialize in seeds imported from outside the U.S. (We exclude Canadian sellers, who are included in all the other lists.) Many home gardeners believe that European seeds, notably Italian and possibly French, have better germination rates, higher packet fills, and overall better quality than North American seedsmen supply; whether that be so or not we cannot say, but a few years ago some friends brought us back a few packets from Italy (probably breaking seventeen customs laws), and they gave terrific, high-yielding plants that grew like gangbusters. Anecdotal, but there it is.
Italian seed: Seeds From Italy - the U.S. distributor for Franchi Seeds.
Italian seed: The Heirloom Seed Store [no GW rating]: another source for Franchi seeds.
Indian seed: Seeds of India
Asian seed: Evergreen Seeds [no GW rating]:
Asian seed: Kitazawa Seed Company
UK seed: Ordering British seed from the USA is a page listing, linking to, and describing five UK seedsmen (Mr Fothergill's Seeds; DT Brown & Co; Chiltern Seeds; Seeds-by-Size; and Thompson & Morgan ) who ship to the U.S. (Thompson & Morgan U.S. no longer exists.)
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Just about every seedsman now has some “heirloom” items. In the list below, we have tried to select, rather arbitrarily we fear, what seemed to us a good little list of mostly well-known or otherwise particularly interesting suppliers who have primarily or entirely OP (open-pollinated) stock and who have a reasonably broad selection of varieties and, apparently, a sincere dedication to preserving genetic diversity. For simplicity, we have not distinguished houses that emphasize “heirloom” types from houses that simply emphasize open-pollinated types (with the squeeze from the hybrid marketers, it’s getting so that any O.P. type is likely to also be an heirloom, but we haven’t quite reached that sad stage yet).
These lists—as the sources linked just below will abundantly demonstrate—are not, and are not intended to be, exhaustive. They merely point to some of the possibilities.
Here are some other resources for locating suppliers of non-GMO (not genetically modified) seed; that is not the same as “organic” or “open-pollinated”, but there is a great overlap.
Green People has a long list of non-GMO vegetable-seed suppliers.
“The 10 Best Seed Companies for Heirloom and Non-GMO Seeds”, a list from the Small Footprint Family site.
“Top 15 Sustainable Seed Companies”, a list from Mother Earth News, plus other supplier ratings “based on value, performance, ethics and fun.”
Favorite Small Seed Companies, a goodbye list from John Jeavons’ Bountiful Gardens, which, alas, closed its doors and web site in 2017.
the Fork & Bottle blog has a useful page with a selected but long list of ”Organic, Biodynamic, Heirloom & Heritage Seed Sources”.
Non-Profit Organizations
Seed Savers Exchange: the web site lists only a few—in relative terms—of the roughly 11,000 heirloom cultivars in their annual directory, sent free to members ($40 a year membership, and worth it for many reasons); these people are a vital factor in the drive to preserve open-pollinated cultivars and genetic diversity in edible crops, and deserve support.
Native Seeds/SEARCH: southwest native-American varieties from another good organization dedicated to preserving seed diversity.
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Conventional Seedsmen
Though these are mainly generalists, we include some of the specialists (heirloom-tomato seedsmen are especially common).
When selecting seedsmen, please keep in mind that though some—many, really—of these suppliers are listed under this “conventional” heading, they might as well be thought of as non-profits, in that they are the dedicated handiwork of one person or a family whose chief goal is the preservation of species and varieties, and who earn by their efforts just about enough to live on and continue their work.
We know this is a long list, but we feel each is worth your consideration. (List order is alphabetical.)
Generalists
Adaptive Seeds - a small, dedicated seed house specializing in regional varieties. [regional]
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - another sound, dedicated OP seedsman [free shipping on even the smallest orders].
Botanical Interests - they say they have “the most beautiful and informative seed packets on the market”.
Ed Hume Seeds: a short-season/cool-climate specialist. [regional]
Fedco - not a company as such but a co-operative, and one of the long-time favorite seed sources for home gardeners (including us), with low prices as well (and seed orders over $30 ship free); they specialize in northern-climate-adapted seeds.
Fruition Seeds - specializing in seeds for short-season climates.
Good Seed: emphasizing seeds suited for northerly climates. [regional]
J. L. Hudson, Seedsman (“A Public Access Seed Bank - Established 1911”), one of the steadfast pillars of sound seedsmanship (“Preservation Through Dissemination”).
Johnny’s Selected Seeds - they supply excellent germination and growing information and have a good selection of varieties, though hybrids seem a larger and larger percentage every season, and their prices are not modest; excellent reputation.
Kitazawa Seed Company: long-time specialists in Asian vegetables (a lot of hybrids, but that almost comes with the territory).
Kitchen Garden Seeds (often listed as “John Scheeper’s Kitchen Garden Seeds”).
Nichols Garden Nursery - both seeds and plants from a respected old house; has a specialty in herbs.
Plants of the Southwest: high-desert OP vegetables, plus an excellent set of plants and resources for xeriscaping (no-water/low-rainfall landscaping).
Redwood City Seed - an amazing spectrum of unusual and obscure items, plus the usuals.
Sand Hill Preservation Center: long-time valuable resource. Slow responding (as they openly say—read their site’s front page), but with lots of scarce or rare seeds.
Seeds Trust: OP heirloom, and organic seeds.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange - highly rated name in OP/heirloom seeds; with, obviously, an emphasis on warm-climate varieties, but by no means exclusively.
Strictly Medicinal Seeds - despite the name, has a varied selection of vegetables and, especially, of herbs; receives strong customer ratings (under their prior name of Horizon Herbs); has both seeds and plants.
Territorial Seed Company - a sort of West Coast Johnny’s—good selection of good cultivars, good quality, helpful information, but a large and increasing percentage of hybrids, and prices definitely not the lowest. Very well rated.
Terroir Seeds (aka Underwood Gardens); heirlooms, some hard to find elsewhere.
Turtle Tree Seed - a small but diligent seed house (an integrated workshop of Camphill Village).
Victory Seeds - respected and highly rated old-timers.
Wild Garden Seed - varieties include many originated in their on-farm breeding program by Shoulder to Shoulder Farm.
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Specialists
Many of the specialists we list in the section above offer mainly or wholly open-pollinated types. Check them individually if you have questions.
The following suppliers all appear elsewhere on this page; they are gathered together here for the convenience of gardeners in our target region: the inland Pacific Northwest, and places more or less like it. (That means that we have excluded the many nearby suppliers who are on “the rainyside” because their climate is not our climate.)
We want to emphasize that a supplier’s being regional does not in and of itself make it a preferred source, nor does one’s being out of the region disqualify it. Indeed, sometimes regional suppliers, between them all, will not have the particular seed or tree or whatever that we want, which leaves us no choice at all. But if a regional supplier carries what we want, and is a good seedsman to begin with, and either grows its own seed or gets it from nearby suppliers, we in our region will have a slightly better chance of getting suitable types and even suitable individual seeds than by buying from a place in a very different climate.
True Regionals
These are suppliers actually in our region.
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Possibly Similar-Climate Sources
There are some suppliers who are out of our region but who do or may have seeds especially well suited for a northern short-season area. (Mind, such seeds ought to do well anywhere; long-season varities won’t grow in a short season, but that does not cut the other way round.) Many of these houses expressly say they handle seed for short-season or northern gardens; but in a few cases, we went by the location. Caveat emptor.
Fedco - “your source for cold-hardy selections especially adapted to our demanding Northeast climate.”
Johnny’s Selected Seeds - “I was interested in doing a better job with short-growing-season areas” (varieties especially well-suited to cold areas are marked in their catalogue).
Turtle Tree Seeds - in upstate New York
Ed Hume Seeds - “Our seed line is specially selected for short season and cool climate areas.”
Seeds Trust - “reliability in the coldest climates and shortest seasons”
Terroir Seeds - (aka “Underwood Gardens” and “Grandma’s Garden”) - in northern Illinois
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