While I’ve spent the past six weeks with my head in the snow and my body in front of a cozy fire, other gardeners have been busy planning for the 2018 growing season. Yes, I’ve received and perused a few seed catalogues, with their glowing descriptions and lovely pictures of the wonders that could show up in my garden, but I haven’t ordered anything.
That’s because for me, the growing season starts in earnest with Seedy Saturday – the day when local(ish) seed sellers and gardeners set up tables and displays in a school gym or community hall to sell or, better yet, swap seeds. Some of my favourite annuals, perennials and vegetables have come from a Seedy Saturday table: Echinacea pallida, Silphium perfoliatum, Amethyst Jewel cherry tomato, Alcea rosea…. the list goes on.
For County dwellers, the Picton Seedy Saturday is next Saturday, February 24! Trenton is March 24, Cobourg March 17, Kingston March 10… You can check out Seedy Saturday dates for the whole province (or country) on the Seeds of Diversity website — in fact, check out the whole site. It has a ton of great information about seed saving and starting.
In the Toronto area – the first Seedy Saturday is this Saturday at the Toronto Botanical Gardens.Others, from Scarborough to Etobicoke and points in between, follow throughout February and March.
Often these events are more than just tables of seeds – there are educational displays, talks by professionals and lots of information sharing. It really is the perfect opportunity to get the gardening juices flowing after a long cold winter, to meet and share stories with other enthusiastic gardeners and to discover new plant varieties.
So mark you calendar, I hope to see you there!
County Gardening 
So I am not the only one. I enjoy looking at the catalogues, but that is about all. I rarely order seed. (I did order Yucca seed thought.) Most everything else is taken from the garden last year, or obtained locally, sometimes from someone else who already got it.
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The only thing I’ve regularly ordered is artichoke seed…. can’t find it in stores here or at Seedy Saturday and I’ve never tried to collect it myself. I’ll be looking for interesting pole beans this year.
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Artichoke seed? I see them, but they seem like too much work. I just get pups from other plants. I do not like them much anyway. We are only a few miles away from Castroville, the artichoke capital of the World.
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They’re annuals up here and you (I) need to start them mid February to give them as much a heads start as possible. I rarely eat the ones I grow….just love the flowers they produce!
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Annuals?! That is just too much work for such minimal vegetables.
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Yeah, that’s what I think of them as exotic (for my region) flowers!
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They escape and bloom along highways here.
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Thank you for supporting the local seed scene – and blogging about it! Awesome post. I am a sucker for purple tomatoes.
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Thanks! The neat think about these is they’re not ripe ’til they change from purple to orangish. .
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That ‘Amethyst Jewel’ tomato looks incredible! Is it tasty too?
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Sadly it looks better than it tastes….still, a LOT tastier though than store bought cherry tomatoes
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Yes. Bought ones are always a disappointment after home-grown sun-warmed ones!
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