Seeds waiting to be sorted
Seeds of vegetables grown in cold climates need to have a short length to maturity and an ability to tolerate cooler than typical temperatures–day and night. You can look in any general seed catalog for terms like “short growing season,” “early-bearing,” “tolerates cool evenings,” or even the magic words, “especially bred for northern growers.”
It’s even better when you can find a seed company that specializes in seeds for cold climates. Recently, a reader asked me just that:
I live in Norway long term and am trying to find cold climate food seed for my garden.
On my Cold Climate Merchants page I have Fedco, High Altitude, Johnny’s, and Pinetree. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of them ship to Norway.
Readers, Can You Help?
Do any of you know of other seed merchants that specialize in vegetable seeds for cold climates? If they ship to Norway, that would be a bonus.
Don’t miss our Botanic Interests seed giveaway, going on now through Sunday!
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cold-climate-gardening,
seeds
. . . We gardeners needn't have a siege mentality toward frost. It's not a villain, holding us hostage in some pitifully short growing season. Jack Frost is simply one more character in this dazzling, sometimes perplexing, and wonderfully rewarding practice we call gardening.
Philip Harnden
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Hi all, I live on Bornholm (an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea). Our snow has disappeared now and our temperatures have been above zero for the last two weeks, so I’m pulling on the gardening gloves. I’ve just placed an order with Impecta based on Mari Ann’s recommendation. I’ll keep you posted.
Cheers and keep up the good work,
Fiona
Fiona Tod´s last blog ..Carpets of wild garlic
Twitter: @JoanLBailey
How about checking out nurseries and garden stores in Norway? Initially, I had a hard time here in Japan, but I’ve gradually found some good local sources. I imagine my resource list will keep growing of local shops or national companies where I can get some things. Package labeling can be a problem – I’m still pretty illiterate in Japanese – but the pictures are quite helpful. It’s been a great excuse to chat up other gardeners, too.
I am sorry, I missed out that the question was about vegetable. Vegetable seeds are available but most of us order from Impecta.se They are cheeper and have a far better collection to choose from. If your reader is still there, put her in contact with me. (mari_braekkan at yahoo.no) We gardners are in hibernation untill april.
Territorial Seeds also comes to mind – for short season seeds.
Gardens North: http://gardensnorth.com/site/index.htm
I live in Norway too, and Garden North has a good reputation among gardeners here.
I almost listed them in my post, but as far as I could tell they didn’t sell vegetables. But you are right, they do have an excellent selection of seeds for the cold climate gardener. Many of them are quite unusual, too.
I would think that Norway would have its own varieties of cold-weather garden seeds/plants. And those very local plants would be most adapated to that clime anyway.
Well, I would think that, too. But I got the impression that the writer of the email wasn’t native to Norway, but was living there for an extended stay, and it may be she wasn’t able to communicate with the local people or hasn’t met many yet.
I would send a note to Jim at Prairie Seeds here in Saskatchewan. He might be able to help you out. There is a link off of my blog.
http://aprairiejournal.blogspot.com/
Clayton
Wow, Clayton! You seem to have a lot of good sources in that sidebar of yours.
Hi Kathy and thanks for the good word. I am not a big “veggie” fan as that is mostly my wife’s domain but I do get the catalogs and try to keep up with what and where. I think we here in Saskatoon and North Central Saskatchewan are probably a good match for the Norway growing conditions and our own shorter season tends to be quite demanding.
Another option for seeds is to get on GardenBuddies as there are many good “sharing” opportunities for small quantities of seed.
Hopefully everything you tried was still “alive”.
High Altitude Gardens was first on my list, I order Tomato seeds from there – Sasha Altai is very short season.
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