Where to buy seeds for your Michigan garden this year
Updated Feb 18, 2021;
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Though we’re still in the thick of winter, gardeners know: Now is the time to start thinking spring.
Garden catalogs have been popping up in mailboxes for months now, and online gardening forums are abuzz with discussions about last-frost dates, garden planning tips, and the perennial question: Where are the best places to buy seeds?
If you’re in Michigan, you’re in luck: The Great Lakes State is home to several seed companies that specialize in heirloom and organic vegetables, flowers, fruits and herbs.
Candace Krebs
The Ag Journal
Seeds of heirloom corn and other food crops are a collective inheritance that should be carefully stewarded with special regard for the ancient ancestors who did the wise work to bring them into being, according to a leader in the seed saving movement.
Rowen White is the founder of the Indigenous Seed Keeping Network. She lives and works on a 10-acre farm in northern California that serves as a living seed bank with more than 400 varieties of heirloom crops.
White talked about the importance of reciprocity and accountability, at a time when so much of seed development has been privatized, during a recent grain forum hosted by the University of Colorado Colorado Springs in collaboration with the Colorado Grain Chain and Rocky Mountain Farmers Union.
Gardeners will be able to reserve seeds from the Rochester Public Library starting March 1. 12:00 am, Feb. 17, 2021 ×
The Rochester seed library enters its third growing year in 2021. However, organizers have yet to see what a normal year for the endeavor looks like.
Established in 2019, the library was a test program at the Rochester Public Library to give people access to seeds to try their hands at growing a garden.
In 2020, a massive water leak and the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizers to adapt and distribute seeds through remote pickup.
This year, volunteers packaged seeds remotely instead of together at the library, and people wanting seeds will have to reserve them and pick them up via the parking lot pickup, similar to other library services.
Coming up with vegetables that please two important groups Wisconsin farmers and local chefs is the goal of the University of Wisconsin’s Seed to Kitchen Collaborative.
It’s all about creating delicious varieties of vegetables well-adapted to the Upper Midwest, explains UW-Madison associate professor of horticulture Julie Dawson, who leads the ongoing research project.
The hope, said Dawson, “is that farmers have better options for varieties that produce really good flavor in the Wisconsin climate. And that chefs have more access to those types of varieties. So, we’re trying to breed for flavor but also to breed for production traits.”
Politics
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“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune “They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
Impeachment
“Trump trial set to consume Capitol” [The Hill]. “Forty-five out of 50 Senate Republicans have already voted to advance a motion to dismiss the trial on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, making it extremely unlikely that 17 Republicans will join Democrats this week to convict.”
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