Seed Orders

What’s still green above the snow: Conifers, Apache plume, rose stems, Japanese honeysuckle, columbine, rockrose, coral bell, snapdragon, bouncing Bess, blue flax, sweet pea, yuccas, Mount Atlas daisy.

What’s gray or gray-green: Salt bush, winterfat, buddleia, snow-in-summer, pinks.

What’s red: Cholla.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, geranium.

Animal sightings: Early in week, bird tracks in snow-covered beds, rabbit tracks in drive.

Weather: Cold Thursday killed many remaining green leaves; snowed around noon; since then, snow only melted on south side of house and from an exposed east facing bed.

Weekly update: I excuse my late fall laziness by claiming I let plants go to seed to give the best the chance to reproduce. Of course, I don’t rely on nature. So, the snow comes and goes, the birds leave tracks around abandoned stalks, and I spent the holiday reading this year’s batch of seed catalogs and ruminating on the earliest known American seed order, the one shipped in 1631 to Massachusetts Bay and reprinted by Ann Leighton.

When John Winthrop, Junior, bought seeds from a London grocer in July 1631, he, no doubt, had heard from his father, the governor, about the many deaths from cold and malnutrition the previous winter. He chose roots and leafy vegetables he knew would survive cold storage or drying and could be boiled in a single pot. His largest quantities were parsnips, carrots, cabbage, pumpkin, raddish, parsley, lettuce, skirret, and cauliflower.

Many of the other seeds he requested were herbs, like marjoram, basil, and chervil, that were added to the cauldron. Only a few were ornamental plants, perhaps the hollyhocks and stocks, and a very few, like monk’s hood, were exclusively medicinal.

Missing from his shopping list were the crop seeds, the grains and legumes, the wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, and peas, the staples provided by the Massachusetts Bay Company. Daniel Slade says the proprietors also sent fruit stones; flax, hemp, woad and saffron seed for textiles; potatoes, and hop roots for brewing.

Winthrop’s selection seems commonplace enough. After all, the previous year Francis Higginson had told London that root crops, pumpkins, pot-herbs, and sweet herbs were doing well in Plymouth, founded ten years earlier. A generation later, John Josselyn found more than 40% of Winthrop’s species were commonly grown in Massachusetts.

What seems unusual about Winthrop’s receipt is that he bought ounce and half-ounce quantities of herbs. If he and his wife spent the first winter with his father, there were five adults and five children to feed. 80,000 thyme seeds, 40,000 savory, and 34,000 sorrel, the number offered today in an ounce, seems excessive for ten people, even granting Governor Winthrop was obliged to entertain.

I don’t know if Winthrop did the calculations I do when I plan a seed order, but I convert weight into number of seeds, and then into linear feet to make sure I don’t buy too much. As near as I can judge, adjusting for temporal differences in quality and cleanliness in seed, he would have needed at least five acres to grow all the seed he bought.

His father had more than enough land, certainly more than one of my immigrant ancestors whose three-acre town lot and six-acre crop land grant in Ipswich in 1637 would not have supported all Winthrop’s seed and also produced essential foodstuffs. In 1630, the governor had been granted a seventy-acre island now subsumed into Logan Airport, a 600-acre farm in what is now Medford, and a town lot.

However, like me, young Winthrop did need to consider how all those seeds were going to be planted, weeded, protected from birds, and harvested. The 25-year-old man had no intention of preparing five acres of virgin land himself before spring planting. His great-grandfather Adam, a guild leader in London, had purchased an estate when Henry VIII dissolved the abbey at Bury Saint Edmonds in 1552, his great-uncle John had claimed a plantation in Munster in 1595 when Elizabeth I opened the area to Protestants, and his younger brother Henry had gone to slave-owning Barbados in 1627. His father hired James Luxford a year later to manage the Ten Hills farm and used Indians on the island.

I suspect Winthrop thought he could make money from luxury seeds that were not supplied by the London company, for those were the ones he bought in superfluity. Perhaps he expected to sell some seeds in the spring, perhaps he expected to sell his surplus crop in summer. We know his father expected a profit from his farm because he later claimed Luxford sold the produce at below market prices.

I don’t know if my ancestor resented his dependence on seed and produce merchants, but other commoners rebelled against a profiteering nail importer in 1639. Even though I know I can enjoy the luxury of growing flowers, not vegetables, because entrepreneurs like Winthrop settled Massachusetts in the 1630's, the snow and the birds remind me life still depends on food, warmth, and good seed.

Notes:
Seed quantities per ounce from a number of sources, but the majority from Stokes Seeds, Growers Guide, 2008.

Avery, Clara A. The Averell-Averill-Avery Family, 1906; genealogy of one of my grandparent’s families gives details about William Averell from legal records.

Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed, 1989, discusses colonial diet and cooking techniques.

Higginson, Francis. A Short and True Description of New England, 1629.

Josselyn, John. New England’s Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents and Plants of That Country, 1672, reprinted by University of Michigan, University Library with 1865 notes by Edward Tuckerman.

Leighton, Ann, Early American Gardens, 1970.

Slade, Daniel Denison. “The Colonies of Massachusetts Bay,” in The Evolution of Horticulture in New England.

Photograph: Bird tracks around Maximilian sunflower stalks, 25 December 2007.

New Year's Rituals

What’s blooming outside: Nothing.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, Christmas cactus.

What’s green and visible in the area: Snow still covers everything; its weight collapsed the sunflowers and áñil del muerto earlier this week.

Animal sightings: Animals left tracks looking for food. Some bird, probably a quail, landed on the cholla, then walked between the cactus and front garden. Quail later found the sunflowers. Green-bellied birds, much puffed up by the cold, foraged in front and discovered they couldn’t hop onto Mexican hat or black-eyed Susan stalks.

Weather: Moisture condensed into hoar frost early this week, then fog condensed early mornings mid-week. By Friday, warmer temperatures were beginning to melt snow, when it snowed again and temperatures dropped..

Weekly update: The week between Christmas and New Years used to be when seed and nursery catalogs would arrive. I would begin the annual ritual of planning next year’s garden: reading about new plants, making lists, totaling prices and crossing out items to fit a budget. Everything needed to be done by mid-February to receive early ordering discounts.

All has changed in the last twenty years.

There are fewer catalogs. Some companies, like Mileager, changed to internet marketing, and I didn’t have an on-line provider. Some, like White Flower Farm, looked at my scant ordering history (or maybe my zip code), and dropped my name. Others, perhaps like Bluestone, may have noticed I complained about bad plants, and decided I wasn’t a valued customer.

Some companies simply disappeared. A few years ago, the owner of Nor’East retired and sold his business. Abundant Life had a fire, and merged with Territorial. Weiss Brothers returned an order saying it no longer was in the mail order business. The owners of Raintree divorced, and each sent a catalog from a new entity, inviting me to take sides. Others were taken over by the next generation or investors who thought all the oddities their parents sold should be replaced by more commercial products.

Corporate takeovers take their toll, although it’s usually hidden. The first thing that changes is the address. In the 80s, it was to Bloomington, Illinois, and Plantron. More recently, many have changed to the Randolph, Wisconsin address of J. W. Jung. Van Bourgondien and Van Dyck moved to Virginia Beach from Babylon and Bridgewater, New York. Henry Fields abandoned Shenandoah, Iowa for Aurora, Indiana.

Changes in the catalog are more glaring. Offers replace plants. Pictures are cluttered with balloons filled with admen’s catchwords ("Great Color," "Fast Grower," "Must Have.") The traditionally fusty, thick Thomson and Morgan and Wayside Gardens sprouted so many guideposts last year, I set them aside. The pictures were obscured with captions that were so distracting I couldn’t read the text.

I’m not sure there are many catalogs left that serve my original purposes - to provide plants or seeds I can’t find in local stores, and find things grown regionally that might do better in my conditions than the rarified hybrids developed for bedding plant and cut flower growers.

When I first started requesting catalogs in Michigan, I searched for nurseries in the northern midwest, thinking they were growing their own produce. Some were, but even then, most were supplementing their stock with items purchased from foreign suppliers. Already, there were the mere retailers who grew nothing, but packaged European and Japanese seeds in catalogs aimed at niche markets.

The more the seeds derived from the same growers, and the only distinction between catalogs was the wit of the retailer, the more price became the only criteria. Cost became more important when shipping fees increased, first when companies like UPS raised their rates, then when petroleum companies raised theirs. Shipping used to be just a little over our high gross receipts tax, then rose to double it. This year, most of the seed company rates are running about 25% of my orders.

With the transition from production to marketing, the idea of an ordering season disappeared. Seed catalogs arrived earlier and earlier, plant catalogs later and later. Companies no longer needed to know what would sell to determine what to plant; they controlled the market so they could believe what they offered had to sell. Early ordering discounts disappeared, leaving only high volume order ones.

I spent this past New Years Day going through catalogs and looking out at snow that transformed the prairie into a tundra. I was down to four seed catalogs, two geared to commercial growers. One made clear with price increases that my business was more a nuisance than before, but it is still the only company that offers single color packages of annuals like larkspur and bachelor buttons. The other apparently figured the more sales the better. The third was filled primarily with purchased seeds, but its original varieties were still there to be ferreted out. The last, which once sold only its own seeds, started supplementing its choices a few years ago.

As for plants, I don’t think I have any choices left. I’m down to two outlets I trust, and only one has sent a catalog.

I contemplate the new year, and regret the losses of the past. I would like to add some new plants, but there’s no longer a Lambs catalog to study. I would like to buy some older varieties, but there’s no longer a Rocknoll or Mellinger. I would like to continue using Crimson Rambler morning glories and Florence bachelor buttons, but they’ve been dropped by the larger catalogs, and I have to scour the others.

I would like more of nature’s bounty, and business models dictate less is more.

Notes: The history of Ferry-Morse and Burpee are treated in Cameron, the story of a midwestern small town, available at http://www.xlibris.com/Cameron.htm .

Photograph: Snow early morning, 6 January 2007, taken through the porch window. Juniper and bunch grasses, with winterfat in back, sunflowers in front.