It's time for seed catalogs

Many of the best home gardens are planned around the kitchen table on unhurried winter nights as families gather to page through the seed catalogs arriving now in stacks as deep as snowdrifts. More than 24.2 million American households will spend an estimated $128 each on mail order seeds, plants, bulbs, garden tools and garden supplies in 2006, the Mailorder Gardening Association says. That translates roughly into $3.1 billion in total mail order and online gardening sales.

Vegetable growers study no-nonsense catalogs offering certified seed potatoes, onion, tomato, carrot or radish seed. Others pore over catalogs describing the virtues of rare, "old country," organic or heirloom fruits and flowers. Some dig deep into catalogs offering wider inventories — everything from plants, trees, shrubs, tools and bird feeders to specialty fashions for the well-turned-out gardener.

The more traditional catalogs are gleaned as much for the wealth of their plant and planting lore as for the quality and reliability of their seed. Seed catalogs are mailed every month of the year, but January is prime time. Garden-related work is all but dormant except for turning over a few fresh planting ideas.

"The week between Christmas and New Year's is the big period for getting them into the house," said George Ball, chairman, president and chief executive officer of W. Atlee Burpee & Co., one of the nation's pioneer seed catalog companies. "If you mail a catalog that isn't strictly gift-oriented before Christmas in this age of junk mail, you're going to get lost," Ball said. "I drop it in the mail the day after Christmas."

Catalogs must be attractive and informative if they're to generate sales. They also must be durable. "(Seed and garden) catalogs are dream books," Ball said. "People use the catalogs to plan out their gardens. Catalogs sit on bedside tables. They're placed in workrooms and carried around in briefcases. Our catalogs are battered and dog-eared long before the planting season begins."

Seed catalogs are as welcome to veteran gardeners as the warmth on their shoulders from a resurgent spring sun. To that audience, seed catalogs are more than handy sales tools. They also mirror many decades of social and horticultural change. In a simpler time, seed catalogs actually served as the agents of that change.

"In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of our farm families were immigrant families," Ball said. "They often learned the English language using the Bible, Sears (Roebuck & Co.) catalogs and seed catalogs. Everyone coming here from Europe knew flowers. But from the seed catalogs they learned phonetics and the descriptions of those flowers. The Burpee catalog often was used as the household language guide."

Small wonder, then, why seed catalogs occupy an important niche in the American sections of certain libraries. Some of the most extensive collections are kept at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the New York Botanical Garden and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Md.

"Catalogs from the late 1800s through the early 1900s are often described as the gems," said Susan Fugate, in charge of the National Agricultural Library's Special Collections. "They were the catalogs of a golden era because of their illustrations — many of them hand-done — and because of the cultural information they included. Later, the catalogs became more commercial as their producers figured people could go to books or elsewhere for much of that (botanical background)."

Modern-day catalog shoppers know seed is one of the biggest bargains in gardening. They also know there's a big difference between shopping for seed by mail and computer or picking through the seed packages stocked on store shelves.

"The Burpee army rules," Ball said. "These are the really dedicated gardeners and fans of our line. They dominate this number. They are experimenters and planners, also. Therefore, they order earlier and spend more per purchase. All of which leads to a more demanding customer and one who likes a very wide range from which to choose. We offer 800 to 900 varieties in our catalogs, but only half of that in stores. It's simply a matter of preference and demand."

Article Source: Published on December 29, 2005, in the Ocean County Observer