Seeds or Gold Flakes

by Bobby Blair 1/2/12

The price of planting that backyard garden will soon require you to take out a loan.

The seed catalogs are piling up quickly. In fact I've received more catalogs than I received Christmas cards. Unlike most people, ordering for seeds and plants begins for me in January. Purchasing in bulk I tend to save money.

Comparing prices between companies can be eye opening. Last year I grew the wave petunias for the milk crates downtown. Looking to compare prices, I browsed through the Burpee catalog I received today. Wave petunias in the Burpee catalog were $5.95 per pack and contained anywhere from 10-15 seeds per pack. That's almost .40 to .60 cents per seed. Burpee does not let you buy in bulk, not this catalog anyway. A similar petunia in HPS Catalog (Horticultural Products and Services), www.hpsseed.com out of Randolf, WI< can be purchased (although quantities begin at a larger number of seeds per pack) for as little as 23 cents per seed. Larger quanties purchased bring the price down to 15 cents per seed.

For those who don't wish to bother growing your own tomatoes, a local farm stand will suffice. But if you do wish to begin your plants in a south facing window in early March, your local hardware store will have seeds as cheap as those catalogs that have been arriving and there is no shipping or handling charge.

This spring will be a little unsettling for me as I order my dahlia tubers for planting at my farm on Highland Street. Last summer's Hurricane Irene wiped out my crop of dahlia plants when we received 10" of rain. The tubers simply rotted in the ground. Starting from scratch after three years of farming will be like returning to the first grade from the third. To make a good go of it, I'll need 3500 new tubers. Swan Island Dahlias out of Canby, Oregon, starts their high-end Dinner Plate Dahlias off at $22.95 per tuber. Let's see -- that comes out to $80,325 without shipping or handling charges. Or I can buy in bulk from Netherland Bulb Co. and the price will be $5,600.

With only 10 more weeks till I start rototilling, can spring be far off?

Posted in Green, Marketplace.

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