Seed and Plant Finder

[PhilaGardener]

Looking for a mail order source for an unusual variety? Here is a useful tool I came across earlier today that might be useful:

The Plant and Seed Finder (Link) from Mother Earth News (no subscription needed).

This search claims to check the listings of over 500 mail order seed companies. I put in a few varieties and was impressed by the responses - listings from Sandhill Preservation, High Mowing Seeds and Southern Exposure come up for unusual things. Just drop below the Google ads in the output to see the listings. Good luck!

 

[thistlebloom]

Hey! I like that! I typed in an annual flower that I've not seen locally in the seed racks but have been itching to try and there it was! Saved time looking up a variety of catalog companies and even faster than doing a Google search.
Thanks Phila'!

 

[Carol Dee]

Thanks, great site.

 

[Smart Red]

Could be helpful. It found a source for Black Sea Man seeds, but it didn't find a source for my most wanted seeds. Sigh!

 

[digitS']

I like those "custom google searches" - thank You!

Maybe this will help, Red: You can put quotation marks around something. Like: tomato "large red cherry" - Try that without search terms in quotations and every page with those 3 words will show up! Indeed, there is an actual variety with that very generic name.

What you can also do with google is put in a minus this or that. Like this: -corn. The other day I was looking for a somewhat obscure tomato variety and it had the same name as a sweet corn, "Illini Gold." Page after page having to do with the sweet corn, apparently because the word "tomato" was in a link on those sweet corn webpages!

I know that many of you like Baker Creek but they've got something clever going on with the search engines. I would never have known, in the first couple of search pages, that Solana and Skyfire Garden sell seed for Woodle Orange tomatoes. Well, I would not have known it without doing a -rareseeds.com in the search window so that Baker Creek pages would not show up.

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

That's something I never knew about searches. Thanks Steve!

 

[Carol Dee]

Steve you are always full of great information. Thanks

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Great resource Philagardener! Thanks for posting!

Smart Red, what seeds are you looking for? Black Sea Man tomatoes are quite nice looking.

 

[Smart Red]

Great resource Philagardener! Thanks for posting!

Smart Red, what seeds are you looking for? Black Sea Man tomatoes are quite nice looking.

Black Sea Man are a delicious beefsteak sized tomato. I've grown them before but find it hard to get seeds. Hopefully my seeds from past years will work, but I didn't have any success last summer.

I am looking for Cloudberries. They are a wild relative of raspberries native to Norway. They have been on my radar (and wish list) unsuccessfully for the past 6-7 years. The first year I looked and found one source in the US, but that nursery was closed and moving to a new location at the time. They no longer carried the berry plants once they had moved. Sigh! Some day. . . . .

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Black Sea Man are a delicious beefsteak sized tomato. I've grown them before but find it hard to get seeds. Hopefully my seeds from past years will work, but I didn't have any success last summer.

I am looking for Cloudberries. They are a wild relative of raspberries native to Norway. They have been on my radar (and wish list) unsuccessfully for the past 6-7 years. The first year I looked and found one source in the US, but that nursery was closed and moving to a new location at the time. They no longer carried the berry plants once they had moved. Sigh! Some day. . . . .

I've had tomato seeds from bad years work great. If they don't, you probably didn't have anything to lose.

Hmm, some folks on another forum may know of where to find them. I'll update you in a few days...