OK, I'm totally aging myself right now, but does anybody else remember the Sears Wish Book catalog?

It came out every winter, and it had all of the toys and books and pajamas that you could possibly ask Santa for.

And you sat down and you circled all the things you wanted, and you knew darn well you were never going to get all the things you circled.

But it was fun to dream, right?

I get that same feeling this time of year with seed catalogs.

If your mailbox looks anything like mine this time of year, it's probably overflowing with seed catalogs, glossy photos, exciting new varieties, and every page quietly whispering.

You definitely need 10 more kinds of tomatoes.

So seed catalog is fun, but it can also be a little overwhelming.

So if you've ever ordered way more seed than you can possibly plant, chosen A variety that just did not perform in your climate, or gotten confused by all the codes and abbreviations and the marketing language, this episode is for you.

Today on Just Grow Something, we're going to talk about how to read a seed catalog, why seed catalogues are tools, not just wish books, the key pieces of information in a catalog listing and what they actually mean, days to maturity and why that number is not as simple as it looks and more.

By the end, you will be able to flip through a catalog and quickly decide, yes, this variety makes sense for my garden, or Nope, that's just clever marketing and make a wish list that can actually be fulfilled.

Let's dig in.

Hey, I'm Karen and what started as a small backyard garden 20 years ago turned into a lifelong passion for growing food.

Now as a market farmer and horticulturist, I want to help you do the same.

On this podcast, I am your friend in the garden teaching evidence based techniques to help you grow your favorites and build confidence in your own garden space.

So grab your garden journal and a cup of coffee and get ready to just grow something.

So before we zoom in on the fine print of seed catalogs, let's zoom out a little bit.

OK, we can use seed catalogs as gardening tools.

They are product lists, yes, but they can also be reference guides full of details about the varieties, the growing conditions and disease resistance.

And a lot of cases.

They can also be little mini gardening textbooks with articles and how to sections.

This is why I love physical detailed catalog blogs because they can be research tools, especially when you combine them with your local planting calendar and your notes from previous seasons.

So if we start with a little bit of a plan and we don't start with the catalog, right, If we think about what do you and your household actually eat, how much space and time that you realistically have for the garden and are you prioritizing like fresh eating or preserving or even market sales or donations?

If you're someone like me, then we can use the catalog to find varieties that match that loose plan.

So you can match crops to your particular frost States and the length of your season, and you can look for traits that you specifically need, whether that's disease resistance or short season crops or compact growth or storage quality, whatever it is.

So if we reverse that and we start with the catalog and then we try to justify our choices, then we're much more likely to overspend and end up with varieties that don't quite fit our climate or even our goals because they just looked really pretty in the catalog.

So let's walk through a typical vegetable variety entry and we'll pull the pieces apart a little bit.

Different companies format things slightly differently, but most of them are going to include some combination of these things.

The first is the variety name.

So you have the vegetable type, right?

So it's broccoli, but then it's going to have a specific name to it.

It's going to be a type or a category.

So it might be indeterminate if it's a certain slicing tomato or a Bush variety of snap bean, right?

It's going to list the days to maturity, the growth habit.

So whether it's Bush or pole or determinate or indeterminate, compact vining, whatever, the size and the shape and the color of the edible part, the flavor or texture description, notes on its disease resistance, often with abbreviations, and then some notes on maybe special traits of some sort.

So is it good for storage?

Is it an early variety?

Is it heat tolerant or bolt resistant, whatever.

And then usually it's also going to indicate the seed type.

So whether it's a hybrid or it's open pollinated or it's an airline.

So we're going to unpack each of these as we go.

But the big idea is this.

Every catalog listing should be a summary of how that plant is expected to behave in an average growing season under reasonable conditions.

So when you understand what each piece of that summary means, then you can compare varieties side by side and choose the ones that actually match your situation.

And I would think one of the most important numbers in here and probably the most misunderstood in the catalog listing is days to maturity.

They often abbreviate this as DTM.

So the catalogs and the seed packets are commonly going to define days to maturity as one of two things for direct seeded crops.

So things like beans or radishes that we're putting straight into the ground, we are not transplanting in most cases, we're talking about days from emergence.

This is when the seedlings first appear.

So days from emergence to the first harvest for transplanted crops.

So like tomatoes or Peppers or broccoli, things that we generally are not planting from seed directly in the garden, we're talking about days from transplanting outdoors to the first harvest.

So in either way we think about this, this is always going to be from whenever the plant is in the garden and the top part, right, the part above the ground is visible.

So whether you're directly sowing them or you're transplanting them, that is where we're measuring the days to maturity.

And the catch is not every catalog is going to say this out loud.

All right?

Some of them are going to clarify that in the front text or on the web website.

Others are just going to assume that you understand that this is the rule and that's how things go.

OK.

So for instance, if a tomato is listed as 75 days, that's 75 days from transplant into the garden, not from the day that you started that seed indoors, all right?

And if you're sowing lettuce seed directly outdoors and the catalog says it's 45 days, that's 45 days from emergence under normal conditions.

Now, obviously, weather can speed things up or slow things down.

If you've got cool or cloudy weather or you've got really hot, stressful conditions, this can all change the actual maturity time.

So these are always going to be estimates.

Remember, this is the best estimate under that sort of average or reasonable conditions, OK, in average growing conditions.

So how do you use this number?

The first thing is to match it to your length of your season.

So if you have 110 frost free days, planting a warm season variety that needs 100 days from transplant is going to be possible, but it's going to be very tight and you never know when that first frost is going to hit.

So if you plant one that needs 80 days, that gives you a much wider margin, right?

There's more room for error there.

You also can use this to compare varieties within a crop.

So if you have struggled to get Peppers to ripen before your first frost, then look for varieties that have a shorter number of days to maturity than what you have used before.

And this is also really helpful for like succession planting.

So if you can choose a mix of early, mid, and late season varieties, then instead of going out and planting 3 different times for a succession across the entire season, you can actually plant them all at the same time, knowing that those days to maturity are staggered.

OK.

And then look for words that modify that number.

So catalogs might say about 65 days, or they'll say 50 to 60 days or extra early or whatever.

That just acknowledges that the environmental conditions are absolutely going to affect the actual timing.

So just use days to maturity as a guide.

But it is absolutely not a promise, but it is still one of your best tools for planning.

The next thing to look at is seed types.

OK, so you're going to see the terms F1, hybrid, open, pollinated, and heirloom in catalogs and also on seed packets.

So what does that mean in practical terms?

Hybrids or F1, right, are the result of a controlled cross between two distinct stable parent plants to combine specific traits.

So whether we're trying to work on disease resistance or yield or uniformity or flavor or color, whatever it is, right, Hybrids are usually more uniform in terms of their size and when they mature, they are very frequently bred for disease resistance and higher yield.

They are sometimes bred for qualities like being able to be transported well or for their firmness, especially if you're looking at like commercial lines, but they are always going to be labeled as F1 in catalogs.

Now you can save seeds from hybrids, but the offspring is generally going to be genetically different and or variable, so they may not resemble the original variety.

So you know, for for most in purposes, if you're planting a hybrid, you're planting it, you're enjoying it for this season.

We're generally not planting them and then saving the seed for long term, but they absolutely can't and have a place in your garden again, specifically because a lot of them are bred for disease resistance.

So that might be something that you're looking for.

Open pollinated varieties are those that will generally come true to type when allowed to pollinate naturally with each other, like within the same variety.

OK.

If you're assuming that there is some isolation from other varieties in the same species, so these seeds can be saved and replanted and their offspring are going to be very similar to the parent plant if they have not cross pollinated, because what happens if they cross pollinate?

Now you have a hybrid.

It may not have been intentional, but now you have a hybrid, OK.

So they're going to be, you know, somewhat more variable than hybrids.

The plants may differ a little bit in size or in yield with these open pollinated seeds or plants, but a lot of them have been selected for particular traits.

So open pollinated doesn't necessarily mean that is a very old variety or that is an heirloom variety.

It just describes how the seed breeds, right?

So you can save seeds from an open pollinated variety if you have isolated it from other varieties, right?

And you're going to get the same thing that you grew this year.

They just may not be as uniform and the way they grow and produce as a hybrid would be.

An heirloom isn't actually like a strict scientific category, but typically what it means is it's an open pollinated variety that has a history of being passed down either in families or in communities or in cultures, often for several decades or longer.

Some people will qualify this and say, well, an heirloom has to have been around for a minimum of 50 years, unchanged, changed.

Other organizations will say it's 75 years, whatever.

It's an old variety that is also open pollinated.

A lot of the times these have really unique flavors.

They have colors and shapes that are not found like in our modern hybrids or even in some open pollinated varieties.

And in often a lot of these cases, they kind of give a sense of like connection to a particular region or a particular culture.

The the downside to heirlooms is that they may or may not have very strong disease resistance depending on their background.

So you just have to know oftentimes too that they may not ripen as quickly.

They usually take a longer time to get to maturity, but, you know, the flavor oftentimes makes up for that.

So it's OK to use a mix of all of these things.

OK.

I know that there has been this huge push here in recent years for nothing but heirloom varieties or maybe even just open pollinated and heirloom varieties as we look at, you know, patents that are being put on seeds and arguments, you know, about not being able to patent a life form, which essentially is what a seed is.

But in terms of home gardening, you know, from a survivalist standpoint, yeah, you want to be planting something that you can save the seeds from so that you're not beholden to some seed company for a source of your own food.

But in realistic terms, a lot of us live in areas where certain diseases are absolutely prevalent in certain crops that we want to grow.

So there's nothing wrong at all with you planting hybrid varieties.

OK.

It's OK to plant a little of all of these types so you know for most home gardeners this is less about like right versus wrong and more about trade-offs.

If you struggle with disease or you have limited space and you need reliable yields, then hybrids with resistance traits can be very helpful.

If you care about seed saving and genetic diversity or specific heirloom flavors, then open pollinated and heirloom varieties might be a priority.

A lot of us use a mix.

I do.

I have a few reliable hybrids for my very problem prone crops and things that I need to generate a specific yield in terms of going to market because I'm a market farmer.

So there are things that I have to concern myself with that, you know, a home gardener maybe doesn't.

But I also have open pollinated and heirloom varieties where I want to save the seeds and I want to focus on specific flavors.

So you do you, as far as that's concerned.

So one place where C catalogs really expect you to read between the lines is the disease resistance section.

So you might see a tomato variety labeled VFFNTA, high resistance to many common diseases, or a note that says that it's resistant to like downy mildew and powdery mildew.

And if you look at all of these abbreviations, it reads about as clear as alphabet soup.

OK, but if you have had disease issues in the past, then this is actually a section that you want to pay close attention to.

So catalogs are usually going to provide a key somewhere in the catalog, either in the front or the back pages or the beginning of a specific section that is going to break down what the codes mean.

OK, So for tomatoes for example, you know, the most common ones are probably V for Verticilium wilt, F for Fusarium wilt and some sometimes you're going to see F1F2 or F3, which is indicating resistance to very specific races of Fusarium wilt.

Most of us are not going to know what that is.

So if you see the F, okay, fine that you know, that's helpful.

And for root, not nematodes, T or TMV for tobacco mosaic virus.

EB or AB.

So that's early blight or Alternaria blight.

LB for late blights, PM for powdery mildew, DM for downy mildew.

So different companies may use slightly different abbreviations, so it's worth checking the catalog's legend.

But what does this actually mean?

Like these terms generally are telling you that, you know, whatever code is listed that that crop is resistant to that particular disease or virus resistance is not immunity.

OK, so a resistant variety may still show symptoms with you've got really high disease pressure.

It just usually gets less severely affected than a more susceptible variety.

And it's often going to yield better and recover more quickly if it gets the disease than one that does not have this resistance.

So just know if you're doing something like tomatoes maybe, and you're planting heirlooms and you have frequently seen problems with like early blight and say powdery mildew, and the heirlooms generally are not going to be very resistant to these specific diseases.

So if you want to guarantee yourself that you're getting something in the way of tomatoes, then you may go ahead and plant those heirlooms.

But you might go and look for one or two varieties that specifically list these diseases as being resistant to them, just to make sure that you're covering your bases.

If you really want to make sure that you get tomatoes, you might also see terms like HR or IR.

So HR would be high resistance, IR would be intermediate or moderate resistance.

Catalogs are going to sometimes explain which diseases are more problematic.

If you have a regional catalog or for specific crops, that might help you decide whether or not the resistance you know that is listed under there is relevant to your situation.

But you can also check your extension agency because usually they're going to list for you, you know, under vegetable gardening, what crops are more susceptible to which specific diseases.

But you know, to use this resistance information for yourself, just ask yourself, what diseases have I seen before in my garden?

Have you been able to identify them?

Right, That's step number one.

And are there any known local issues like like bacterial, well downy mildew that you kind of want to plan around?

So if you know that you've had a few cerium wilt in your tomatoes and choosing varieties with an F code gives you a better chance of success.

And a lot of extensions are going to recommend choosing varieties that list multiple disease resistance just as a way to sort of build in a margin of error.

So let's take all that information and then connect it back into the real world, like your actual garden, your space, your climate, your goal is right.

So we kind of want to emphasize 4 different factors.

The 1st is going to be the climate and the season length.

The second would be your space and the growth habit of the plants, the purpose of your garden, whether that's fresh use or storage or processing, or in my case, being a market farmer, and then your time and your skill level.

So when we talk about climate and the season length, you want to look for cues in the catalog that are saying things like, you know, performs well in cool springs, has good heat tolerance, it's slow to bolt or it's a short season or extra early variety, right?

So a lot of these phrases are going to matter if you you have like very hot summers that stress out cool season crops like lettuce or broccoli, or if you have a very short frost free window in your garden, you're going to need some, you know, some short season or extra early crops if you have cool cloudy springs that slow down those warm season crops.

You know, pair these descriptors with like the days to maturity number and your local like planting calendar to see if a variety is realistically going to be mature before the growing conditions become very unfavorable for you.

And then when we look at the space and the growth habit, they're usually going to state whether a plant is a Bush variety versus a pole variety, determinate or indeterminate, if it's compact, if it's dwarf, if it's good for patios or if it's a vining crop.

So if you're, you know, growing in a small garden or in containers, yes, you might want to look for Bush or compact varieties, ones that are labeled good for containers or suitable for small spaces.

If you have a lot of trellises or you want more vertical crops, then you're going to look for pole beans or indeterminate tomatoes or vining cucumbers and squash.

Rather than short Bush varieties, you're going to look for varieties that are specifically described as being good for vertical growing.

And then you know your purpose.

How are you going to use this harvest?

The seed catalogs are often going to hint at the best uses for these crops.

Remember, you know, especially when we're talking about hybrids, these seed developers, these, these these plant scientists are, are going to a lot of trouble and a lot of work to kind of isolate these specific traits within these plants.

And so they oftentimes are going to list exactly what it was that they were breeding these plants for.

So if you see something that says best fresh or excellent fresh eating, you know that this this was a variety that was bred to be good fresh off the vine versus one that is labeled for good for canning or freezing or one that stores well or is a lawn keeper or ideal for drying, right?

So choose varieties that match your intended use.

A tomato bred for processing, you know, one that's good for canning might be more meaty and less juicy.

That might not be something that you're looking for.

You know, a salad tomato might prioritize texture and fresh flavor over its ability to be stored for root crops and like winter squashes, something that says it's a good keeper or, you know, good for long storage is important if your goal is to eat them over several months.

So pay attention to those descriptions.

And if you're looking at a catalog that doesn't have those descriptions, you might want to pick a different catalog.

And then you know that final, you know, consideration is the time and skill level.

A lot of varieties are going to be described as, you know, especially vigorous or dependable or performs well under a range of conditions or recommended for beginners.

So if you are a a beginner, you can prioritize varieties that have this type of language and then add that disease resistance to it to increase your likelihood of success.

Now, if you like a challenge, you you might intentionally choose one or two fussier varieties, but it's usually better not to make your entire garden dependent on those.

OK, so catalogs are trying to sell you seeds, right?

So there's always going to be some type of marketing language in the mix.

So this is where you kind of need to focus on specific measurable traits rather than like vague adjectives.

OK.

So like high yielding is only to be meaningful if you combine it with like the size and the spacing in your garden and your own planting density.

OK, excellent flavor is totally subjective.

But if there are multiple sources or trial results that say that they all agree on that flavor, then that's a little bit more informative, right?

Things like all America selections winners or any of those types of awards that usually does indicate good performance in trials across multiple locations.

So that actually can be, you know, something that would encourage you that that's a good selection to try.

Other phrases that might be helpful would be like if they're crack resistant or crack tolerant.

If you're looking for tomatoes and you're growing in a wet climate or slow to bolt for, you know, your lettuce or your cilantro or even your spinach.

If you're growing in a warm region, tip burn resistant would be one that's good for like heading lettuce or good field tolerance, which is, you know, going to indicate tolerance to certain diseases or certain stresses.

So vague phrases like attractive plants or versatile, they're not bad.

It's just marketing, right?

It's, it's just not enough to base a decision on.

So if you pair that with like more concrete information that we've already talked about, OK, then you're going to be better off.

So let's run through just some common seed catalog pitfalls and how you can sidestep them.

The first one is buying without checking your frost dates.

OK, if you're choosing varieties purely on description without checking the days to maturity against your frost free window, you might get yourself into trouble.

So know your average last spring frost and 1st fall frost date and use those cattle or that that those dates to calculate your growing window.

And so in that instance, for your warm season crops, you're going to need to choose varieties that fit inside that window with some margin.

The second would be ignoring the growth habit in small spaces.

So the mistake would be ordering vining or indeterminate varieties without enough support or room.

So if you are growing in small beds or containers then prioritize those compact or Bush or determinate varieties.

If you want vertical crops, then plan your trellises and spacing ahead of time and then choose the varieties that are described as good for trellising.

Another mistake would be overlooking that disease resistance.

If you're reordering the same susceptible variety over and over again in a garden where you have had repeating disease issues, you're basically just digging yourself deeper and deeper into that disease hole.

So note which diseases you have actually seen in the garden and then look for varieties that have those resistant codes or explicit resistance to those diseases.

And then you can combine that resistance with some crop rotation and some good cultural practices in the garden to help wipe out those diseases or at least get yourself a better yield out of the the plants that do get hit with that disease.

And then, you know, one mistake that I have made before is ordering too many new crops at one time.

So if you end up, you know, buying seeds, a long list of crops that you've never grown before, you might, like, feel overwhelmed trying to figure them all out.

So, you know, one way to avoid this is just introduce one or two new crops or new techniques per season as you gain experience.

And then keep the rest of the garden like in your comfort zone so that you have the bandwidth to experiment without like, getting burned out on all these things.

And then finally, make sure that you are reading the fine print.

Don't make decisions from photos and variety names alone.

Read the full description, including whatever little notes there are about spacing or the planting method or the best use.

And then also check for any warnings like requires a long warm season or sensitive to heat or requires staking, whatever that is.

Try to turn your catalogs into more of a plan like they can.

Absolutely be fun Wish books, but they're also packed with really useful technical information if you know how to read it.

OK, so we talked about days to maturity and how it relates to your frost free season, the difference between hybrid and open pollinated and heirloom seeds, and why each one might have a place in your garden.

How to read disease resistant code so you're not guessing about what those letters mean.

After a variety name matching the catalog descriptions to your climate and your space and your goals instead of just what looks really pretty on the page and avoiding common catalog traps like over buying and ignoring the growth habit or resistance.

If you do a seed ordering session after listening to this, I would love if you would share your variety choices with me and why you picked them.

I love hearing how gardeners match the seed catalogs to their real world gardens and let me know if any of the information that I shared in this episode helped you figure out what exactly to order from your seed book wish list.

Until next time, my gardening friends, have fun perusing your seed catalog Wish books and we will talk again soon.