The Real Seed Catalogue

The best vegetable seeds for the Kitchen Garden

VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans Beetroot Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery Chard & Greens for cooking Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Kale Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens (for cooking) Herbs Onions Oriental Salad Greens (also great cooked) Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vine Types Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Ulluco Mini-Collections Useful Books   SEEDSAVING SeedSaving Instructions Seedsaving Courses   INFORMATION Read past Newsletters Give us Feedback Browse the Reference Section   PAYMENT

Seed Sources: We Grow Our Seed Without Any Chemicals We are based on a community-run farm devoted to sustainable agriculture and sustainable living. We try to think carefully about the impact of our lives on the planet: So we don't use any chemicals, and as policy, the whole site generates all its own electricity from the wind, sun and water, and all our heating is by renewably coppiced wood. We don't fly, and try to minimise our car use. Almost all vegetable cultivation is by hand, with minimal machinery use. Large areas of the community farm are devoted to wildlife and woodland, and no animals are raised for meat production. Overall , our aim is that at the end of our lives, we will leave the soil and ecosystems in a better condition than at the start. Our Seed We feel that seed we grow ourselves is produced to ethical and environmental standards that far exceed the requirements of Organic Certification. But we're not actually Certified Organic, due to the cost and bureaucracy involved. We'd rather be out growing vegetables than filling in forms, to be honest. As we haven't paid the fees for certification, we mustn't use the O-word to describe our seed. But we have labelled our farm-produced seed in the catalogue (see the table below) and leave it to you to judge. Seed from Others We would prefer to grow all our own seed - but life is not perfect, and we cannot always do this for all of the varieties, so we have to find alternative sources. Wherever possible we get it from other small growers or farming friends, again people we know, and who we trust to use no chemicals, and who we know see the soil as a living organism that must be cared for. But they are rarely Certified Organic - if someone is growing £30 worth of quinoa seed for us, it just doesn’t make sense for them to pay hundreds for organic certification. Again, we have labelled these seed sources, so you can decide if you trust our views on this. If we have to buy in seed, we prefer to get certified organic seed from a few commercial growers that we know and trust. As a final alternative we source top-quality conventionally grown seed, untreated with any fungicides or preservatives. A few passionate gardeners produce seed for us too. If you are an experienced vegetable grower & would like to join our Seed Growers Network, get in touch . Seed Source Codes Many people would like to support small family farms or co-operatives that farm in a responsible manner without the use of pesticides and other agrochemicals. Big farms, like all big industries, are harder on the environment. To help you, we have labelled the catalogue so you can see where things come from. [OG1] Grown by us without any chemicals whatsoever, but not 'Certified' Organic. [OG2] Grown by a friend, another small farmer, seed saver, or co-operative grower that we know and trust to use no chemicals - but not 'Certified' Organic. [CO1] Seed from another small farmer or cooperative that we know to be Certified Organic [CO2] Seed from a large commercial grower that we know to be Certified Organic no code Non-organic seed, free from postharvest chemical coatings & treatments We don't have anything to do with treated (fungicide-coated), hybrid seed, or genetically modified seed! Seed Saving All our seeds come with instructions on how to save pure seeds for use in the following years. This is only possible because none are hybrids. Seedsaving is a simple process that is vital if you want to be able to carry on growing vegetables suitable for home growing rather than those bred for commercial chemical farming. While it may seem odd for us to encourage you to keep you own seed, it is obvious to us that the world is in a perilous state as we enter a period of rapid climate change just as we have lost all our traditional vegetable varieties. We would prefer that you saved your own seed - preserving this biodiversity for future generations is far more important than us making big profits. Bigger Packet Sizes On a separate note, we have yet again increased packet sizes wherever we have enough seed available. We are proud of our reputation for good germination, so we do not want to keep seed from year to year - we'd rather you had a generous portion. It seems that commercial seed packets are getting smaller and smaller, and while it is silly to waste seed, we try to give you as least as much as we would sow for our own family use.