Vegetable Gardening

Where to get seeds and plants for your garden? Advice for community and backyard gardeners interested in growing vegetables

Vegetable Seedlings and Plant Resources

• Newton Community Farm has a seedling sales in May, see website for info

• Mahoney's - Locations in Brighton, Concord and other Boston area locations.

• Gore Place - Gore Place in Waltham is selling seedlings

• City Natives -  in Mattapan

Seeds for planting flowers and vegetables can be found at your local garden center, and these are a good place to start. But if you want a large selection of seeds with information on their history and cultivation, with options for heirloom and other open pollinated varieties in addition to the hybrid varieties, and some which have been produced using organic methods, then you will want to check out some of the online sources listed below. Most of these catalogs offer open pollinated and heirloom seeds. Many also offer hybrid seeds which have more consistent characteristics but you can’t save hybrid seeds for the next year. Seed saving is done with open pollinated varieties. These include many of the heirloom varieties that have been grown for many years, often decades or more. Some of these providers also grow some or all of their seeds using organic methods. Their seeds also vary in price and the sellers in their size and specialties. If you want to delve into the details, check out some of these seed sellers. Their websites and catalogs offer a wealth of information.

• Johnny’s Selected Seeds - an employee owned company in Maine that sells seeds and plants, also sells equipment and has lots of good information on their website and in their paper catalog

• Fedco Seeds - also in Maine, Fedco is owned by members, both workers and consumers. They also sell plants, equipment and supplies and have good information in their catalog

• High Mowing Organic Seeds are located in VT. There are a variety of small local seed catalogs

• Hudson Valley Seed Company looks like a bigger company, they’re in NY

• Seed Savers Exchange is based in Iowa on Heritage Farm and as you might expect they have lots of heirloom and open pollinated seeds

• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds is based in California and they have all sorts of varieties from many different countries.