12/27/2009

One of the joys this time of year, in addition to finally having a working snowblower, is waiting patiently for the first garden catalog.

Like southbound waterfowl, dimming days and the annual scientific slugfest over the accuracy of wooly bear caterpillars in forecasting winter's harshness, the arrival of seed catalogs is one of those immutable signals that change is in the air.

The soil can be hard enough to abrade diamonds when the first of the vegetable inducements hits the mailbox, but in ways as mysterious as why expensive gas-powered snow removal devices break down on the eve of major winter storms, within four months, the ground is friable enough to commence planting.

Uncanny is what it is.

Vegetable and flower seed purveyors lately seem to be in a race to be the first out of the box -- or into the box, in this case.

The winner at our place goes to Wisconsin-based Jung Garden and Flower Seed Company. Their tasty-looking catalog was delivered last Tuesday. The silver medal, for second place, is awarded to Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I found it on my desk at work Wednesday morning. This is a new one for me, although the Mansfield, Mo., company has been in business for a dozen years.

More are on the way, including my favorite, Skyfire Garden Seeds, a small, friendly mom-and-pop operation based near Kanopolis, of all places.

But back to Baker Creek. The large, more well-known seed houses send out glossy catalogs depicting vegetables and flowers in photographs that have undergone more retouching than those of naked models in skin magazines.

Not Baker Creek, particularly its 2010 catalog cover, a bucolic watercolor that is a blend of Birger Sandzén and Salvador Dali.

The scene comprises a weathered cottage, narrow gravel road, a pair of apple trees and a field of banana melons.

Even people who don't know beans about melons know this is a field of banana melons, because the artist has drawn in the foreground a melon shaped like a banana that in proportion to the other objects must be 50 feet long and weigh at least a ton, maybe two.

I liked these folks precisely because there is no way I could be suckered into thinking I could grow a 2,000-pound banana melon. A 500-pounder, maybe.

As its name implies, Baker Creek Hierloom Seeds offers only open-pollinated, sometimes hard-to-find varieties. Other specialty companies do the same. Some of the big boys are beginning to throw a few tried-and-true standard vegetable seeds in their catalogs, but the rest of the content is largely the latest whiz-bang hybrids. Baker Creek company disdains hybrids, treated seeds and anything genetically modified. For all I know, the paper used to print the catalogs was processed from organic wood pulp.

Gardeners looking for so-called "Frankenfoods" won't find Baker Creek to their liking.

But those seeking such fare as Asian Winged Bean, Pencil Cob Dent Corn, Ozark Razorback Cowpea, Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge Tomato, Ali Baba Watermelon -- and Banana Melon or Jumbo Pink Banana Squash -- would enjoy a peek at this catalog, or its Web site, rareseeds.com.

As the seed catalogs pile up in inverse proportion to the snow that had been forecast for last Thursday, we who are drawn to scratch in the dirt have faith that spring is just around the corner. A matter of days. About 120, to be exact.

nGordon D. Fiedler Jr. can be reached at 822-1407 or by e-mail at gfiedler@salina.com.

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