You know how seed catalogues never use quite the same language to describe plants and you have to re-read and go back and forth and back and forth to make sure you know what you're getting? Just me, then? Well, bear with me anyway and check out this pretty cool site that Craig from Ellis Hollow linked to a while back—I believe he played a part in putting the site together. It's got an index of thousands of seeds, and it's part of the Cornell Cooperative Extension:
It's like the Wikipedia of seeds, sort of. You can register with the site, and that will let you add reviews and varieties that aren't in the system. You can search for something as broad as "Tomato," and the site will return a list of every variety of tomato they have, which you can then sort by different criteria; or you can search a particular variety of vegetable, like "Brandywine Tomato," which will give you a specific plant description, a list of seed sources (with links!), and reviews of the plant. They also have growing guides that give you temperature and soil preferences, potential problems, germination time, and more for tons of different kinds of plants.
As we continue to peruse our seed catalogues and try to narrow down our choices, we're doing a lot of browsing around this site. I can see us checking in at the site for the rest of the season, too, as some of our plants will inevitably deviate from schedule or start to die in weird ways and we of course will need to run to the internet to see what we did wrong.
16 January 2008
Vegetable Varieties
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6 comments:
Wow - that is a fantastic site & one that I will use a lot. And I live about 30 minutes from Cornell and frequently tour their gardens, so ya know they know wherof they speak. Nice blog - I will be back to check you out some more!
Thanks for posting that great resource, I think it will be very useful for those of us just learning about gardening and plants in general.
Howdy folks...enjoying your blog. Arrived via Onestraw. I'm a writer up here in snowy Wisconsin, working on a book about raising chickens, wrote a book about gardening that had a passage about why I love Edward Hopper's work. Anyway. I'd love to send you a copy of the garden book if you like. If so, email me at mike[at]sneezingcow[dot]com Forgive and ignore me if I've breached some sort of blog comment protocol, just plain enjoy your site. Envy yer rainwater collector.
dlyn, I bet their gardens are awesome. I've seen pictures, but have never been there myself. We're glad you like the blog!
Ken, yep, it has great general information, and I also love how specific it gets with different varieties. Glad you found it useful.
Mike, very cool! I think I actually have one of your books (Truck) on my to-read list. I didn't realize you had a gardening one as well. We'll email you. Thanks for stopping by!
That's a great site. It could use lots of promotion, 'cause it obviously gets better the more people review in it! I posted a few reviews a while back, now I'm reminded to do more!!
Hi, Mike. Yeah, that's the thing--I've been poking around there quite a bit, but now I have to remember to make an effort and contribute when the time comes!
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