buying organic vegetable seeds on Amazon.com

[kermit116]

Has anyone ever bought ORGANIC vegetable, fruit, or herb seeds on Amazon.com?

I will be starting a veggie garden this year - in past year's I've basically only grown herbs and a few tomato plants in containers. This will be my first year trying a full-fledged veggie garden in my yard. I usually buy the small plants from a local farm in April/May, but this year I'm thinking it may be cheaper to buy the seeds and start all the plants myself and then put them in the garden.

I'm looking for organic seeds and I've found some online at Amazon.com. I'm just a little nervous ordering seeds over the internet. Does anyone have tips? I'm watching the Amazon reviews of the plant seeds I'm buying, but not all of them have reviews, so I'm kind of at a loss. The key here is I want all organic, so it's easier for me to find all organic seeds online rather than running around to several different garden suppliers in town. Any tips or advice for web sites would be great.

 

[IBelieveInTheMagic]

Yes, as a matter of fact I have

I, too, wanted a completely organic garden and we've done one the last 2 years now. I couldn't find any zucchini in plants here locally so I ordered the seeds from Amazon. I had no problems at all with them and in case it matters, the brand was Ferry Morse (I just checked my order on Amazon). I would order them again, no problem.

I will say, I definitely prefer starting the garden with the small plants (not seeds) but sometimes it's more challenging for the organic variety.

We can't wait to start our garden again this year!!

Enjoy,
Heather

 

[fall08CP]

I loooooove me some veggies!

Moreso than organic, I would focus on heirloom / non-GMO. You can sometimes find these at Home Depot or Walmart (love Burpee brand), but maybe you're going with amazing because it's cheaper? They're only a buck or two per packet, for 100+ seeds.

I highly recommend the square foot method to get more harvest in a smaller space, and no weeding whatsoever. We have 10 of us eating from 2 4x4 gardens at work- we harvested kale, spinach, mustard greens, bok choi, and radishes yesterday. We picked about 1/3 of it and had bags of extra produce to spare. The 2/3 we didn't pick will keep growing. We water it once a day (1 pale per garden) and get 16 crops per box. Much more efficient than row or simple raised bed gardens

 

[kermit116]

Good tips - thanks!

I also just found that Walmart is selling organic seeds - the brand is "Seeds of Change." They are $2/packet. I've ordered the Burpee catalog so I may order from them and just grab some seed packets at Walmart for the more common items (tomatoes, peppers).

 

[Colleen27]

I've never ordered from Amazon but I have a couple of favorite online sources - Seeds of Change (and wow, they're available at Walmart now?!?) is one, Baker Creek (rareseeds.com) is the other.

I don't solely plant organics, though - my interests lie more in heirloom/open pollinated and non-GMO (including not produced by companies that also produce GM seed, which rules out some of the big companies like Burpee, Park Seed, etc.) I believe organic growing methods are best in the actual production of food crops, but don't really care if my seed comes from certified organic growers.

 

[Colleen27]

Moreso than organic, I would focus on heirloom / non-GMO. You can sometimes find these at Home Depot or Walmart (love Burpee brand), but maybe you're going with amazing because it's cheaper? They're only a buck or two per packet, for 100+ seeds.

Not picking on you here but Burpee sources a lot of their seeds from Seminis/Monsanto. You won't get GMO seed at the consumer level but you're still giving your money to the same company that is so aggressively promoting GMOs, so if that matters to you it would be worth looking elsewhere for seed.

I'm a big fan of the square foot method too, and trellising anything that will climb. I don't have a huge yard, just 1/4 acre of which I only get a corner for gardens because the kids need room to play, but I grow more veggies than we can eat in my little raised beds.