Gardening in October
Compiled by Sors Pretorius
Photo:www.nmg.nationalgeographic.com
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage,
concludes that it will also make better soup” Henry L. Mencken
A
t this time of year many
a gardener visits his or
her local nursery or plant
-outlet to decide what
to plant in the garden. For many of
us, especially those of us in the
smaller towns and villages, tend to
become frustrated and sometimes
totally disillusioned by the lack of
variety to choose from as far as different cultivars are concerned. You
tend to end up with only one or
two choices of seed for a specific
vegetable or herb. To make things
even worse, many of the sales people tend to know nothing about the
seeds, seedlings or plants they’re
selling and you normally end up just
buying blindly from what is available at the time.
However, more and more serious
and knowledgeable “plant” people
realised this phenomenon and embarked on worthy initiatives in this
regard. The role of the internet,
websites and blogs does make
things easier and one can buy your
choice of products AND get online
advice at the same time.
I was recently fortunate to get hold
of Living Seeds’ August 2014 – July
2015 Heirloom Vegetable Seed Catalogue. I would really like to congratulate Sean and Nicola Freeman
and their team on this, their first
seed catalogue. As the only commercial grower of locally tried and
tested heirloom vegetable seed
their emphasis is on locally grown.
What I find absolutely great, is the
well organised information provided about a number of important
aspects of essential use to the gardener. I find the information on
the “Info bar” and explanatory
“Icon Key” of the best I have encountered in any similar catalogue
so far (see example below). Their
comprehensive information and key
regarding plant type, ease of
growth, and seed treatment, furthermore places their sales effort in
a superior position.
Example of The Living Seeds InfoBar
Source: http://livingseeds.co.za/InfoBar