We finally got our seeds for our garden in the mail last week. Not knowing any really local seed suppliers, and not having a large selection of catalogs to select from, we went with one that randomly showed up in my mailbox at work, since their catalog made us feel comfortable with the company.

Horizon Herbs, located in Williams, Oregon, does purport to be primarily a medicinal herb seed company, but they do have a large supply of crop seeds. Part of what made the catalog more attractive was the fact that they included the latin names of every plant in their catalog, which for my wife as a boilogist who dabbles in botany was a win. But more than that, their prices were very reasonable, they grow as much of their own seeds as possible, and having ordered from them once, we were really pleased with the speed at which they got us our order.

Yes, their "11 Reasons to Choose Horizon Herbs" list includes an entry for 'Magical, Religious, and Entheogenic Herbs', but you know what? This company is just clearly really into seeds, and while the jury is still out on how we'll feel about them at the end of this gardening season, so far the experience has been fantastic.

We choose to go with their pre-packaged garden kit, the Hoedown Collection which arrived nicely vacuum packaged. Further, the company makes some key promises with regard to the collection that made us feel good about buying it. They claim that the seeds are germ-tested and viable, so we should have good success. Plus, they are all open-pollinators, so we should be able to save seeds if we wish.

Admittedly, we're still going to be buying some more plants from the market this year. Some of our favorite tomatoes were F1 hybrids, and our the pepper selection in this package is non-existent, though we did augment our order with a package of pepper seeds. Pretty soon we'll be starting seeds inside, and then tilling our plot.

We only have a 20'x20' plot, so I'm not sure we'll be able to go through all the seeds we've got this year, but at least we know we'll have plenty. As we get more of our plans laid for this years garden, I'll be posting more information about what we're doing, and I'll try to include some pictures this year.