Where do you get your seeds?

[Andy Hamilton]

Had a quick look and have just bought a few seeds off e-bay and I have also bought on-line from sulffolk seeds but could not find them today for some reason. Can anyone reccomend a good source for seeds on-line?

[mbeirnes]

I get most of mine form the organic gardening catalogue

They are reliable at delivery and a good quality

[catalyst]

www.vidaverde.co.uk sell an amazing selection of heirlooms

we try to grow as many heirlooms as possible, and save seed each year, so our range of different germplasm grows...

also, sometimes buy f1 hybrid varieties from lidls (20p or so), then save the seed, if poss. and see what appears from them next year... (every seed comes up different, so you could create a masterpiece)

am growing 5 potato seeds this year for tha same reason, each seed will be unique...
things i do for fun!!

[Millymollymandy]

I ordered from Thompson and Morgan because they sell in France too. The good thing is that you can use their website in English but still be ordering in Euros for delivery within France!

One thing I noticed though is that you don't get many seeds in a packet. I always get tons of seeds in the packets I buy in shops in France (even T&M).

[Magpie]

Being in New Zealand, this is no help to you at all, but you may find it interesting anyway - http://www.koanga.co.nz/ is where I get a lot of my seeds.

[Chickenlady]

Very interesting article in the latest Clean Slate mag (CAT's journal) about seed swapping. Various groups are popping up who organise days when they get together to swap seeds and listen to talks, etc.

The idea is to pick up some seeds to grow, then save them to swap next year. They help to keep varieties of seeds going that are no longer sold, so increasing genetic diversity. Apparently it would be illegal to sell seeds not on the Naitonal List or EC Common Catalogue. But if you swap them, it's OK. And quite often, you cannot sow the seeds from commercial growers as they are sterile F1 hybrids.

There are groups in Brighton, Lancaster, Devon, Newport and Llanelli, but the article encourages people to start their own. There are email addresses in the article for these groups, so let me know if you want me to post any.

[Muddypause]

Apparently it would be illegal to sell seeds not on the Naitonal List or EC Common Catalogue.

I'd like to meet the person who thought that law up and shake him firmly by the throat. It's one of those laws that is a veritable steam hammer used to crack egg shells.

A reasonable argument can be made for some control on standard and quality of seeds sold, but the way it's done means that most varieties of crop that are not grown commercially won't ever get on the approved list, and so will be illegal to sell. To register every specialist, low volume seed type would cost huge amounts of money. Registration fees can be, apparently, a thousand pounds per variety, plus an annual renewal fee - now there are thousands of varieties of potato alone, so that's millions of pounds just to register potatoes. Subsequently we will never see most of them again in this country.

I'm guessing that in drafting that law, someone's commecial interest was being protected somewhere.

For those who don't live in Europe, and wonder what this is all about, here is an article from The Independent newspaper from a couple of years ago (if your eyes can cope with orange text on black):

http://www.seedysunday.org/independent2.htm

[Wombat]

That is really bad! Talk about big brother................. . Nothing like that has happened here......yet

Nev