Starting seeds
27.03.2008 01:02
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- Source: Home Envy
John Gale can drive a tractor, teach martial arts, quote the price of petunia seeds, and once spent two days photographing a hamburger, piled high with tomatoes. Gale is the CEO of Stokes Seeds, the largest seller of garden and flower seeds in Canada. The hamburger photo ended up in the Stokes catalogue (which John also writes) as a perfect way to illustrate Stokes' extensive tomato seed collection. Check out the Stokes mail order seed catalogue and dream your way from asparagus to zinnias. Pause and revel in the Scotia tomato, "used to make Maritime green relish by customers in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Maine." John can bend you ear for a goodly long time about the attributes of tomatoes. About the variety called Hy-Beef he says, "you can fire it against a wall without much damage; it's like a slab of beef." It's tasty, robust, and makes wonderful sun-dried tomatoes, John says. "It's a friendly business, we help each other," says John. Then, John tells me the story of his father Harry who started with Stokes Seeds in the 1920's. His father went on to build the first climate-controlled seed storage facility in 1936. "During the Second World War, when the Germans were invading Holland, Dutch seed companies sent their valuable seed stock to my father for safekeeping. The Sakata Seed Company of Japan did the same thing. After the war, we returned all the stock seed to our horticultural friends." It's quite seductive to get lost in the history of Stokes Seeds, but I visited their headquarters in Thorold, Ontario with a mission: to find the easiest plants to grow from seed. John's son, Wayne Gale, calls these "toss and grow" seeds. Wayne is the president of Stokes Seeds, the third generation of the family to operate the business. "Anybody can grow cosmos," Wayne declares. I suspect he wanted to add the words, "Even me." Like so many company presidents, his time is pressed. He can appreciate a seed that can be tossed in the ground and relied on to bloom in short order. Cosmos are the happiest of annuals with clear colours, and ferny foliage, they mix well in the perennial border and the Sonata series is right at home in pots. The catalogue even tells you when to plant the seeds outdoors (May 15th) and at what soil temperatures the seed germinates (24-27C). Eighty per cent of Stokes seeds are sold to commercial growers, but the same seeds and the same meticulous instructions end up in the hands of home gardeners. To the new gardener, John warns, "Don't pick out the prettiest thing in the catalogue and try to grow it." Instead look for the comforting words, "Sow outdoors." Zinnias, for instance, "grow like weeds", John says. Their day-glow colours will be welcome after such a gloomy winter. Sow outside after June 10th, the catalogue instructs. Morning Glories are a snap to grow from seed. To see Heavenly Blue covering a trellis is to believe in fairy tales again. Put the seeds (after soaking for 48 hours in a wet paper towel) in the ground after May 30th and stand back. By late August or so, after a summer soaking up the heat, the Morning Glories will match the bluest of skies. Seeds are also available for dwarf varieties, and Morning Glories with lovely, variegated foliage. The Gale's are both boosters of sunflowers as easy for the beginner to grow from seed. They jump from the pages of the catalogue as dazzling as new solar systems. Plant Mammoth Russian, Teddy Bear, or Moulin Rouge, after frost danger is over, and smile away the rest of the summer. "It's a beautiful business to be in," Wayne says as he thinks about visiting customers' greenhouses in March and April, where the air is warm and humid. "I just enjoy watching things grow." Friendly, rewarding, that's the way it is with seeds. If you've never done it before, just plunk some plump little nasturtium seeds in the ground this month and wait for the jet-propelled flowers to emerge. The leaves are curiously round and childlike, and great for munching, like chawing on whole peppercorns. If you choose the nasturtium called Alaska Mixed you'll get green leaves splashed with white like a Jackson Pollock painting. That's a bushel full of excitement for $1.50 a package.
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