Everything you ever needed to know about seed catalogs

The colors of the garden catalogs that billow through the mail slot in January can warm the bones and lift the soul. For more experienced gardeners, it doesn't even take pictures: adjectives are enough. New! Double! Disease-resistant! Heirloom! Chartreuse!

It can easily heat us up to a kind of delirium, in which we order 25 times as many varieties as we have space for. Or they all will need harvesting the week we're going on summer vacation. Or we didn't realize we had to start the seeds indoors before transplanting them outside. Or they are plants that are fabulously photogenic but have little chance of setting much fruit or flowers in the little sun we have.So pause before you order. Step out back for a breath of bracing fresh air. Take a look at where you'll be doing the actual growing, bare though it may now be. Apply a little methodical thought to the situation and you can bring that catalog fever down.

But don't be immune. There are many good reasons to garden by mail-order. Starting plants from seeds is less expensive than buying them in nurseries or even home-improvement stores, and the selection is far wider. The only way to get many varieties of seeds, as well as of plants such roses, lilies, herbs, spring bulbs and perennials, is by catalog. Getting on a few mailing lists or building up a favorites file of Web sites expands your gardening world immeasurably.

Nurturing food or flowers from seed is uniquely satisfying. "There's no other flavor like a home garden vegetable," says George Ball, president of W. Atlee Burpee & Co. in Warminster, Pa., one of the nation's oldest and largest catalog companies. And even a novice can do it -- with the right plants. You can afford to experiment with new or borderline plants you'd hesitate to pay $10 for. "Seeds are cheap, so go ahead and try it," says Karen Park Jennings, president of Park Seed Co. and Wayside Gardens in Greenwood, S.C., two other big catalogs. "You aren't losing much if it doesn't work."

Here are three good questions to ask yourself before you put pen to order form or start dialing that toll-free number:

Question No. 1:

What kind of gardener are you?

'Gardening Newbie':

1. Start with a good general garden book or an authoritative Web site to get background on plants you think you'd like to grow. You can't count on the catalogs to define essential terms or explain gardening basics. For example, a catalog may assume you know that peas are normally sown right in the ground, but tomatoes have to be started inside as much as two months ahead of time and transplanted outdoors in late May or June.

2. What you need to know about a plant before you order:

Sun requirements

Soil requirements

Height at maturity

Width at maturity

If seed, direct-sown or started indoors

Planted when

If plant, bare-root or potted

If perennial, does seed need a cold period called stratification before planting

3. Figure out a catalog's system of symbols. The icons are trying to tell you the plant's needs. But they aren't standard, so find and understand the legend before you buy.

4. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Choose a few easy plants to start.
5. Direct-sow something: Jennings suggests sunflowers or zinnias from the Profusion series, or radishes, carrots or peas (but make sure you have a strong support for the pea vines to clamber -- another thing a catalog may not tell you).

6. Want to try indoor seed-starting? Order an inexpensive small kit and use it to start a dozen or so tomato and pepper plants on your sunniest windowsill or under a close-hanging fluorescent light.

'Been At This Game a While"

1. Don't always buy the same old thing. "Gardeners learn their garden, they learn what does well there and they learn what they like," says Ball. But it's a waste of all that boundless catalog variety if you don't mix in one new kind of tomato every year. Maybe a perennial you thought you couldn't fit in now comes in a compact cultivar.

2. Don't buy things just because they are new. Think about how they will work among your existing plants. And remember that though new varieties have been tested in trial gardens, they haven't stood the test of time.

'I Love Details and Juggling':

Celebrate. Catalog shopping, by offering varieties that mature at different rates and giving you seeds to sow in succession, can allow you to keep vegetable harvests going almost all season. Sow lettuce seeds every two weeks, provide some shade during the summer and you can cut your own salad in all but the hottest parts of July and August. Start tomato varieties from early to late, cherry to beefsteak, and you can have ripe ones from the 4th of July until frost.

'Go With the Flow':

Look for seeds you can sow right in the dirt outside (though not all catalogs tell you this). Many perennials can be sown in fall and bloom the next year, Jennings says.

'Gotta Have It Now':

If you can't wait for seeds to sprout, try plants. Many catalogs now offer some varieties as seedlings. It won't be as cheap as seeds, but you can find more choice than at most nurseries. Shipping expertise is vital here, so deal with only experienced sellers.

The plants that arrive may seem small compared to the ones you see in flats at the home center. But that's good: The home center plants may have been forced into flower to spur impulse buying, which means their season is half over when you get them. The ones you get in the mail really will be at the right stage for planting.

'Tied to My Computer':

You're in luck. Nearly all catalog companies now have Web sites, and some specialist nurseries are Web-only. A search engine will turn up all sorts of treasures.

But bear in mind that it doesn't take much these days to set up a Web site. It's a lot harder to run a nursery business, maintain a large, healthy seed inventory or ship plants so they arrive on time and alive. So make sure you know how long the seller has been in operation and how much business they do.

Know that a Web site may not have all the information that is in the printed catalog. And vice-versa: Plant companies use the Internet to sell off excess or end-of-season inventory cheap.

Question No. 2:

What are your conditions?

Sun:

Did you watch last summer? If you didn't, step outside and try to imagine how much sun your site will get from May to October. Are there overhanging branches that would block sun when full of leaves? Unless you have at least six hours of full sun every day, don't bother ordering most herbs or vegetables, except greens.

Soil:

Make sure you know what yours is like. Get a soil test if you can or at least check the pH. (Chicago-area soils tend to be alkaline, but there are exceptions).

Most plants prefer a soil that is rich in organic matter and drains well. Clay soils, common around here, need organic matter mixed in. Pay attention to what catalogs say about each plant's soil requirements.

Exposure:

Perennials, trees and shrubs will be rated by USDA zone, a measure of plants' ability to survive cold in the winter. Lower is colder; Chicago is in Zone 5. But gardens vary, and every garden has areas with different conditions. Seed can be a cheap way of testing what your personal climate limits are.

Question No. 3:

What kind of garden do you want?

Vegetable:

"How to read a catalog is really how to plan," says Ball. Read through all those succulent descriptions, make your wish list of varieties and then sketch your garden plot and narrow the list down to what will fit. Make sure you allow for rotating crops and for the different times it takes to prestart vegetables. While you're at it, plan supports for tomatoes, pole beans, squash, cucumbers and other climbing crops.

Flowers:

Growing annuals from seed is a good way to get a new look every year without spending a fortune, says Jennings. They also will fill in between young perennials and shrubs, so you won't be tempted to space them too closely.

While most vegetable ordering is done in spring, flower catalogs keep coming all year, helping you keep your garden rhythm. For example, bare-root roses are ordered in winter. Spring-blooming bulbs are ordered in the summer for fall planting. With catalogs, you can preorder things such as bulbs and bare-root perennials and they will be shipped when it's time to plant them.

Container:

With more people gardening in pots, more compact varieties are being bred for them. There even are cherry tomatoes you can grow in hanging baskets. You can direct-sow some vegetables in pots -- radishes, peas, baby carrots (nothing with roots deeper than about 8 inches, though). Make salad pots of fluffy leaf lettuce or mesclun; if you can protect them from hot sun, sow a succession of pots for a long season of salad.

Children:

The process of plant creation fascinates kids. So let them pick out something easy from a catalog full of pictures.

Radishes are perfect -- three or four weeks from a seed you drop in the soil to something you can eat. Lettuce also is quick. And kids who grow vegetables might eat them.

Bloomwise, there are myriad sunflowers today, from fabulous 10-foot towers to cuddly 2-footers. Plant sunflowers in a circle, and by late summer they will have grown into a wonderful hiding place for a child.

Woody:

Ordering trees and shrubs by mail requires a long view. They will be small; it's just not practical to ship heavy root balls. Nearly all woody plants sold by mail are bare-root. But if you have some years to invest, it's certainly cheap; there are places that will sell you a 6-inch tree for a couple of bucks.

Native:

Those seeking out native plants for the hardiness and disease-resistance they have evolved and for their suitability to local conditions will find a far greater range in catalogs than in most nurseries. And many new cultivars have been bred of native plants such as coneflower and black-eyed Susan that are smaller or flower longer or have new colors.

But beware: There is no standard definition of "native," and a plant with that label may well be native to the arid Rockies or acid-soiled Eastern forests rather than the Midwest. So proceed with caution.

Heirloom:

This term is variously defined but generally means old, often 19th Century or earlier. Some heirloom varieties are the hand-me-downs of generations of expert home gardeners; others are commercial varieties from before World War II. Heirloom varieties offer a much wider range of colors, forms and flavors than were available in most of the late 20th Century. The tradeoff is that they may be less disease-resistant, and have fewer flowers or lower yields or more irregular fruit than more recent hybrid types. Still, it's fun to explore heirlooms and some gardeners swear by them. Heirloom seed usually also is organically grown -- but not necessarily, especially from non-heirloom specialists.

Organic:

More and more nurseries today are selling seed grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Some don't sell anything else. But you can find some organically-grown seed in even mainline catalogs like Burpee's. You may find the same varieties grown organically by some companies and non-organically by others.

Much commercial seed is treated with fungicide to prevent disease. Organically grown seed should not have been treated.Sources:

Reader's Digest New Illustrated Guide to Gardening (Reader's Digest, 544 pages, $35)

Reader's Digest Organic Gardening for the 21st Century : A Complete Guide to Growing Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers by John Fedor (Reader's Digest, 288 pages, $30)

University of Illinois Extension Hort Corner, urbanext.uiuc.edu/hort. Extensive background information on gardening in northern Illinois

Mailorder Gardening Association, mailordergardening.com. This trade group site offers ordering tips, a glossary, advice on care for plants after they arrive and a vast listing of catalogs, cross-indexed by what they carry (perennials, roses, bulbs, aquatic plants).

Dave's Garden, davesgarden.com. This garden portal includes Garden Watchdog, where members rate more than 4,000 mail-order vendors. Do homework before you start buying