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Maine
FEDCO
P.O. Box 520, Waterville, ME 04903-0520
(207) 873-7333; fax (207) 872-8317
CR. Lawn, founder
Seeds,
Trees, shrubs, perennials, Bulbs and tubers
Worker/customer
plant cooperative. Office hours from December through April,
Monday to Friday, 9:30-5; irregularly the rest of the year. Three catalogs annually, $3. Mail
order only. Strict order deadlines. Discounts on bulk orders.
Annual spring tree sale. Books.
Fedco
is a Maine-based worker/customer plant cooperative with
refreshingly old-fashioned values, bound to warm the heart of the
most world-weary cynic. Fedco sells vegetable and flower seeds,
bulbs, tubers, trees, and nursery stock at low prices by mail
order. It encourages customers to form buying cooperatives to
secure even greater bulk discounts. It operates according to a
practical rural philosophy, reminiscent of Virgil’s Georgics,
espousing the nobility of fanning. Literary quotations and
inspiring stories of plant breeders are interspersed with catalog
listings. Fedco’s newsprint catalogs would seem relics of the
19th century, prices included, if not for the witty advertising
copy, hilarious asides, and sight-gag illustrations taken from old
garden catalogs. We deeply suspect founder C.R. Lawn, a trained
lawyer rejoicing in the occupation of farmer, of indulging a
weakness for sick puns during catalog season.
The
Fedco Seeds catalog is a conflation of several mail-order
categories into a single mailing: Fedco Seeds, Moose Tubers, and
Organic Growers Supply. The Fedco Seeds section offers vegetable
and flower seeds selected for proven performance in cold-climate
gardening (Zone 4). A special focus is on the heirloom seed
program, whereby Fedco cooperates with Maine farmers to grow
regional seeds such as dried beans and heirloom vegetables rarely
offered by commercial growers. All seed is untreated, and
absolutely no transgenic cultivars are offered. As to variety,
“lettuce” (let us) point to excellent bean cultivars,
“amazing” corn, tomatoes, greens, and other classic garden
vegetables—open-pollinated and heirloom, some good for home
gardeners, others for truck farmers. The list includes flower
seeds for “fancy annuals and perennials,” mostly old-fashioned
cottage garden plants. We like knowing where to find a
300-year-old sweet pea, heirloom black hollyhocks from Maine, and
a neglected double impatiens from the Victorian era. The Moose
Tubers section of the catalog offers certified seed potatoes,
onion sets, sunchokes, and sweet potatoes, complete with handling
instructions and quotations from Shakespeare. The Organic Growers
Supply section offers cover crops, organic fertilizers, organic
pest controls, books, tools, and garden supplies. Among the last,
our favorite is the Flame Weeder, useful for immolating weed
seedlings, “burning out webworms, and singeing the tops of
meringues and cremes brulees.”
The
Fedco Trees catalog is a descendant of its original tree
catalog, originally for fruit, nut, and shade trees, now expanded
to include ornamental trees, flowering shrubs, small fruits,
bulbs, medicinal herbs, and perennial plant crowns. Since 1978,
Fedco has been an admirable source of inexpensive hardy fruit
trees, especially apples, flowering crabs, pears, and stone
fruits. Fedco’s continuing search for old Maine apple varieties
has turned up 15 Maine heirlooms; the most notable, called
‘Starkey’, was grafted from the last Starkey apple tree in
Vassalboro, where the variety was discovered some 200 years ago.
All Maine apples are being planted in an orchard in Unity at the
headquarters of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners
Association (MOFGA), an organization allied closely with Fedco in
origin and philosophy.
Another
heirloom available for the first time in decades is the American
chestnut, once the most prominent deciduous tree in the eastern
United States; Fedco’s seedlings are made available through the
American Chestnut Foundation, which is working to restore the
tree. (The seedlings are blight-susceptible, but according to
Fedco, “will probably thrive if there is no blight infection
within a mile.”) The Fedco Trees catalog also offers
cold-tolerant berries, grapes, and hops; roses and lilacs;
underutilized fruiting shrubs such as elderberry, Allegheny
serviceberry, and cornellan cherry: herbaceous perennials
(including Japanese tree peonies); medicinal herbs used in
traditional and Chinese medicine; and a few tender summer bulbs
such as tuberous begonia and gladiolus. All trees come bare-root;
plants may be mail-ordered or picked up at Fedco’s annual tree
sale in Clinton. Maine. In early May, Fedco catalogs comprise some
of the best reading material available to armchair gardeners with
a taste for madcap humor. While Fedco Trees is slightly
more sober reading than Fedco Seeds, both are full of
visual puns and amusing literary gags. Among the seed descriptions
alone, we noted antic references to Jurassic Park, the
Russian space program, chess, Marvel Comics, Balkan politics,
Johnny Most, and Alice in Wonderland. Fedco Seeds almost
certainly has the craziest ordering system on earth. The catalog
tells customers how to order, how not to order, and the right day
of the week to order, depending on where you live. Order
deadlines, like edicts from the Red Queen, are at once confusing
and strict. Group seed purchasers can use Fedco’s “7%
solution,” which provides individual packaging of component
orders for 7 percent of the purchase price. Individual seed orders
can be processed on Fedco’s Short-Form 1020-EZ, due by mid-March
so as not to be mixed up with your federal tax return.
Other
than the tree sale, a gardener’s only opportunity to meet
Fedco’s endearing gaggle of eccentrics is to attend MOFGA’s
Common Ground Fair, held annually in Unity, Maine, in early
autumn.
Directions:
Fedco is essentially a co-op warehouse staffed by fanners using a
temperamental fax machine. Call for directions to the tree sale,
held in early May.
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JOHNNY’S SELECTED SEEDS
RR 1, P.O. Box 2580, Foss Hill Road, Albion, ME 049 10-9731
(207) 437-4301; fax (800) 437-4290
Rob Johnston Jr.
Seeds
for vegetables, flowers, herbs and farm garden spring vegetables.
Independent
seed house, certified organic. Business hours January to May,
Monday to Friday 8-7, Saturday 8-5;June through December, Monday
to Friday 8:30-5. Fax 24 hours. Free catalog. Fax, Internet, and
mail order. Retail store open year round, Monday to Saturday
8:30-5. Visitors welcome. AAS trial and display gardens. Workshops
and tours. Annual open house. Vegetable flats in May. E-mail: homegarden@Johnnyseeds.com. Web site:
www.johnnyseeds.com.
Like
anything grown from seed, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, according to
its owner, “had the smallest of beginnings.” An independent
Maine seed house that functions as the L.L. Bean of vegetable
gardening, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, named for Johnny Appleseed,
was started from scratch in 1973 by Rob Johnston Jr., a native of
suburban Massachusetts whose grandfather liked to take him out on
summer nights to, as he puts it, “listen to the corn grow.” In
college, Johnston helped found a successful counterculture food
cooperative in Amherst, Massachusetts, and engaged in communal
truck farming in New Hampshire before starting a small import
operation to secure hard-to-find Oriental vegetable seed.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds has since prospered into an excellent
organic source for more than 4,000 varieties of field-tested
vegetable, herb, flower, and farm seeds.
Johnny’s
operates out of a 25-acre farm in Albion, a central Maine
agricultural community east of Waterville (population: 1,500),
where it does just about everything that can be done with seed for
100,000 customers: researching, testing, importing, producing,
storing, packaging, selling, and, in some cases, giving it away.
The seed is guaranteed to be of high quality, and, as far as
possible, organically grown and chemical-free. Johnny’s is not
only a seed purveyor, but also a certified 40-acre organic farm
that, in an almost-unheard-of throwback to 19th-century
agricultural practice, actually produces some of its own seed
(especially beans, melons, corn, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes,
squash, beets, and rutabagas). Founder Johnston continues to
function as plant breeder, director of research and production,
and chairman of the board, In addition to such outside titles as
president of the Maine Organic Farming and Gardening Association (MOFGA),
listed member of the Seed Savers Exchange, and, since 1982,
official Vegetable Judge for All-America Selections (AAS), which
determines the year’s best new seed varieties.
Doing
descriptive justice to Johnny’s vast seed list would be an
exhausting undertaking; instead, we recommend readers to seek out
Johnny’s free, illustrated, no-nonsense catalog, which doubles
as a sourcebook for gardeners and an energizing tonic against the
winter blahs. Notable among its vegetable seeds are Johnston’s
top- 10 favorites, which include frost-tolerant red romaine
lettuce, ‘All Yellow’ Swiss chard, bicolor summer squash,
‘Tendersweet’ cabbage, and, for Tex-Mex freaks, an
Anaheim-style chili adapted to northern gardens. Johnston’s own
hybridizing efforts have attracted AAS awards for ‘Baby Bear’
pumpkin, ‘Juliet’ plum cluster tomato, and ‘Bright Lights’
Swiss chard (a brilliant, multicolored vegetable that easily works
as an ornamental annual). Johnston’s strong interest in superior
heirloom seeds is reflected in wonderful old-fashioned vegetables
for short-season gardens, including vintage tomatoes, trout beans
from Maine’s Passamaquoddy tribe, and an antique Scottish kidney
bean obtained from an elderly gentleman on North Haven Island. We
hear rave reviews for the wild arugula and the tiny, intense
raisin tomatoes derived from the original wild tomatoes of eastern
Mexico. Vegetable seeds also include cool-weather varieties that
can be planted late and harvested in fall and winter, such as
Brussels sprouts, corn salad, kale, and collards.
Among
the flower seeds are sunflowers, salvias, and sweet peas;
many-colored salpiglossis; creamy angel’s-trumpet; plumed
celosia, and red-hot poker. We could go on about the decorative
annuals, vines, and grasses; the everlastings and wildflowers; the
medicinal and culinary herbs; not to mention the grains, green
manures, salad sprouts, potato tubers ... but that would take the
fun out of it. Peruse the catalog, make your lists, and plan your
own garden, real or imagined. For literary gardeners, Johnny’s
offers a good selection of garden books. For practical souls,
there are good supplies for home and market gardens, including
sound gardening tools and an effective cold frame designed by
Maine author/educator Eliot Coleman.
Visitors
are welcome at Johnny’s organic farm, whose barns (now administrative
offices) and large building (housing the retail store, packing
department, and seed lab) are surrounded by fascinating AAS
trial gardens for more than 3,500 vegetables and flowers. The
Albion farm is set amid a rolling landscape of spare antique farms
with peeling paint; above a blue distance, clouds accumulate like
sheep on summer afternoons. Johnston is in contact with dozens of
breeders in different countries, who send flower and vegetable
seed for the trial and breeding gardens; here one can glimpse the
future of American vegetable and flower beds. (Occasionally, home
gardeners are given a chance to participate in Johnny’s
experimental seed and taste trials.)
The
beautiful herb gardens are overseen by Janicka Eckert, now Mrs.
Johnston. Johnny’s greenhouses are loaded with seedlings for
sale in May, attracting vegetable lovers far and wide; later
visitors may attend tours, workshops, and an annual open house.
For
all its rural roots, Johnny’s is a sophisticated independent
seed house, employing nearly 100 staff at the height of the
season. Demonstrating its far-flung connections are wooden
directional signs posted outside the seed store, droll indicators
of the number of miles to seed suppliers: Burpee, 509; Gurney,
1,804; Shepherd’s, 3,372:Tozer (London), 3,345; Starke-Ayers
(Cape Town), 8,104; East West (Bangkok), 11,008; and Johnny’s,
0.
Directions:
From Augusta, follow Route 202/9 east to Albion, and turn left in
town at the L+M Market onto the Albion- Winslow Road. After 3.25
miles, turn left onto Foss Hill Road (signposted), and Johnny’s
is 0.5 miles on your right.
From
1-95, take exit 33/Waterville and follow Route 137 across the
Kennebec River Turn right at the first set of lights (still Route
137), and turn left at the second set of lights (still Route 137).
In 0.25 mile, up the hill, turn left after the bank onto Garland
Road. In 3.5 miles, turn right onto the Albion- Winslow Road.
Drive 4.5 miles and turn right onto Foss Hill Road; Johnny’s is
0.5 mile on your right.
Nearby
attractions: The Heirloom Seed Project, 20. Box 300, Waldobora ME
04572 (207-832-389 school; 207-832-6321 greenhouse), is a
seed-savers program run by biology students at Medomak High
School; they research and grow each heirloom, save the seed, and
distribute it through a free catalog. Donations accepted.
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