Albert's Greenhouse

It's winter. It's cold outside. Time to sit by the fire, and see what the mailman brought us this year... This is part of a series of short looks at some of the plant catalogs that arrived in January.

Catalog: Burpee
Cover Plant: Porterhouse Beefsteak Tomato $4.40/pkt
Paper: Thin, semi-glossy, 136 pgs
Pictures: Oversaturated Color Throughout

Selling Ice to Eskimos: Horseradish. 5 roots/$7.95 - those of us familiar with horseradish know that just one root will invariably multiply when you don't dig it up completely into a hoard of horseradish. What are you going to use that much of it for anyway? We go through like a bottle every couple years at most.

It Will Never Germinate: Impatiens Rose Parade Mix. $4.95/30 seeds in 5 different colors. Or approximately six seeds per color if you're lucky. I'm not that lucky, and furthermore have had horrid luck getting those little seeds to sprout.

Cost of the Black Colocasia: ( not offered ) They will sell you 8 dwarf canna bulbs for $9.95, though.
Cost of the Beefsteak Tomato: Better Boy $3.35/30 seeds
Best Bet: Mache, Lamb's Lettuce $4.40/1500 seeds. This is a great cool weather crop, and the stuff is expensive in stores. With 1500 seeds, it's almost a bargain.

Burpee is one of the catalog companies I remember my dad ordering from when I was young. I seem to recall it was a bit different back then, offering fewer varieties and mostly just seeds, but it's become a tradition to at least look the catalog over each year.

I know what my dad would say: "$4.40 for a packet of 30 seeds???"
The interesting thing is that this is apparently not some kind of record. In fact, on page 3, there's a couple of new introductions priced as $4.95 for 30 seeds. The seed packets seem to bottom out at $2.50, and it's rare to see one under $3.00. I guess somebody has to pay for all the bright color photos, but at these prices it's not likely to be me.

They now have a small section offering organic seed - a concept I'm not quite sure I understand. Heirloom, I understand the attraction. You're telling me, though, that some treatment of the seed or the mother plant is going to make its way into the seedling and into the daughter plant in a large enough concentration that it's going to effect me when I eat it?

It's a big catalog and it's a pretty catalog, but aside from a couple offerings of weird colored carrots, there's not really anything in there this year for those of us into plant oddities.