The Cottage Gardener is an heirloom seed and plant nursery in southern Ontario, Canada. We have been providing rare and endangered heirloom varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers to gardeners and market growers since 1996. Our online catalogue has almost 600 heirloom seed varieties available, in retail packet sizes and bulk amounts. We have one of the most diverse selections of Certified Organic seeds in Canada, and we add to this each year. Each spring we sell certified organic plants onsite.
We've added over 60 more heirloom varieties to our Online Catalogue (check "New for 2008" in our online catalogue).
As a certified organic seedhouse & nursery, we are committed to converting as many of our seed varieties as we possibly can to certified organic status. We now have more than 230 certified organic varieties & over 100 organic/naturally grown - virtually all of our vegetable seed & the majority of our herb seed. The biggest challenge is with flower seed - it is extremely difficult to obtain perennial and annual flower seed, especially of the very rare varieties that we offer, that is organic/certified organic; and it takes three years of growing out successive generations of untreated seed organically to consider it Certified Organic. Nevertheless, we are moving along that path & have expanded our growing areas to do so.
We have increased the number of seed varieties available in bulk quantities. To make perusing & ordering easier for you, we have integrated them into the website listings as well as our paper catalogue.
Our new, secure online shopping cart enables you to order 24 hours a day/7 days a week. It's been designed to make ordering quick, easy, expedient & enjoyable.
We've made one change in practice that, I'm sure, will have many of you sighing in relief - we are identifying dates up front that we will be open for selling organic & certified organic starter plants in 2008: May 24/25th; May 31/June 1st and June 7/8th. We are expanding our plant sales to include perennial & annual flowers as well as herbs. Now a caveat - if spring is really cold some of the more tender plants, such as peppers & tomatoes, may not be out on the first weekend or you may have to harden them off a little yourselves.
Well, we think that captures the major news for 2008 – here's to a winter of dreaming and planning our gardens and, hopefully, a summer of great gardening weather!
See if we'll be coming to a seed or gardening show near you! We love to talk about heirlooms!
Note - Due to recent U.S. changes in import regulations, we regret that we cannot ship seeds to the U.S. at this time.
