I want to grow food. I’ve experimented with small garden plots with varying degrees of success but my wife and I bought a house last summer with a back yard big enough for one large vegetable garden, a small fruit grove, grape vines and berry bushes. And I have designs on planting all of that plus a lot of wildflowers in the next few years. Since I am new to agriculture I was looking for a seed seller that I could build a long term relationship with as I learned what I liked, what tools and supplies suited my specific needs. I thought that was Seeds of Change, a slightly hippy dippy company that has been selling organic and heirloom seeds for many years. The company’s approach and presentation sold me, but things started going south as soon as I started trying to do business with them.
The webstore is a weird form that requires you to manually input catalog numbers for each item you want. Luckily I had jotted that information down while looking through the print catalog, otherwise I would have jumped to another site automatically. I made my order and noticed that two or three seed packs were temporarily unavailable. No biggie, I can wait a few weeks for those, I thought. Several days later a pending charge appeared on our checking account. Then it disappeared. Then it reappeared, only halved. Then a week later I received an envelope from Seeds of Change featuring a single pack of heirloom squash seeds. No explanation, no card saying thank you for ordering and here’s a coupon since your order is delayed, just a packing slip for the single seed pack.
Seeds of Change seems like they have their hearts in the right place. Maybe when their heads catch up I’ll do business with them again.
April 9th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Sorry you had this experience, Neal. I have ordered from Seeds of Change many times with great success, but sounds like you were not quite so lucky. I have heard that with the cost of everything going up, that seed sales are at an all time high. Perhaps they are running low on stock and just haven’t dealt with the seed success of the year very well.
There is another line of good, organic, heirloom seeds that I buy at Cit E Scapes downtown or at Whole Foods, called Botanical Interests.
You could also check out the amazing selection of heirloom seeds at: http://www.seedsavers.org/
This hippie is wishing you luck on your garden!
April 9th, 2009 at 5:39 am
That’s really bizarre. I’ve had varying degrees of success with company’s like that. Sometimes they communicate with you so much you’d swear you talk to them more then your own family. Other times, you wonder how they stay in business with that kind of hit-or-miss service and attention to detail.
I’m assuming that’s what you were renting the sod cutter for last weekend. I’ve got to do the same in the near future. The wife would like me to build 4 raised beds for her in time to put in an organic crop of vegetables and whatnot. I guess I’d better get to work.
April 9th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Julie – I’ll do business with your group of hippies any day.
Brian – You better get to work, like, this afternoon.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:20 am
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