Top Seed Bank In The US
Baker Creek carries one of the largest selections of seeds from the 19th century, including many Asian and European varieties. The company has become a tool to promote and preserve the agricultural and culinary heritage. Our company and seeds have been featured in The New York Times, The Associated Press, Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. Gardeners can request a free color catalog. Their catalogs now distribute to over 625,000 gardeners nationally.
Baker Creek started hosting festivals in 2000 as a way to bring gardeners, homesteaders and natural food enthusiasts together to exchange ideas and seeds, to listen to speakers and to enjoy vendors, old-time music and much more. These festivals gave birth to the idea for our pioneer village, Bakersville. Other projects include their trial gardens that we grow each year, seed collecting expeditions, and educational produce exhibits.
Seed Savers Exchange takes threats to biodiversity seriously. They maintain a collection of more than 20,000 heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable, herb, and plant varieties, including over 1,000 varieties of heritage apple trees. They take great care to ensure the health and viability of the collection for generations of growers to come, keeping the bulk of the collection in an underground freezer vault at Heritage Farm.
Each year, they grow out select varieties in gardens at Heritage Farm to refresh the seed supply. To maintain accurate records of each variety’s traits, they have an evaluation Team grows out other varieties and keeps careful track of them, updating descriptions, and checking for inconsistencies. Their seed historian researches the story of each variety, documenting its history and the lives of the people who brought it to our collection.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
It takes many farms to grow a collection of seeds like they offer. They work with a network of over 50 small farms in various parts of the US who grow seeds for us. Despite working with many growers who come to them with little experience saving seed, they find that the seed they buy from them at the end of the season is more reliably true-to-type than the seed they get from wholesale.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange offers more than 700 varieties of vegetable, flower, herb, grain and cover crop seeds. They emphasize varieties that perform well in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, although gardeners and farmers from all over the country grow their seeds. They offer many unusual, Southern heirlooms, one of their gardens in spring including peanuts, southern peas, naturally colored cotton, collards, okra, roselle, turnip greens, corns for roasting and meal, and butterbeans. However, they serve gardeners throughout the United States and Canada. They do not sell chemically treated seeds.
Territorial Seed Company is a privately held company, wholly owned by Tom and Julie Johns. Purchased in 1985 from its founder Steve Solomon, Tom and Julie have grown the business substantially over the past 30 years but have never strayed far from the original course set by Steve.
All of the seed varieties they offer were trialled and evaluated at their farm. Only crops that have proven to thrive and yield the highest quality crops will receive the stamp of approval and be included in their offerings. In addition, the live plants that we offer and send to you are raised in their farm greenhouses. To ensure they will sell only top performing seed, you’ll be interested to know we have established germination standards that are higher than prescribed by the Federal Seed Act.
Originally founded in 1996, Brothers Grimm became known for strong and stable strains of cannabis. When they shut down in 2002 due to security concerns, the original Cinderella 99 seed stock was quickly depleted and became unavailable until their recent resurrection in 2016. During the dozen or so years in between, the C-99 became more than just popular—it reached cult status as the holy grail of indoor marijuana.
Many attempts were made by other breeders to copycat the strain, but none ever hit the mark. Mr. Soul decided in 2015 to retrieve his famous clone Princess and the cache of seeds he’d saved from Brothers Grimm in 2002. He grew the seeds to select a P94-generation male and then pollinated the Princess exactly as he’d done in 1999 to create the original Cinderella 99 seeds. Some other outstanding strains from Brothers Grimm are the legendary Apollo 11, Killer Queen and their newest sensational creation, Rosetta Stone.