If you’re a gardener, you know that seeds are important for the growth of your plants. In botany, a seed is an undeveloped plant embryo and food reserve enclosed in a protective outer covering.
Most seeds are composed of three parts: the embryo, endosperm, and seed coat. A seed also may have additional parts, such as an aril or raphe (fleshy outgrowths of the funiculus), caruncles or spines, wings, and hairs.
Burpee
Founded in 1876, Burpee Seeds is a leading supplier of vegetable, herb and flower seeds. The company offers a wide selection of vegetable and flower varieties for every growing region.
The company also offers a variety of products related to gardening, including seed-starting supplies, tools, ties, fences, and other garden accessories. They are committed to delivering quality products that will help you get the most out of your gardening efforts.
The seeds produced by the company are guaranteed to perform as advertised, but there is a one-year return policy. Moreover, the company has an excellent seed usage policy that will protect you from any misuse or unauthorized distribution of their product.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds
As the weather warms up, gardeners and farmers across the country are prepping their summer crops. Johnny’s Selected Seeds is one of the companies shipping seeds across the country, helping people prepare for a successful harvest.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds is a 100% employee-owned seed producer and merchant based in Winslow, Maine. They provide vegetable, fruit, flower, herb and bulb seed to home gardeners and commercial growers.
A central Maine company that has grown into an international plant breeder and seed retailer, Johnny’s is dedicated to serving families, friends and communities with superior seeds, tools, information and service. Founded in 1973, Johnny’s has three facilities including a research farm in Albion.
Keeping up with the digital innovations that foster its mission of feeding neighbors far and wide, this seed merchant has partnered with Salesforce to create an ecommerce store that delivers the products customers want and helps them find educational content to grow their gardens. After implementing Salesforce’s digital solutions, the company’s gross merchandise value increased 16%.
Baker Creek Seeds
Baker Creek Seeds is one of the largest heirloom seed companies in the world. Its headquarters are located in Mansfield, Missouri, where you can tour a pioneer village and visit the company’s seed store.
The company is owned by Jere Gettle and his wife, Emilee. They are passionate about growing unique seeds and helping those in need.
They have a pool of about 250 independent growers who produce their seeds. They also source from small farmers around the country and from seed collectors from all over the world.
The company offers over 1,000 heirloom vegetable and flower varieties. Their catalog is full of color, glossy photos and vivid descriptions of each variety. It’s a dream for adventurous gardeners looking to try something new in their garden.
Kitazawa Seed Co
There’s an old saying about imprinting history and time on a place: It may be in a tattered family photo album, in the weathered face of an old man, or in the seeds that have been planted in a garden.
In 1917, Gijiu Kitazawa started a seed business from his San Jose home that served Japanese-American farmers throughout the West. But when Americans of Japanese descent were forced to leave their homes in the wake of World War II, Kitazawa’s business shuttered for three years, and he was put in internment camps.
Then, in 2000, a San Francisco woman named Maya Shiroyama, who had never run a seed company, offered to buy it. She took the business into the Internet age, broadened its seed sources and added new varieties to the catalog. The seed packets still have the historic Kitazawa look: manila paper with green line drawings of the enclosed vegetable variety. The Oakland-based company is one of the country’s oldest seed companies specializing in Asian vegetables and continues to serve gardeners throughout America.
