Gardening FAQ

Garlic is planted in fall, and our seed garlic at Garlic Bulbs begins shipping in early fall, with a sign-up button on any variety that shows as out of stock so we can notify you when it is ready to order. Our zone-by-zone guide at Alli-yum: Baker Creek's No-Nonsense Guide to Planting Garlic gives the right planting window for where you live. Garlic ships within the United States only, and some states are excluded by agricultural quarantine rules, which is noted on the product page before you add it to your cart. If you miss the fall window, How to Plant Spring Garlic covers planting in spring.

Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths are all planted in fall for spring flowers, and we gather them at Fall Bulbs, with our full tulip range at Tulip Bulbs. Bulbs begin shipping in early fall, with daffodils and hyacinths going out from late September into November, and we can only ship bulbs within the United States. For design and planting advice from our garden team, read Plan and Plant a Bulb Garden Like a Pro!.

Think of fall as a second spring: the trick is sowing in summer so crops mature as the weather cools, and our ideas for succession planting into cool weather are at What Should I Plant in Summer for a Fall Harvest? for you to browse. Kale is one of the hardiest choices and tastes best after a frost has touched the leaves (Kale Seeds), collards can be direct seeded until midsummer for a fall crop, and radishes come in both quick salad types and larger winter storage types at Radish Seeds for your garden. Carrots, turnips, lettuce and spinach round out a fall garden, and we carry heirloom varieties of each.

Kale may be the hardiest of the cabbage family: it excels in cold weather and tastes best after a frost, and you can see our heirloom kales at Kale Seeds. True spinach is also very cold tolerant: in zone 6 and warmer you can pick a few leaves all winter, and farther north it is possible with row cover or a high tunnel, so browse our varieties at Spinach Seeds. Mache (corn salad), Miner's lettuce and mizuna are other greens that keep producing in the cold, and we walk through them in Five Cold-Tolerant Greens to Ring in the New Year.

Some crops need a long head start indoors, and our guide Long-Season Crops to Start in Winter lays out what to sow beginning in December. Leeks are a classic example: they need a long season, so the tiny seeds are started indoors early in the year, and you will find our heirloom leeks at Leek Seeds. Before you fill the first tray, our experts' top seed-starting tips are in Pro Tips for Successful Seed Starting.

Peas lead the way: they need to go in early so they finish before late-spring heat shuts them down, and we offer heirloom types for shelling or edible pods at Pea Seeds. Radishes, spinach, lettuce and other cool-weather crops can be sown straight into the garden in early spring too, and our favorite direct-sow varieties are in Direct Sow Winners. For quick wins, Top Spring Varieties for Impatient Gardeners lists fast-maturing heirlooms to plant in spring.

Not at all. July is one of the best months for setting up both your summer and autumn gardens, because the soil is warm and the days are long, and our ideas for the month are at What to Plant in July. For another round of beans, browse Bean Seeds, Common, and heat lovers like okra, cowpeas and basil thrive in the hottest weather. Our timing advice for keeping sowings going all season is in To Make the Most of Your Garden, Try Succession Planting!.

Yes, our potatoes are non-GMO, virus-free micro seed tubers in heirloom and specialty varieties such as Yukon Gold, Adirondack Blue, Purple Majesty, French Fingerling and Russet Burbank, all at Potatoes. Spring is the traditional planting time, and you can also plant a second crop for a fall harvest; our horticulturalist answers the common questions about growing microtuber seed potatoes in Can't Top These Tiny Taters!, and the basic rules for a great crop are in 'Tis the Season to Plant Taters. Seed potatoes ship within the United States only and cannot be sent to every state (Alaska and Idaho, for example), which is shown on each product page before you add them to your cart.

Radishes are one of the easiest crops to start with, and we carry 69 heirloom varieties from small salad types to larger winter storage types at Radish Seeds. Lettuce is another forgiving first crop as long as you grow it in cooler weather and sow a little at a time, and our 112 varieties are at Lettuce Seeds. For a short list of our favorite varieties that can simply be sown straight into the garden in early spring, see Direct Sow Winners.

Zinnias, marigolds and cosmos are three of the most forgiving flowers you can start from seed. Our heirloom zinnias at Zinnia Seeds have huge blooms in many striking colors and are famously easy to grow, and our marigolds at Marigold Seeds are cheerful, edible-flowered and amazingly easy as well. If your soil is poor or dry, our cosmos at Cosmos Seeds are drought tolerant and actually prefer poor to average soil, bringing a riot of color and frills to the summer garden with very little fuss.

Sunflowers are a favorite for children, with big vibrant blooms that pollinators love and edible seeds to harvest at the end, and we carry 47 varieties at Sunflower Seeds. Radishes are easy to grow and give young gardeners something to pull up and eat, with 69 kinds at Radish Seeds. Nasturtiums are fun because the colorful flowers and leaves are edible and the green seed pods can even be pickled like capers; see our 34 varieties at Nasturtium Seeds.

Yes, and many of our lettuces, basils, radishes, chard, peas, arugula, kale, marigolds and kitchen herbs such as chives, parsley and thyme are flagged as container favorites in our catalog. Chives in particular are a perennial we suggest growing in containers or as a border plant, and lettuce is a natural fit for pots in cool weather; browse Lettuce Seeds and Basil Seeds to start. For ideas on growing edibles in containers when you have little or no yard, read Easy Edible Plants to Grow Inside in Winter.

Basil is the classic first herb: a fragrant, heat-loving, frost-sensitive annual that thrives in full sun, and we carry a wide range of varieties at Basil Seeds. Dill is another easy choice because it is simply sown directly where it will grow and it draws beneficial insects; see Dill Seeds. For a walk-through of planning and planting the whole bed, we put together Growing an Herb Garden with Baker Creek.

It depends on the crop, and we describe each variety as accurately as we can, including days to maturity, growth habit and germination guidance, so the product page will point you in the right direction. Many vegetables and flowers can be sown directly outdoors in early spring, and our favorites for that are in Direct Sow Winners. Warm-season crops like tomatoes are usually started indoors first; our experts share their best seedling advice in Pro Tips for Successful Seed Starting and our Tomato Starting 101 guide at Tomato Starting 101 covers tomatoes specifically.

For sauce you want a paste type, and we carry several classic ones, including Amish Paste, Martino's Roma and Comstock Sauce and Slice, all in our tomato collection of more than 300 heirloom varieties at Tomato Seeds. Each product page tells you whether the plant is determinate or indeterminate, which matters for a sauce harvest, and our Tomatoes 101 post at Tomatoes 101 walks through the basics. If you are starting from seed indoors, our Tomato Starting 101 page at Tomato Starting 101 covers that step.

Slicers are the big beefsteak-style fruits you cut for sandwiches and salads, while cherry and grape types are small, snackable and prolific; we offer both in our heirloom tomato collection at Tomato Seeds, where you can browse by color and type. For picks with the stories behind them, read Five Favorite Slicing Tomatoes at Five Favorite Slicing Tomatoes and Our Favorite Cherry Tomatoes at Our Favorite Cherry Tomatoes. Many gardeners plant a few of each so the salad bowl and the snack bowl both stay full.

We label every variety in the title, so you will see Sweet Pepper Seeds for bells, Italian frying peppers like Jimmy Nardello, pimentos and shishitos, and Hot Pepper Seeds for everything from jalapenos and cayennes to habaneros, ghost peppers and Trinidad scorpions. You can browse all of them in our pepper collection at Pepper Seeds. If you like heat, our post Top O' the Scoville at Top O' the Scoville: Our Favorite Superhot Peppers names our favorite superhots, and Jalapenos: America's Favorite Pepper at Jalapenos: America's Favorite Pepper covers the most popular medium-heat choice.

Summer squash, such as zucchini, crookneck and scallop types, are picked young and eaten fresh before the rind hardens, while winter squash like butternut, delicata, red kuri and pie pumpkins mature on the vine with a hard rind and store in cool, dry conditions for up to a year. We label each variety as Summer Squash Seeds or Winter Squash Seeds in its title, and you can browse all of them, more than 240 varieties, at Squash Seeds. For a taste of how deep the winter squash world goes, read the story of Yokohama squash at Yokohama Squash: A "Study in Form and Texture".

All three, and more. Our corn collection at Corn Seeds includes sweet corn for eating fresh, such as Stowell's Evergreen Sweet, Country Gentleman Sweet and Golden Bantam 12-Row, popcorns like Glass Gem Popping, Dakota Black Popcorn and Strawberry Popcorn, and flour and flint corns like Hopi Pink Flour, Painted Mountain and Sehsapsing Delaware Black Flint for grinding into meal. Every variety we sell is open-pollinated and non-GMO, and we test our corn for purity; our post Corn Crazy at Corn Crazy! Five of Our Favorites picks five favorites to start with.

Yes. In northern climates we suggest small-fruited watermelons, and the Orangeglo variety often works well there too; you will find Orangeglo at Watermelon Orangeglo alongside Sugar Baby and Blacktail Mountain in our watermelon collection at Watermelon Seeds. If you want melons beyond watermelon, our melon collection at Melon Seeds has heirloom honeydew and Charentais types that can mature in almost any climate.

Lettuce grows best in cooler temperatures, so plant it in early spring and again in late summer for a fall crop, and sow a little every couple of weeks for a continual harvest while avoiding the long days and heat of early to midsummer. Our lettuce collection at Lettuce Seeds offers a wide range of heirloom varieties, including romaine and cos types like Parris Island Cos, butterheads like Buttercrunch, compact Little Gem and loose-leaf Henderson's Black Seeded Simpson. For salad through the cold months, see Top Greens for Indoor Winter Growing at Top Greens for Indoor Winter Growing.

For a cutting garden we would start with snapdragons, scabiosa and lace flower. Snapdragons at Snapdragon Seeds are an annual spiked flower popular as a cut flower, scabiosa at Scabiosa Seeds is a Mediterranean annual that is a popular choice for cutting gardens and floral arrangements, and the sweet-scented blooms of lace flower at Lace Flower Seeds last well in the vase. Bells of Ireland, with its fragrant chartreuse spires, and the many salvias that make lovely bouquets round out an heirloom cutting patch.

Start with milkweed, because it is the sole food source for monarch butterfly caterpillars and an herbaceous perennial; our varieties are at Milkweed Seeds. Sunflowers at Sunflower Seeds are a North American native adored by pollinators, and agastache, bee balm, dianthus and columbine are favorites of hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. For fresh ideas, our garden team picked out several new pollinator favorites in Five Fabulous New Flowers the Pollinators Will Love.

We publish step-by-step growing guides for each main type, including Shirley and Flanders poppies at How To Grow Poppy Seeds (Shirley/Flanders Type Poppies) and breadseed poppies at How To Grow Poppy Seeds (Breadseed/Opium Poppies), with separate guides for California and Icelandic poppies. Poppies bloom from late spring into early summer, and our heirloom poppy seeds are at Poppy Seeds. One caution: parts of many poppies are poisonous, so do not eat any part unless you are certain it is safe.

Quite a few of the heirloom flowers we offer belong in the kitchen as well as the border. Nasturtium flowers and leaves at Nasturtium Seeds are wonderful in salads, soups and pesto, and the fresh green seed pods can be pickled like capers; pansy and viola blossoms at Pansy / Viola Seeds are tasty in salads or candied; and calendula at Calendula Seeds is an easy, aromatic annual herb with edible flowers. Marigold blossoms, bachelor's button blossoms, hollyhock petals and the young leaves of celosia are edible too, so check each variety's description for which parts are traditionally eaten.

Plenty of tea herbs grow well from seed: chamomile with its sweet apple scent, lemon balm, bee balm whose strongly flavored foliage is an excellent addition to teas, lemongrass for a citrusy brew, anise hyssop and the other agastaches, mints including Greek Mountain Tea, and stevia if you want a natural sweetener. Our article Plant Your Best Tea Garden walks through our favorites at Plant Your Best Tea Garden. Start with Chamomile Seeds and Lemon Balm Seeds.

We offer seed for many herbs with a long history in traditional herbalism, including numerous echinacea (coneflower) varieties plus several mullein and yarrow, along with marshmallow, horehound, calendula and toothache plant, all open-pollinated and non-GMO. Echinacea is a clump-forming perennial native to eastern and central North America and is adaptable and easy to grow; mullein's hairy leaves have many uses in traditional herbal medicine. Shop Echinacea Seeds and Mullein Seeds, and read our growing notes at Growing Echinacea with Baker Creek.

We carry a deep selection of East and Southeast Asian vegetables: bok choy and tatsoi, Chinese cabbage, mizuna, tong ho, bitter melon, wax melon, soybeans, burdock and long beans such as Chinese Red Noodle and Taiwan Yard-Long. Bok choy is a cool-weather brassica that originated in Asia, while long beans are a staple of East Asia and easy to grow in all but the coldest climates. Start at Bok Choy / Tatsoi Seeds and Bean Seeds, Long, and explore more favorites in our article Seeds Of Japan at Seeds Of Japan.

Yes. We offer green, yellow and purple tomatillos, several cilantro and coriander varieties, grain and leaf amaranth, ground cherries, and hot peppers such as Poblano, Chiltepin and the Aji types. Tomatillos grow much like tomatoes but are seldom staked and are more cold tolerant, and cilantro does best sown in succession. Find them at Tomatillo Seeds, Cilantro / Coriander Seeds and Pepper Seeds.

Unusual varieties are our specialty: oyster leaf, a coastal perennial whose leaves taste like oysters; toothache plant, whose flower buds make your mouth tingle; litchi tomato, snake bean, wax melon, moringa, Job's Tears and many more. Every year we travel the globe to find new heirloom and open-pollinated varieties, and each season's finds are gathered in one place at 2026 Introductions. For a taste of the odd and wonderful, see Oyster Leaf Seeds and Toothache Plant Seeds.

Yes, we sell heirloom sweet potatoes as live plants rather than seed packets, in varieties such as Nancy Hall, Korean Gold, Pumpkin Yam, Myanmar Purple, Lilac Beauty, Carogold, Seon Mi and Jersey Yellow, for example Sweet Potato Plants Nancy Hall 5 Plants Ships Prompt. Live plants ship within the United States only, and the expected ship window for any plant is shown on its product page. If you are curious about the crop's story, our seed historian traces it at A Brief History of the Sweet Potato.

Yes, saffron comes from Crocus sativus, and we sell saffron crocus bulbs at Crocus Bulbs. Crocus bulbs ship from late September through November for fall planting, and we can only ship bulbs within the United States. For crocus growing tips and favorite varieties, see Crocus: A Gorgeous Prelude to Spring.

Mostly seeds, but we also offer a small range of live plants: heirloom sweet potato plants such as Sweet Potato Jersey Yellow 5 Plants Ships Prompt, Joseph's Coat plants at Joseph S Coat 3 Plants Ships Prompt, and Northcountry blueberry plants at Blueberry Northcountry 2 Plants March May Ships Prompt Weekly As Available. Plants ship in their planting season as they are ready, so the product page gives the expected ship window, and if a variety shows out of stock it is worth checking back because not every plant is ready at the same time. Live plants ship within the United States only.

Yes. Bedding-type dahlias are grown from seed, and our guide at How To Grow Dahlia Seeds (Bedding Type Dahlias) walks you through it, while How To Grow Dahlia Tubers covers dahlias started from tubers. Seed dahlias are grown as annuals, but the tubers they form may be lifted and stored for planting the following spring, and both the flowers and tubers are edible. Our dahlia seed varieties and mixes are at Dahlia Seeds.

A gardener is easy to shop for when the gift is heirloom seeds, and we have gathered our tools and other seedy gifts in one place at Gifts and Supplies, with free shipping in the U.S. If you would rather let them pick their own varieties, an electronic gift certificate from Gift Certificates is delivered by email and redeemed at checkout. For something to read by the fire in winter, our gardening journals, cookbooks and other books live at Books and Catalogs.

They are two different publications. The Whole Seed Catalog is, as we like to say, the whole enchilada, and it is sold in our Catalog collection at Catalog, while the Rare Seed catalog is more of a digest with photos and short descriptions and is free to request at Request a Catalog. If you love seed catalogs as time capsules of garden history, our post at The Whole Story of Seed Catalogs is a fun read.

We sell dried sourdough starters alongside our heirloom seeds at Sourdough Starters. The lineup includes our Old World Sourdough Starter, Ms. Debbie's Rye Starter and an Amazing Sourdough Rice Starter, and each one comes with care and feeding instructions plus a few recipes to get you going. They make a thoughtful gift for a baker, and like the rest of our U.S. orders they qualify for free USPS shipping.

Yes. Our Books and Catalogs collection at Books and Catalogs includes the Baker Creek Vegan Cookbook, The Heirloom Life Gardener by Baker Creek, Bizarre Edible Plants: Unknown Delicacies Vol. 1, and The Artisan Herbalist by Bevin Cohen. If you want to cook from the garden before the book arrives, the recipes from our catalog are free to read at Recipes.

Cowpeas (Southern peas) are a classic choice: they are popular across the southern U.S. and tolerate heat, drought and humidity, and we carry dozens of heirloom varieties at Cowpea Seeds. Okra, an African native and a staple of the Deep South, really thrives on heat, and you can browse our varieties at Okra Seeds. For hands-on advice and variety picks from our horticulturalist and trial farmer Richie Ramsay, read Hot Weather Gardening Plus Richie's Picks at Hot Weather Gardening--Plus Richie's Picks!.

Several of our heirloom flowers are built for low-water gardens. Gaillardia, or blanket flower, has the heat and drought tolerance that makes it an excellent choice for xeriscaping, see Gaillardia Seeds, and cosmos are drought tolerant and actually prefer poor to average soils at Cosmos Seeds. Moss rose (portulaca) is a drought-tolerant succulent annual that spreads into low mats of bloom at Moss Rose Seeds, and our daisy, rudbeckia, coreopsis and vinca collections are also described as drought tolerant.

Absolutely. In many respects winter is the best gardening season in the South, and our article How To Grow a Winter Garden In the South at How To Grow a Winter Garden In the South walks through how to make the most of it. Cool-season crops are the place to start: lettuce at Lettuce Seeds needs cooler temperatures to grow really well, and fava beans at Bean Seeds, Fava prefer cool weather and tolerate frost. Pansies and violas are cool-weather-loving annuals that suit spring and fall gardens too.

Heirloom varieties are seeds that gardeners have saved and passed down for generations, and open-pollinated simply means non-hybrid. Everything we sell is open-pollinated, non-hybrid, non-GMO, untreated and non-patented. Our glossary post at Heirloom? Open Pollinated? Patented? A Glossary Of Terms defines heirloom, open-pollinated, hybrid, treated and non-GMO side by side, and Who Owns The Seed? Who Controls Food Supply? explains how commercial seed got to where it is and why the difference matters for what you grow.

Yes, and that is a big part of why we sell only heirloom and open-pollinated seed: every variety is non-hybrid and non-patented, so the seed you save from your harvest is yours to plant again. Our conversation with seed saver Bevin Cohen at Bevin Cohen Wants You to Save Your Seeds makes the case that saving seed is easy, fun and does not have to be complicated, and Heirloom? Open Pollinated? Patented? A Glossary Of Terms explains what the terms on a seed packet mean. If you want to start with a crop that has been passed down this way for generations, our heirloom tomatoes at Tomato Seeds are a classic place to begin.

The Safe Seed Pledge was first created by the Council for Responsible Genetics in 1999, and signing it is a public commitment to keeping gardens free of genetically engineered plants; we are one of nearly 400 companies that subscribe to it. We also test every one of our corn varieties for GMO purity, do not buy seed from Bayer-owned Seminis, and are not members of the American Seed Trade Association. You can read the pledge at Safe Seed Pledge and our wider position at Non-GMO, and browse the corn we test at Corn Seeds.

We previewed the Purple Galaxy, a purple-fleshed tomato developed by a plant breeder in Europe, in our 2024 catalog after a major international laboratory reported that it did not contain the two genetic markers it tested for. Later testing could not conclusively establish that the variety was free of genetically modified material, so we chose not to offer it and discontinued production before a single seed reached a customer. The full account is on our FAQ page at FAQ, and our commitment to selling only heirloom, open-pollinated, non-GMO varieties is explained at Non-GMO.

We believe seeds belong to the people, and for 30 years our family has been sharing rare and unusual seeds and the simple joy of gardening with folks around the world. Our seed is heirloom, open-pollinated and non-GMO, we test germination beyond the federal standard, and we stand behind every product with a two-year satisfaction guarantee. You can read more at Why Baker Creek and About Us, and see how we test our seed at How Does Baker Creek Test Seed Germination?.