Garddwest’s Seeds have been open-pollinated and hand-selected for over a decade using professional horticultural methods with a homegrown touch. All of this year’s seed was grown and saved in the Facer St neighbourhood of St. Catharines, Ontario.
Garddwest saves a wide selection of open-pollinated seeds each year. We generally donate all our seed back to Seedy Saturdays and Seed Libraries across Ontario, but this season we harvested enough to fundraise by sharing a few with you! We are selling a limited number of packets to keep our educational materials free-of-charge. Seeds will be mailed out to you as soon as we receive email confirmation and payment!
Select the “Heritage Seed Collection” option to purchase all listed seeds for $25 and receive 3 additional bonus seed packets for herbs including chives and basil!
Payment is by etransfer to garddwest@gmail.com
Mailing is free across Canada until May 2023
*seed descriptions at bottom of page, below form
BEANS
Annie Jackson – Pole Bean (25/pkt)
A very early and vigourous pole bean; 3-4m; 90-100 days.
Pole Beans are twining vines that will climb anything. Reaching 3-4m in a season, the vines need a pole or trellis for support – an efficient use of vertical space in a small urban garden. Annie Jackson beans are known for artistic colors and excellent flavour, especially as a baking bean. Can be eaten fresh, but dries down quickly on the vine making for a good dry storage bean.
We have been developing this line of Annie Jackson Pole Beans in our urban gardens with 7 generations over the last few seasons. These Russian heritage pole beans came to Southern Manitoba with Annie Jackson herself, where her son has continued to keep the lineage alive. We picked up our recent Firelight Gardens seed at the last pre-pandemic Seedy Saturday we attended, in Wellandport, ON. In 2020 Kate grew out three generations of these beans along the railing of a concrete basement stairway. Together with Josh, Garddwest planted four crops of these beans across the 2021 / 2022 seasons.
TOMATOES
Market C – Red Cocktail (25/pkt)
Named for its label in my research journal, as one of many trial tomatoes I grew at Niagara College. With parents including Stupice (TreeandTwig), Bloody Butcher (TreeandTwig), Fireworks (Reimer), Sub-Arctic Plenty (Baker Creek), it has been trialed and tweaked for 12+ generations, arriving at this foolproof, reliable, early ripening production tomato with superb flavour. This is everything a tomato should be: 2″ – 3″ and dense with robust flavour, resistant to cracking, easy separation from calyx, can be picked green or red with strong skins and long shelf life under either condition. The plants themselves are disease-resistant, hardy and tolerant of wet cold summers with fruits ripening very early.
~65 days / indeterminate
Market B – Mini Beefsteak (25/pkt)
Named for its label in my research journal, as one of many trial tomatoes I grew at Niagara College. Starting from Microbeicum Occemus (also known as Santorini Paste Tomato) seeds donated by Michel Lachaume at a growers meeting, it has taken on a life of its own since 2010, crossing happily with many of my other market favourites (including Sudduth’s Brandywine) until I arrived at this foolproof, reliable, production tomato with superb flavour. Mini for a beefsteak, but really a medium slicer in beefsteak shape, with sweet, crinkled, marbled pinky red flesh. Vigorous producers with little cracking, long shelf life, easy separation from calyx, robust flavour and medium size seed cavities.
80 days / indeterminate
Yellow Pear, Bite Size (25/pkt)
These fun, lemon yellow, pear-shaped tomatoes grow in prolific clusters, dependably through hot summer weather and endlessly into cooler autumn nights. With a sweet, mellow flavour they make a great fresh garden snack or were traditionally made into preserves. Highly productive plants can get tall and lanky, need staking and suckering. Moderately resistant to disease.
80 days / indeterminate
We have three options for beans this year:
Annie Jackson Pole Beans
Cranberry Beans
Sunset Scarlet Runner Beans
Individual packets of beans are $4 each
3pack of Heritage Beans for $10
We have three options for Tomatoes this year:
Market C
Market B
Yellow Pear
Individual packets of tomato seeds are $4 each
3pack of Heritage Tomatoes for $10
We have two options for Melons this year:
Cantaloupe
Honeydew
Individual packets of melon seeds are $3 each
2pack of Heritage Melons for $5
Garddwest 