Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co.
Jere Gettle started this one in 1998 as a teenager with 500 mailed catalogs, and it grew into the biggest heirloom seed house in the United States. Everything listed is open-pollinated and non-GMO, no hybrids at all, with well over a thousand varieties and a heavy accent on odd colours and imported types: purple carrots, striped tomatoes, Asian greens collected on seed hunting trips. The free annual catalog is a thick colour book, and the separate Whole Seed Catalog runs past 500 pages with growing notes and history.
Good fit for a gardener who likes to experiment and read while the ground is frozen. Less good if the goal is disease resistant workhorse varieties for a market garden, since the collection favours rarity over yield. Two walk-in stores, Mansfield in Missouri and the Petaluma Seed Bank in California, plus a spring festival that draws big crowds.
Address: 2278 Baker Creek Road, Mansfield, Missouri, USA
Pros
- Over a thousand open-pollinated varieties
- Free colour catalog, thick and detailed
- Rare imported types hard to find elsewhere
- Two retail stores and a spring festival
- Fast shipping outside the January rush
Cons
- No hybrids, so no modern disease resistance
- Packet seed counts vary a lot by variety
- Support slows badly in peak season
- Some novelty varieties germinate unevenly
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