We’re in the last two days of the pre-Christmas shopping rush. While it’s too late to order anything from the website for Christmas delivery, consider dropping by the following fine retail establishments today or tomorrow to pick up an Art Pack or two for stockings or table-top gifts:

• High Falls Mercantile, High Falls, NY
• Victoria Gardens, Rosendale, NY
• Verde, New Paltz, NY
• Adams Fairacre Farms, Poughkeepsie, NY
• GreenStar Cooperative Market, Ithaca, NY
• Story’s Nursery, Freehold, NY
• The Cutting Garden, Liberty, NY
• Lucky Dog Farm Store, Hamden, NY
• Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Tarrytown, NY
• GRDN, Brooklyn, NY
• Brooklyn Botanic Garden Gift Shop, Brooklyn, NY
• Bowery Bazaar, New York, NY
• The Red Lion Inn Gift Shop, Stockbridge, MA
• Kingdom of Herbs, San Francisco, CA
• Ninety-Six Ten Gallery, Klamath Falls, OR

We’ll be featuring our retailers in greater detail this winter and spring. But for now we just wanted to provide a little help to any last-minute shoppers out there.

Best of luck in finishing your lists, and warmest greetings for a happy, healthy holiday season.

In Seediness,

Ken and Doug

Stuff Stockings and Cards with Seeds!

The signs are everywhere: the dim slant of the sun’s rays; the frantic rush to finish outdoor tasks by 4:00 p.m.; the urgency of holiday shopping.

The winter solstice is nearly upon us.

While the 21st of December may mark the first day of winter this year, it also marks an end: it’s our final ship date for the 2009 Holiday Season.

If you’d like to have your items arrive at their destination by December 24th, please submit your order by 10:00 a.m. on Monday, December 21st. (For those who don’t mind if their orders arrive a day or two late, we will continue shipping throughout the week.)

Already have all your big shopping done? Consider our Art Packs as stocking stuffers or as small “gesture” gifts to include in cards or to supplement an existing gift that needs a little boost. We ship daily, and most orders placed by noon go out the same day. We ship first-class or priority for all orders; most arrive at northeast destinations within one or two days, at other destinations within three.

Ayumi trimming plates.

Ayumi Horie’s limited edition Pest and Pollinator salad plates now on sale. 50% of proceeds will be donated by the artist to the Hudson Valley Seed Library for educational programming. Thanks Ayumi!

Ayumi Horie was one of the first artists to create an Art Pack for the Seed Library. She enthusiastically took on the Rat’s Tail Radish, an oddly but aptly named edible podding radish. There were concerns that it would be hard to make a rodent that many people consider a pest into an attractive seed pack for gardeners. Ayumi overcame the challenge, using her signature Japanese folk art-inspired animal illustration style to create what became a pink pack sensation.

This year, Ayumi has again chosen to draw a pest, the voracious woodchuck, for the subject of her Piracicaba Broccoli pack. We wanted to give Ayumi the chance to exorcise all her inner garden pests–and to redeem herself by drawing some benevolent pollinators. The result is this limited edition line of salad plates, each featuring a creature that is part of our wild and cultivated garden ecosystems. Each of these insects and animals plays an important role in the cycle of seed to garden to plate that we cherish as gardeners. Some we call pests, some we call friends, but all are equal in the natural world–and each is the star of one plate. I like to think of the plates as mealtime reminders that our gardens and farms are inextricably connected to the natural world. We are dependent on these creatures for our food more than we know.

Bee Plate

Each plate is one of a kind, made by hand, and signed by the artist Ayumi Horie. Sales support the artist and the Seed Library; Ayumi has generously offered to donate 50% of each sale to support the educational programs and partnerships of the Hudson Valley Seed Library. Invite your favorite pest or pollinator to dinner with one or more of these limited-edition plates. To buy your plate, visit Ayumi’s website. Last year’s Rat Pack is currently sold out, but Piracicaba Broccoli is still available. Ayumi’s original ceramic tile for the Broccoli pack has already sold, but the original works from the other artists can be purchased by request through the contact us form.

Snow day!

This morning, our dog Kale was transformed from an old dog of 12 to a young pup by 6 inches of fresh snow. He bounded through the white fluff with a big grin that said, “It’s snowing let’s play!” His namesake Dinokale, however, was feeling a bit differently. Its brittle leaves and sagging tops said, “I’m so over winter.”

Although many of the plants from which we save seed are annuals and can be grown from seed to seed in one season, the biennials, like the kale, need two years to muster up the energy to flower and go to seed. That means as seed savers, we need to help our brassicas, roots, and parsley get through the winter. The creative process of getting plants that normally would not survive the cold on their own is called over wintering. (more…)