you got me all excited about this -- UNTIL i went to the site and found that the prices are way beyond my means! $25 for 100 seeds?? ah, well....

I have bought seeds from Swallowtail previously, and it is a good place. =)

100 Calibrachoa plants will cost you considerably more than $25. Just sayin'

Burpee has them for $5.95 but it's only 10 seeds plus shipping. There was free shipping when I ordered last night.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bloom Where You're Planted-Urban Gardening in Philly

My favorite and only place I buy seeds is Geoseed.
They have Kabloom for 100 seeds for $14.70. They have 200 NEW varieties of seeds this year in addition to their normal 5000 varieties.
Incidentally their catalog has no pictures.
The Geo part stands for George Burpree who founded the company many, many years ago when he left Burpree.

Hi Bob (aka bugbite),

I can't say GeoSeed is my favorite, but I do order seeds from them. I have their current catalog, which is titled GeoSeed, Seed for Professionals 2014-2015 Flower Seed Price List. I wonder if we will have to wait until 2016 to get a new catalog from them.

Not only do they not have any pictures, but they combine several different items as a single entry in the catalog. You have to be on the watch for this, because the listing is very brief.

For example, in the Zinnia section, for the Yoga Series zinnia variety, the catalog listing is:

Yoga Series 3 ft; Professional cutflower for direct sowing. Tall nonbranching stems bear good sized double flowers, just right for bouquets & shipping bunches.
Colors: Mix, Orange, Purple, Rose, Salmon, Scarlet, White, Yellow.

A new customer might mistakenly think that just a mix of colors was offered, and that mix contained the listed colors. When actually, GeoSeed is offering a Mix and separate colors. You could purchase a Trade Packet containing 2M (2,000 seeds) for $3.35. (That is a lot of seeds for not much money.) You could order a Trade Packet of just White Yoga seeds, or any of the other separate colors listed.

"The Geo part stands for George Burpree who founded the company many, many years ago when he left Burpree."

I think you meant to say that the Geo part stands for George B. Park. There may have been a family connection with the Park Seed company, but none that I know of with the Burpee seed company.

Bob, hey, we miss you over at the "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias" message threads. At one time you were planning to grow some tetraploid cactus zinnias from seeds offered by GeoSeed. I will be placing an order with GeoSeed for some zinnia seeds again this Spring. They have a great selection of zinnia seeds, although none of the Burpeeana Giants zinnias that I like. I guess I will have to get them from the Burpee catalog and/or from the SwallowTail website.

Incidentally, I mentioned the Yoga zinnias just as an example. I am not attracted to zinnias that are non-branching. I think Yoga zinnias are mostly for commercial growers of zinnias for the cutflower florist trade.

ZM
(not associated with any product or vendor mentioned)

This post was edited by zenman on Thu, Dec 4, 14 at 2:27

Hi ZM,
So glad you caught my "George B. Park" mistake. Guess I was typing faster than my brain was thinking. Thanks for the help.

Yesterday I was talking to my wife about how much I have done with gardening over the years and how much I have forgotten about those meaningful experiences. Kinda of sad, since the testing was so significant to me at each particular year. I remember the Zinnia I tried. Thanks for remembering. I probably have seeds left in the frig from that one. But don't remember being so fond of it that I would take it out and plant it again. Zinnias surely vary as do marigolds. Some great; many uneventful in my garden. If I could hit on the perfect Zinnia for my North Florida garden I would stick with it. But I am afraid that would take a lot of experimenting and I am now limiting myself to 1 or 2 new seeds a year.
It is like I am winding down and am sticking to the reseeders that really like me. They are now taking up all my beds.
I recently got the Geoseed catalog 2014-2015. 110 pages that have line items like a telephone book. And as you say potentially many, many colors and mixes per plant.
I was watching for Kabloom to show up when someone mentioned it earlier this year. I remember seeing the picture of the Young's Trial that did not knock me out at Young's Nursery trials. Search on Google "trial results Kabloom". You will see White, Yellow and Pink flowered plants. Click the image and it will take you to the pictures of the plants on different dates in the year of the test. That's where things get ify for me. They look like they have great performance for about a month plus.
I have ton's of Ynonne's Salvia that perform from early spring to early winter...always blooming. Even my volunteer Barbara Bush petunias have a long season. So if I experiment, I want something with a long season. I am thinking about Divine (100sd/ $4.95) or Florific (100sd/ $8.95) New Guina Impatients or a short dill Dill- Compatto. 2m for $3.00.
I have been going through all the new seed offerings in the catalog and looking up pictures on Google.
Thanks for the reply. Great hearing from you. You have a great memory, considering I am just one of your many, many grateful followers.
Bob

Here is a link that might be useful: Kabloom trial