I KNOW! I got their catalog in the mail and after glancing at the prices, just tossed it in the trash. I refuse to pay $4 for a packet of lettuce seeds! That's outrageous. They sell thru Lowe's...I bet it's an exclusive deal too because I dont recall seeing any other seed company names. Last year, everything I bought at Lowe's (all Burpee)...nothing sprouted or the germination rate was very low..even for marigolds and you know how those come up.
It makes me so eager to start my own seeds, but it is still very early here. We still have snow on the ground! So good to read your blog.

Good gardening, Annie

Hey Larry,
Seed prices have gone up everywhere! This is the first year I bought some seeds online - from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I'll be curious to see how they fare. The last few years the Burpee seeds I've gotten at Lowe's, Walmart, Kmart etc.(seems to be the main brand they all carry) didn't do all that good. I wonder sometimes if they are old (from previous seasons) and just reused, re-packaged, and sold again for the next growing season.
Jane

I just went to Lowe's here, they had no Burpee seeds, only Ferry-Morse, and they are known for putting very few seeds in the packs. However, the packs I bought feel like they actually have a pretty decent amount of seeds in them. I have had very poor germination out of Burpee seeds the past couple of years, often "zero" percent and others times very low germination rates. I only bought a few things at Lowe's, hoping to start buying more stuff from places like Baker Creek, keep me posted on how satisfied you are with the seeds you got from them.

Two online sources I highly recommend is JUNGS seeds and also RH Shumway. They don't have a huge selection of the newest stuff, but they have a very good selection and they are very very generous with seed amounts and have low prices. They are strictly mail order and the customer service is great....I once couldn't remember the name of a pea I had planted 2 years earlier and really liked and they tracked down my old order and sent me a FREE PACKET.

I think today I'll try some "winter sowing" of foxgloves and verbena. I have never had success with the traditional winter sowing, where you plant the seeds in containers and put them outside over winter in the snow, etc. Last year though, I had a pot sown with verbena that never came up. Instead of tipping it out, I put it in the unheated basement garage and forgot about it. When teh weather warmed up in the spring everything sprouted! So I'm going to try that with foxgl. and verbena again and see if it works. Wish me luck. The week I've had, it will be a miracle the seeds dont come up poison ivy! *HA*

I will cheek out JUNGS and RH Shumway. I was reading in the seed forum about planting in vermiculite and thought I might try that. While I was at Lowe's yesterday I thought I would pick up a bag, and there in the new location(they have rearranged things this year) where the large area of shelving is for that sort of thing, was one empty space, you guessed it Vermiculite was sold out already! I know they had it earlier because it was next to the Pearlite I bought, the lady in the garden center showed 48 bags, I think, on order. I could not help but wonder why there were no Burpee seeds, couldn't help but think the prices were so high Lowe's thought they would not sell. Really the only thing I really wanted from Burpee was a pack of Early Treat tomato seeds. They had a new rack of Burpee seeds out at the Farmer's co-op but no Early Treat tomato seeds.Those are always my earliest tomato and probably for that reason my least diseased and most pest free tomato. Even though they are pretty small they taste great to us.