Gift Ideas from our Members
Gardeners always appreciate gifts that will help make their growing efforts successful. If you’ve never considered looking to your favorite seed catalogs and website for ideas, you’re missing out! Here are a few great gift ideas for home gardeners from Home Garden Seed Association members.
For Seed Starting
Sili-Seedlings 6-cells, available from westcoastseeds.com, can be reused again and again. Gardeners feel better knowing that their seedlings won’t be contributing to the plastic waste problem. And that they’ll be growing in style!
For anyone who plans to start seeds indoors, a heat mat is an essential piece of equipment. Bottom heat speeds seed germination, and young plants will put on growth faster also. Seedling heat mats are available from burpee.com (and many other seed companies).
This Indoor Seed Starting Light Kit, from growhoss.com, solves a common indoor seed starting problem: not enough light. The 12W LED grow light lasts 50,000 hours, and the kit includes four seedling trays with holes, a wicking mat, and a heavy duty base that serves as a water reservoir.
Kits for Indoor Growing
This Basic Sprouting Kit from trueleafmarket.com has everything the novice seed sprouter will need: the Handy Pantry 3 Tray Stackable Sprout Garden, a great selection of Organic sprouting seeds, and step by step instructions. It can also be used to grow wheat grass hydroponically.
Similarly, the Microgreen Kitchen Starter Kit from highmowingseeds.com will make growing these tiny tasty greens a breeze. The set includes one tray with holes and a second tray for it to nest in, a 6 quart bag of compost, and a ¼ pound bag of mild mix microgreen seeds, enough for multiple sowings.
Planning for Spring
The Garden Planner from territorialseed.com is an online tool that will help a gardener create a plan by calculating how many plants will fit into a space, and keeping track of vegetable plants – which makes crop rotation and succession planting easier. It will also help determine when to plant, based on weather data.
For the cook who gardens, edenbrothers.com offers a Culinary Herb Seed Collection, containing 10 different easy-from-seed herbs including basil, parsley, dill, chervil, and more.
And for the butterfly and hummingbird lover, americanmeadows.com has a Hummingbird Nectar Wildflower Seed Mix, sold in a range of sizes, ¼ lb and up. Containing 16 annual and perennial wildflowers, it delivers color throughout the season.
Tools for the Garden and Kitchen
A Soil Thermometer—this one is offered by rohrerseeds.com—will help a gardener determine how early to plant spring crops, thus avoiding potential damage due to seeds sown too early or too late in the season. Different seeds require different soil temperatures for germination. Lettuce, for example germinates best when soil is between 60 and 75° F, while beans sprout best when soil is at least 75° F.
This Soil Knife with Leather Sheaf, from harrisseeds.com, will quickly become indispensable. It can be used for digging, cutting roots, aerating, transplanting and more. The leather sheaf with a belt loop keeps it just where it’s most handy.
And leave it to reneesgarden.com to come up with the Perfect Tomato Slicing Knife. The angled, serrated blade slices easily though juicy fruits and thin skinned vegetables, and makes paper thin slices of onions and radishes. It’s a tomato grower’s dream!