I have a real passion for squash because it has taken so many different shapes, flavors, and faces, depending on who is growing it, what region it's grown in, and what culture culinary history has made its mark. Photo courtesy of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. Shannie McCabe holding Kamo Kamo squash during a harvest in Esparto, CA before the annual National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa. What plant has the most varieties represented in the seed catalog? This is a more fantastical looking tomato and the flavor really is really bold and delicious. They taste a little bit like cardboard if you eat them out of season. When we think of tomatoes, we think of red, round, maybe grocery store tomatoes. This is a more recently introduced heirloom, open pollinated variety. It's the Black Strawberry Tomato, a newer innovation as far as heirlooms go. Ĭould you describe the cover of this year's Whole Seed Catalog? The Black Strawberry tomato is the cover star of this year’s Baker Creek Seed Catalog. So that's what kind of prompted him to put extra effort into making the catalog something that's really enjoyable and that you want to spend a lot of time going through. The founder and owner Jere Gettle always loved that part of the gardening process, when you're sitting in the winter circling what you want in the catalog and just dreaming and using your imagination to paint a picture of how you want your garden to look this spring. It's filled with recipes, stories, and histories of the various heirloom varieties that we offer in the catalog, as well as lots of growing information really high quality photos. And what it really is is an homage to everything we love about that middle of winter time when we're just dreaming up our garden. It ranges anywhere between about 365 to 490 pages. I think it was up to almost 500 pages this year. Shannie McCabe: First of all, let's just talk about the size. KCRW: Tell us about the process of putting together the catalog each year. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. McCabe discusses some of this year’s standout varietals and what it takes to assemble and publish the massive annual seed catalog. Purple, green, and yellow, it’s a recently introduced variety that McCabe describes as “gorgeous and galactic with a bold flavor.” The company ships out hundreds of thousands of seed packets a year, including this year’s cover star, the Black Strawberry tomato. Horticulturist and garden writer Shannie McCabe contributes to the catalog, which spans nearly 500 pages this year, and details the stories and history of the seeds offered, as well as growing information. His affinity for seed saving grew into a retail business, which publishes its own Whole Seed Catalog for heirloom open-pollinated varieties of seeds for home gardeners. Raised on a homestead in the Ozarks, he started gardening at age 3 and learned to read by poring over his parents’ collection of antique seed catalogs.
Missouri-based seed catalog and retailer Baker Creek was founded by Jere Gettle as a hobby.
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