I found Coleonema ‘California Sunset’ (Breath of Heaven) (second photo above) while on a weeklong return to my old haunts in the Golden State. And I would say, “Gotta have it,” if only it were winter-hardy in the harsh climes of the heart of the Heartland.

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But that hasn’t stopped keen gardeners like Colleen Heck. She created a small bed around her mailbox and it’s now in full bloom. Wanting to attract birds and butterflies, she selected shasta daisies, Whirling Butterflies (gaura), marigolds, gladioli, balloon flowers (platycodon), salvia and day lilies that light up this mini landscape as they wave gently in the breeze.

“My idea is to make a bouquet in the ground with something always popping up — like the fireworks on the Fourth of July,” Heck said. To achieve this, she changes out the plants seasonally so that there is always something in bloom.

The Star-News of Wilmington reported that Colleen, her husband Charles Heck, and their two children, Caroline and Carson, live in a quiet neighborhood off Greenville Loop Road where her little curbside garden really stands out.

Colleen Heck, who does all the gardening, loves it so much that she is thinking of starting a part-time business creating and maintaining small flower beds for people who just don’t have the time or the inclination. She even has a name picked out: “Razzle Dazzle Gardening.” Currently, Colleen works part-time as a teller at RBC Bank, but she hopes to get Razzle Dazzle Gardening off the ground sometime this year.

As for her mailbox masterpiece, “it took me three solid weeks, but that included (another) small island bed and putting in the stone surround,” she said. The “stone” is actually a man-made material that looks like the real thing, but without the high cost of genuine stone and being much easier to install.

As every gardener knows, creating and planting a new bed is only the beginning. Flower beds need to be maintained — fed, watered and weeded, not to mention some judicious deadheading. But Heck doesn’t seem to mind that aspect of landscaping either.

“It’s my relaxing time,” she said. “I come out early in the morning and water and touch the leaves.” Did she say “touch the leaves?” ”Yes, it’s my connection to nature. It’s my passion,” said Heck said.

If you are thinking of landscaping the area around your mailbox, there are a couple of rules to follow. First, the front panel and flag must be kept clear of plant material so as not to impede delivery/pick-up of your mail. Secondly, if your irrigation system does not reach the mailbox, you will need to water daily, “unless you plant all drought tolerant plants, like lantana and purslane,” said Charlotte Glen, consumer horticulture agent with the Pender County cooperative extension service.

Climbing plants, like mandevilla and clematis, are popular for mailbox landscaping and do a great job of softening the lines of the post or column, but be sure to train — or trim — them away from the front panel and flag.

“Making it a raised bed is a good idea,” says Glen, “so that you can amend the soil. And you are going to have a lot better result than if the soil is at sod height, with people walking all over it.”

Because of the conditions surrounding mailbox landscaping — hot, dry and dusty with fumes and rocks emanating from passing traffic — the choice of plants is particularly important.

“One thing that does well are some of the ornamental grasses,” said Glen, “just make sure you plant them behind the mailbox (so they don’t cover the front).”

Her suggestions include muhly grass, zebra grass, a small miscanthus called “Gold Bar,” Karly Rose (all perennials) and the annual pennisetum rubrum. “Wind doesn’t bother them, they just blow in the wind.”

Glen also recommends the lower growing lantanas “New Gold” and “Silver Mound,” a smaller pink gaura named “Passionate Blush,” purslane, scaveola, Spanish lavender, penta, shasta daisies, dwarf day lilies like “Happy Returns,” the spreading or trailing “Blue Daze,” and gomphrena (very tough, dries well and makes a good fresh cut flower).

The designers’ highly naturalistic concept, sophisticated plant mixes and artistic interplay of form and color, are causing real excitement at the Garden, where many are referring to the design as “pure genius.”

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Gardening packs an educational punch: It can teach nutrition, biology, mathematics (sizing up rows and plot perimeters), social studies, geography and languages. Vegetable gardens help save money, encourage exercise, deliver fresh flavors to the kitchen and reduce the risks of buying tainted food.

Cooking is the logical second step, providing children with another life-long practical skill.

With that in mind, The New York Botanical Garden offers gardening with related cooking programs for kids from 3 to 13, along with an assortment of practical and craft ideas for people of all ages.

“It’s a matter of taking things in steps,” said Toby Adams, the institution’s family garden manager. “Plants don’t grow overnight, so we can introduce things slowly. Getting kids to understand things like cleaning up the plots. Composting. Washing their hands before preparing salads.”

Adams breaks students into small groups where they’re taught vegetable preparation methods and menu items. Some do pestos. A few make soups. Still others prepare herbal teas or salsas.

“Then they share them with one another,” he said. “It becomes a reward for all that work they’ve done in taking the plants to maturity.”

Children bring energy, imagination and confidence to the growing and cooking tasks, Adams said. “They also bring attention to detail and a sense of wonder. Kids are surprised at what’s around every corner. They’re seeing many things for the first time. They’ll notice a butterfly fluttering by or see ladybugs under the leaves. When harvesting, they’ll get excited about pulling on a leaf and coming up with a carrot. They think it’s awesome when they stick a fork into the soil and find potatoes buried beneath the plants.”

Mistakes, too, can be turned into learning opportunities.

“Making a mess,” Adams said. “Spillage. Sunflowers that grow from seeds dropped the year before. Planting seeds in rows that are a little bit off here and there. Maybe it’s something we didn’t intend to do but we’ll try to turn it around and make the most of it.”

One thing children usually don’t have in abundance is a lengthy attention span. But there are ways to get around that. Here are some ideas from the authors of “The Family Kitchen Garden: How to Plant, Grow and Cook Together,” by Karen Liebreich, Jutta Wagner and Annette Wendland (Timber Press, 2009):

–Learn by doing. “It is boring watching other people gardening,” Liebreich said. “They must be involved from start to finish. Doing is interesting. Watching is dull.”

—Teach kids how to compare: “Does the beetroot ‘Chioggia’ taste different from beetroot ‘Bull’s Blood’? If you close your eyes, can you tell which is a white currant, which is a red currant? Is French parsley different from Italian, curly from flat-leaved? This not only makes it fun, but also cultivates a palate to distinguish tastes,” Liebreich said. “And, incidentally, shows the importance of opinion.”

– Stage competitions: “Whose bramble root is longer, whose bean grew taller, who speared more potatoes on their (pitch)fork when digging them up?”

– Experiment: “Did the bean with no water germinate? The bean in the dark? What happened to the bean with no stick to climb?”

– Do things in short sessions: Work on child-size jobs rather than large projects. Prepare just one menu item at a time.

– Go heavy on the encouragement: Getting seeds into the ground the right way is more important than planting a perfectly straight row. Be positive and expressive when taste-testing.

– Emphasize safety: Whether cultivating or cooking, insist that equipment and utensils are handled properly. Ban horseplay when working in the garden or around the stove.

– See tasks through: “Eating the food you grow; this makes things interesting,” Liebreich said. “There’s no point in planting potatoes if you don’t, later on, get to dig them up. And then scrub them and cook them. It completes the story and also leads to great pride in achievement.”

Kids aren’t the only ones who will learn; home gardening has become something of a lost art for many parents, too, because of busy lifestyles and urbanization.

“Knowing that a carrot is muddy and grows underground sounds obvious to some, but is a revelation to others,” Liebreich said. “We have teachers visit our gardens who thought cucumbers grew underground, and mothers who couldn’t believe we would serve carrots that had been in mud only minutes before.”

Easy-to-grow plants for young gardeners

There’s nothing like easy-to-grow, high-yield plants to help boost the self-confidence of young gardeners. Hardy, disease-resistant varieties with early maturity dates keep interest levels high.

Here is a list of some of the simplest plants to grow, according to “The Family Kitchen Garden: How to Plant, Grow and Cook Together,” by Karen Liebreich, Jutta Wagner and Annette Wendlund (Timber Press, 2009):

Easiest: Artichokes, French beans, beets, chard, zucchini, garlic, kale, kohlrabi, leaf lettuce, onions, parsnips, pumpkins and squashes, radishes and arugula. Cabbages, broccoli and brussels sprouts, on the other hand, are tricky to grow because they’re susceptible to disease.

Fastest from seed: Radishes (four to six weeks), leaf lettuces (six weeks), arugula (four to eight weeks), spinach (eight to 14 weeks), first early potatoes (10 weeks), pumpkins (10 to 14 weeks), carrots (10 to 16 weeks), zucchini (10 to 14 weeks), beets (11 weeks), head lettuce (12 weeks), cucumbers (12 to 14 weeks) and tomatoes (16 weeks). Asparagus, on the other hand, is a perennial and takes about two years to get established.

Editor’s Note: We invite you to click here to visit the Monitor’s gardening site, which offers articles, essays, and blog posts on a variety of gardening topics.

Gardens look beautiful in the rain. Everything becomes more lustrous, the flagstone is bluer, the brickwork redder, the leaves greener. I have a crape myrtle whose cinnamon-colored trunks glisten a ruddy brown when wet. There is something meditative and soothing about sitting on a porch and watching and listening to the rain.

But we’ve had a lot of rain, and even gardeners are complaining about it. Some of the gripes are legitimate: rotting seeds, rotting sandals and unworkable soil. But the grousing from plant lovers is mostly a front. Inside, we all know that our gardens are lush, verdant, unstressed, and we are basking in the reflected glory.

When plants were stirring in early March, the soil was alarmingly dry and cracked. I was anticipating with dread a repeat of 2007, a year in which it basically stopped raining in May. Given the choice between drought and flood, I’ll take the latter. An even rainfall might be preferred, but the moisture has saved a great deal of time that would have been spent watering plants.

The time saved has been taken up by the need to cut things back. This task, however, is pleasant, even therapeutic, because I know that an established plant with a large root system will bounce right back. In many cases, it will also return bushier and with more flowers.

The first on my hit list was a thicket of winter jasmine planted 15 years ago as three little sticks behind a retaining wall. The jasmine fulfilled its role of cascading down the wall, but it had become a mass of tangled stems. I knew that trimming it, as I had done in the past, would not be enough, so I cut it to the ground in April. The chore took three solid hours. The shrubs looked dead for a few weeks but have now put out new shoots, helped no doubt by the rain. The jasmine may not flower much next winter, but I regained control of it.

In mid-May, the joe-pye weed was about four feet tall and I cut it back to two. Given all the rain, I knew that come July it would flop without this intervention. I gave the same treatment to the butterfly bushes, which are now back up to five feet and could do with another trim. This will delay flowering a bit but assure a prettier display.

The rain, you will have noticed, has pushed a lot of growth not just of perennials, but shrubs and trees as well. I have found myself doing a lot of trimming to keep these plants from elbowing one another. Bringing definition to a shrub without ruining its natural look has proved deeply satisfying.

I have two handsome ground covers that overflow in rainy spells, and shrivel and retreat when it gets dry. This year, they are over the moon, or the steppingstones at least. The mazus loves partial shade, rich soil and all that rain. The other is the golden form of creeping Jenny, which has spreading stems that root, bearing buttonlike leaves. One stand I have has probably doubled in size this spring and stretches 15 feet or so at the top of a hill.

If you have lost, say, a boxwood or a yew to constantly wet soil, don’t replace it with a boxwood or a yew, or at least not without first raising the bed and adding lots of organic matter. Sometimes the answer is to add drains, often incredibly laborious to install yourself and expensive if others do it. The alternative is to put in plants that like wet soil.

In a wet area of my garden — it seeps after some of the deluges we have had — I have put together a collection of such swamp lovers. I started with a little grove of dawn redwoods, now 30 feet high. These deciduous conifers grow large and rapidly in such a site. The native baldcypress offers a similar effect but grows at half the rate of the redwood.

About 20 feet away, I put in a black gum, another native flood-plain tree. The creeping Jenny grows beneath it, and, downhill a bit, the Siberian irises are gargantuan.

Next to the irises, a patch of peppermint has spread beyond its boundaries. It may have met its match, though, in a new bedfellow, a gunnera related to the giant rhubarb (Gunnera manicata) often seen growing on the side of ornamental ponds in Britain. That perennial, unbelievably, can produce leaves that are six feet or more across. By comparison, my G. tinctoria will have leaves between two and four feet wide, depending on how happy it is.

Meanwhile, the rain has brought about a splendid blooming season for two plants that love moisture. The bigleaf hydrangeas are coming into flower. The lacecaps, in particular, are so elegant and lovely. The Southern magnolia has been in bloom for a couple of weeks. I have two whose waxy blossoms fill the air with the scent of lemon. Peering into this ivory chalice you see the true flower, a tower whose pistils form a magical repeated pattern, like minute tilework. Even the faded blossoms this year seem prettier, not a deathly brown so much as a glowing tan.

Tips for this rainy gardening season

The long, moist and relatively cool spring has been good for gardens, but there are some disadvantages to a wet year.

– You may see increased foliar diseases on plants. Preventive fungicidal sprays will help against black spot on roses or septoria leaf spot on black-eyed Susans. It’s not practical to spray large shade trees with leaf spots; just make sure to remove and bag leaves when they drop. Look for anthracnose disease on dogwoods and prune out affected leaves and branches. Remove all suckers or water sprouts on trunks and branches.

– Frank Gouin, a retired professor of horticulture at the University of Maryland, points out that heavy rain on bare soil will pulverize the top quarter-inch of earth and destroy its desirable structure. The resulting crust will prevent some nutrients and moisture from reaching into the ground. If your soil has crusted, break it up a bit and add a one- or two-inch layer of organic mulch.

– In the vegetable garden, seeds that failed to sprout have probably rotted. Cultivate the soil and try again with beans, cucumbers, and winter and summer squash.

I took the picture back on May 1 to accompany my first Whisperer posting. In that post, I wrote about the relationship between writing and gardening. I also offered some tips for rejuvenating tired soil and planting a new tree rose.

Soon, the tree rose was coming along very nicely. In fact, today it’s covered with blooms.

But along the way, this little patch of garden took an unexpected turn. The tree rose was supposed to be the focal point — the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae.  Instead, the plants around the Baby Blanket rose (see Photo No. 2) have at long last stolen the show.

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Forty years later, in 1859, the wealthy former businessman-turned-philanthropist opened on the land he so loved a botanical garden for his adopted city’s residents.

The treasure Shaw established “for all time for public good” on June 15, 1859, would become the Missouri Botanical Garden, an urban oasis of splendor and beauty, and one of the nation’s oldest botanical gardens in continuous operation.

Longtime St. Louisans still affectionately refer to it as Shaw’s Garden, for the British businessman who made his fortune in hardware here, retired at age 40 to travel the world, and found inspiration in the great gardens of Europe.

A National Historic Landmark, the Missouri Botanical Garden is widely considered one of the top three botanical gardens in the world, a center for science and conservation, education and horticultural display.

“There’s no place like it, over and above the Kew Gardens,” said Dr. Martin Gordon, a retired professor of medicine at Yale University. He recently visited for a film he’s doing on plants’ medicinal value. “It’s such a warm and friendly place, an invaluable institution, suitable for all ages — and addicting.”

The Missouri Botanical Garden is celebrating its 150th birthday with activities and events throughout the year, from lectures by renowned botanical experts to a 20-foot-diameter (6.1-meter-diameter) floral clock, showcasing seasonal flowers of varying colors and textures. Shaw’s handwritten journals of his first European travels in the 1850s are being made public for the first time on the Garden’s Web site.

Marking the occasion are special displays including heirloom vegetables from the 19th century, and orchids and holiday flowers. The Garden is also exhibiting photographs that document the plants it is working to conserve in 36 countries around the world.

Other birthday activities include a Midsummer’s Night Dance June 27, a (native St. Louisan) Chuck Berry concert July 24, free evening concerts on Wednesdays through Aug. 5, and Garden Party Nights featuring wine and microbrewery-tastings Thursdays through Sept. 3.

But all the fun should not distract from the Garden’s mission “to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment, in order to preserve and enrich life.”

The Garden offers 79 acres (32 hectares) of display gardens, fountains, sculptures, indoor conservatories and historic buildings, including Shaw’s country home, Tower Grove House, and final place of rest.

Its horticultural displays include a tropical rainforest inside the Climatron conservatory and one of the largest Japanese strolling gardens in North America.

The William T. Kemper Center for Home Gardening has 23 residential-scale demonstration gardens.

Behind the showpiece, the Missouri Botanical Garden’s “unseen garden” is its botanical exploration, plant science and conservation.

Garden botanists train and help local botanists around the globe conserve and manage their resources. The Garden has developed the world’s largest and most widely used botanical database, TROPICOS, and maintains an herbarium of 6 million plant specimens.

Later this month, the Garden will host the American Public Gardens Association annual conference. The gathering of public garden professionals from North America will celebrate “The Global Garden” to honor 250 years of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; 150 years of the Singapore Botanic Gardens; and 150 years of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Director Peter Raven, the botanist and environmentalist who has led the Garden since 1970, has overseen its rise in stature from a relatively small institution to a world leader, said Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. “What Peter has achieved, globally, is unique,” he said.

Raven said he plans to retire in mid-2011, and a search for his successor is under way. The two will overlap a bit.

“It’s inspiring to me,” said Mona Diefenbach of Anna, Ill., who was recently touring the garden with her husband, Richard. Now 66, she’s made regular visits to the garden since accompanying her Ukrainian immigrant grandparents as a girl.

“When we came to visit, they always made sure we went to the botanical gardens,” she said.

Annual grasses are striking in containers and along walkways and patios. The purple foliage of annual purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’) draws the eye; the golden plumes of Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima) soften hard surfaces and glow in the sun. Some varieties of Carex are grown for their unusual tan foliage that some liken to the color of coffee and chocolate. These are typically considered annuals although they are perennial in warm climates.

Perennial grasses make lovely ground covers, living screens and focal points. Popular types of Miscanthus, Pennisetum and Panicum add drama with their tall fountains of foliage and flower plumes. The foliage of many perennial grasses stands throughout the winter, glistening in the frost and snow, and providing cover for winter birds. Most types bloom in midsummer and their dried seed heads often remain on plants all winter.

Planting Instructions
Most grasses prefer full sun to light shade and well-drained soil. Plant in spring, spacing plants one to three feet apart, depending on the variety. Prepare the garden bed by using a garden fork or tiller to loosen the soil to a depth of 12 to 15 inches, then mix in a two- to four-inch layer of compost. Dig a hole twice the diameter of the pot the plant is growing in. Carefully remove the plant from its container and place it in the hole so the top of the root ball is level with the soil surface. Carefully fill in around the root ball and firm the soil gently. Water thoroughly.

Long-Term Care
Apply a thin layer of compost each spring, followed by a two-inch layer of mulch to retain moisture and control weeds. Water plants during the summer if rainfall is less than one inch per week. Cut back the plant in late winter before new growth begins. Some species need dividing every three to four years to keep the plants vigorous.

For more tips and garden information visit www.garden.org.

A former floral designer and interior plantscaper, Kathie Bond-Borie has spent 20 years as a garden writer/editor, including her current role as horticultural editor for the National Gardening Association. She loves designing with plants, and spends more time playing in the garden – planting and trying new combinations – than sitting and appreciating it.

– Courtesy of Family Features

With flowers that are single or double, ruffled or smooth, large or diminutive, there are daylilies for every taste. Best of all, daylilies ask very little of us – just a partially sunny spot and average soil.

These plants are categorized in several different ways. Deciduous kinds go dormant in frosty weather, evergreens can tolerate frost and grow all winter in mild regions, and there is an intermediate group called semi-evergreen. The rule of thumb is to avoid deciduous daylilies south of Zone 8 and avoid evergreens north of Zone 7.

The height provided in nursery descriptions doesn’t refer to the foliage but to the height of the flower stalk. Flower stalks on the shorter varieties grow as high as 12 inches, while stalks of the tallest reach more than six feet high.

Single daylilies have six petals. Double varieties have a second set of petals, often ruffled. Flower size ranges from 11/2 inches – miniature varieties – to eight or nine inches across. Some modern daylilies, called “tetraploids,” have twice as many chromosomes as the normal varieties, which gives them larger leaves and larger flowers. The color range of daylilies has expanded to include everything but blue and pure white, and many blossoms are bi- or tri-colored.

Growing Tips

Daylilies are stalwarts of the perennial border, but they shine in other spots, too. Vigorous daylilies make weed- and erosion-proof ground covers. Plant them on banks and roadsides or along waterways. Use dwarf daylilies in rock gardens, in containers, or as edging for flowerbeds.

When planting several daylily varieties, arrange drifts of a single variety. A random mix almost always looks spotty from spring through fall. Group at least three clumps of one variety together to get both a more natural look and a stronger impact at show time.

Daylilies grow best in full sun, ideally six hours or more daily. However, in hot and dry climates, they benefit from some afternoon shade, as well as irrigation during bloom. Also, many of the deep reds and the paler shades hold their colors better in partial shade. In any zone, daylilies will perform reasonably well with half a day’s shade; they just won’t bloom as vigorously.

Daylilies grow well in a wide range of soils. You can plant daylilies successfully almost any time the ground can be worked. The ideal time to transplant and divide is in spring as the shoots begin to emerge, or immediately after bloom. In Zones 9 and 10, plant in early spring (February or March) or fall; avoid planting in mid-summer. Likewise in the Southeast, don’t plant during midsummer because the high temperatures and humidity may cause new plants to rot. When planting in fall in cold regions, move the plants at least a month before hard frosts to allow new roots to take hold against frost heaving.

Space plants 18 to 24 inches apart. Plant at the same depth plants grew previously or slightly higher to allow for settling. Firm soil, then water.

Some cultivars can grow for 20 years without requiring division, but others may need division every second or third season. You’ll know it’s time when you notice flower production declining.

For more tips and garden information visit www.garden.org.

Editor’s Note: We invite you to click here to visit the Monitor’s gardening site, which offers articles, essays, and blog posts on a variety of gardening topics.

– Courtesy of Family Features

The D. Landreth Seed Co., one of the oldest surviving corporations in the nation, has seen several owners and many shifts in its fortunes in the intervening 225 years. But if Landreth were looking down on his enterprise today, he probably would be grinning. After years in the doldrums, the consumer demand for vegetable seeds has abruptly climbed at a rate even industry veterans have never seen.

This spring, sales at Landreth are “up 75 percent over last year,” said Barbara Melera, a former venture capitalist who bought the company in 2003. Moving between the shelves of bulk seed containers in her warehouse in New Freedom, Pa., she pointed out varieties that are almost sold out: Detroit Dark Red beets, Danvers Half Long carrots, Bloomsdale Long Standing spinach. She had no kale or a popular beet variety, Lutz. “We have a modest amount of beans left.

Seed producers and merchants across the United States are reporting the same phenomenon of crazy demand and even some shortages, especially of staples like beans, potatoes and lettuces. Sales of seed packets picked up last year and have grown significantly again this season, which runs from January to June.

Industry observers attribute the boost in sales to a concern for food safety following outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella poisonings and a desire by consumers to be a part of the local food movement. Michelle Obama’s new vegetable garden at the White House may also be inspiring people, they said.

But the primary reasons, they speculate, are the recession, income loss and the need for people to lower their grocery bills by growing their own.

In late April, Greg Frandano, a 35-year-old bartender, ripped up part of his lawn to extend his vegetable garden in the rear yard of his brick Cape Cod in Falls Church, Va. “We hardly buy any produce when things are cooking,” he said, as he worked composted leaves into the clay soil before planting. He started the garden four years ago and has enlarged it every spring since to feed his family of four.

At four community gardens in Reston, Va., coordinator Deana Demichelis said the wait list for 250 plots has climbed to 140 names, a backlog of about three years. “New gardeners are begging to get in because of the recession and the fact they can save money growing their own food,” she said.

Melissa O’Brien, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said seed sales in March were up 30 percent over last year, sales of vegetables and herbs plants had increased by 28 percent and sales of seed-starting supplies rose 40 percent.

“When times get tough, it doesn’t take long for people to realize what they can do to help themselves,” said Tom Johns, owner with his wife, Julie, of Territorial Seed Co., a mail-order retailer in Cottage Grove, Ore. Johns, who bought the 30-year-old company in 1985, said his sales grew 25 percent last year and have increased another 25 percent this year. “For a company getting as old as we are, those are big percentage increases,” he said.

Melera of Landreth Seed personally sells one-third of her vegetable and herb seeds at flower shows in late winter and early spring, bringing her in direct contact with customers.

“A year ago January, we began to see a gigantic increase in vegetable sales,” she said. It was driven by 30-something mothers “who were scared to death that their children were going to get salmonella from the (store-bought) spinach.”

This season, she said, the customers tended to be from their 20s to 40s and “many, many more males. It was much more driven by the economy.”

Melera has also seen a strong demand for staple varieties, “what I would call survival food.” These include seed potatoes, winter squash, peas, spinach, beets and pole beans, which produce more food per plant than bush beans. “Very few melons,” she said.

The seed producers that supply wholesalers and retailers have been scrambling, along with their contract growers, to meet the demand.

John Wahlert, sales and production manager for Wild West Seed Inc. in Albany, Ore., said in a normal year he would have seed stockpiles in June to get a jump on the 2010 season or to make up for crop failures, but he and other producers are low on a range of basic varieties. “Onions are short, lettuces are short, carrots are extremely short,” he said. “Beans are extremely short, peas are short.”

Trevor Clarke, a seed producer in Hamilton City, Calif., said recessions tend to bump up consumer demand for vegetables at the expense of flower seeds, but this year he and fellow producers have seen the market for vegetable seeds expand by 30 to 35 percent. “This is the best year we have had in 20 years,” said Clarke, of Western Hybrid Seeds Inc. “I have been in the vegetable-seed industry for 40 years, and this is the best year I have seen.”

Editor’s Note: We invite you to click here to visit the Monitor’s gardening site, which offers articles, essays, and blog posts on a variety of gardening topics.