[Market-farming] seeds HPS etc.

Road's End Farm organic87 at frontiernet.net
Fri Jan 2 12:50:34 EST 2009


On Jan 2, 2009, at 11:07 AM, SUE WELLS wrote:

> What about HPS seeds? Any comments about them?
> Sue
> Vermont
>

HPS, Vermont Bean, Shumway, Totally Tomatoes, and somewhat more 
recently Jung's, are all the same company, or are all owned by the same 
family, or all of them are owned by one of them.  Some types of seed 
are not carried by all of the companies, and those catalogues refer you 
to one of the others; they also don't all carry the same sizes.

The ownership situation is murky. I wrote HPS some years ago and they 
wrote back and confirmed the relationship among the first four, but 
refused to tell me who the owner was. I have since seen Jung's logo on 
some of the other companies' catalogues, and credit card charges from 
any of them show up on the bill with a portion of the billers' name 
being the same; I've read on Garden Web that Jung bought the rest of 
them, but don't know whether that's correct. I have written Jung about 
the situation, but got no answer.

As far as reliability goes: I have never ordered from the Shumway 
variation, but have occasionally placed small orders to one of the 
others, as there are a few varieties I use that are hard to find 
elsewhere. (I might order more from them if they weren't so secretive 
about who they are, and if Shumway and Jung weren't both still 
presenting themselves as being independent family-run companies when it 
seems highly unlikely that both of them are -- at least unless a 
Shumway married a Jung.) What I have ordered has arrived OK and been as 
represented. Most of their seed is untreated, but at least some of the 
catalogues may carry some treated seed. Some of the catalogues last 
year said that they aren't currently carrying GMO's but may do so in 
the future (I haven't read all the fine print in this year's yet); some 
of them don't say anything about it; if you need or want non - GMO seed 
I would check with them about the particular variety before ordering.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale
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