Where to find and purchase.....seed

With much talk about the forums on grasses, no-till plantings, building up the soil and more, I am wondering where do you find to purchase large bags of the herbs, grasses, and sometimes weeds to do these things?

In the stores I only find limited variety, in small packages, at high prices.  What if one wants to create a diversified field of animal feed and soil mulch, where would they shop?

Where do you 'grass/herb' farmers shop.... How do you save money?

Hi Jami,
    Local soil and conversations folks generally have some sort of mixes for sale seasonally. Your state might also have a division that does a like thing.
      My two favorite sellers are Peaceful Valley and High Mowing. Both organic and priced reasonably. They work well for the smaller amounts I need as do one piece of land at a time generally less than an acre at a time.

www.groworganic.com

www.highmowingseeds.com

Also like Baker Creek although that is for smaller areas yet, but good diversity if you have the patience to build up your supply through seed saving.

www.rareseeds.com

Just look for packages like cover crops, green manures and clover grasses mixes. For herbs and other plants take a look in local nature for some seeds, root divisions and cuttings.

This can be more expensive than a feed store, but it's cheaper than seed packets:

I often go to the bulk bin section of a hippy grocery store, or buy bags of dry seeds from ethnic stores (Indian & Mediterranean suit my climate particularly well). The Mexican section of a normal CA grocery store occasionally has interesting finds, too, like safflower seeds & whole cilantro seeds, $0.70 or so for a 1 to 2 oz. bag of seeds. Labor migrations are such that I think Oregon would have similar products on offer.

I've had success with bulk-bin fava beans and bagged fenugreek seeds. I'm trying black sesame, buckwheat, cilantro, and maybe safflower, amaranth, and/or black eyed peas this spring, and I expect flax, breadseed poppy, quinoa, and popcorn are all viable from food suppliers.

Thanks Pat that is helpful...

Plankl - I just don't have the time to glean my own seeds, not in the amounts I'm interested in, but some people might.

And Joel, I would have not thought of that - great ideas.

I have bought from Richters
No particular reason other than they are there.

I have thought that to really do a seed heavy cultural approach it pays to grow your own, and think about my own projects as being seed source for my next projects...

Hi Paul,
    I agree with you and for at least three reasons. Saving seed from successful crops helps adapt plants to a local micro-environment. Overtime plantings become more successful as they have continually adapted to the location or farm.

You do save money saving seed. Where can you get get seed better adapted to your farm or garden than what has grown there? Your biggest costs in saving the seeds are: harvesting, processing, drying and storing. These are basically time costs, rather than out of pocket.

GMO's. I try very hard to buy my original stock from non-GMO origins. Most things I raise are not at risk due to my location, but some things like corn pollen can travel for miles on the wind. The best thing I can do is be aware of the other plantings in the valley and work around them.

We do have an atmospheric inversion factor here also to factor in, and plantings are placed in the areas least affected by the most common inversions.

It doesn't guarantee freedom from GMO's in my corn, but then the corn that doesn't "make" in my conditions, doesn't become seed corn.