It may possibly surprise you to learn that the most exciting day in the vegetable gardening year is not in late October, when the soil is warming and the risk of frost has abated and the seed potatoes that’ve been chitting, snug and cosy, in the house, can safely be planted out; and nor is it in November when periscopes of asparagus magically rise, like meerkats upstanding, scanning the day; nor December, with its daily feast of flavourful breakfast berries, with peas by the bucketful and tomatoes of every shape and colour beginning to ripen; nor later: the autumn bounty of capsicums and eggplants and zucchinis— everything a ratatouille requires. No, it’s not any of those…although, of course, every one is a delight and a gift and all of them together precisely what inspired you to become a veggie gardener in the first place. But no, the most exciting day in the vegetable gardening year is none of those.
It is in July. When outside it’s so cold and miserable that no-one is volunteering to climb into their Swanni and gumboots, torch in hand, to stumble over to the shed and return with a wheelbarrowful of firewood. When the garden beds are so waterlogged and muddy that you couldn’t possibly plant anything anyway, and the only thing there to harvest is a gargantuan kale that nobody wanted before and certainly doesn’t want now. And even the neighbours— farmers, with thousands of acres between them—have all gone to Fiji to ‘get away from it all’.
It is in July.
Because, in July, the Kings Seeds catalogue arrives. Such an old-fashioned concept, the mail-order catalogue: what is now Farmers grew as a mail-order business for the farming sector1. And yet, a catalogue—a physical, tangible, artefact—has a charm, a tactile allure, that today’s on-line shopping experience—even Amazon itself—cannot match. A catalogue is a book of spells: every page, every item, the promise of a better tomorrow. You can cuddle a catalogue.
The Kings Seeds catalogue, if you don’t know it, is produced by a family-owned business in the Bay of Plenty (appropriately): in Katikati2. And in it they offer over a thousand varieties of seed: flowers, and herbs…and vegetables. Of every imaginable sort: if you’re looking for Spring Onion Red Bunching, they have that. Or Spring Onion Ishikura. Or Fennel Milano. Over fifty different tomatoes. A cornucopia of corn…and anything else you might want. 132 pages all told.
But there is something in particular that the Kings Seeds catalogue promises. Not in so many words, of course, but in every photograph and in every description: Perfection.
This year, my veggie garden will be perfect. Everything I plant will grow, and thrive, and be bountiful. There will be no pests. No diseases. Not too much rain. Or too little. There will be no neglect. I promise, Dear Lord, to give every single one of these seeds I am about to purchase—after hours and hours pondering my selection, and then adding a few more tomatoes, because I cannot resist—the very best start in life, and a quality of care and attention that even the most famous, most affluent, celebrities cannot command. This year, I believe, I know, it is within my power…I shall achieve everything the Kings Seeds catalogue promises.
Signed, on this day of July.
And every year hereafter.
From Zest, by Daniel Kalderimis:
Our actions do not sequentially follow our deliberative thoughts. We are much more complex creatures, capable of deciding not to eat another chocolate biscuit just as we find ourselves reaching for the packet.
24 year old Robert Laidlaw created Aotearoa’s first catalogue—Laidlaw Leeds & Co, ‘Suppliers of Everything in the Wide World’—in 1909. In 1918 he merged it with the Farmers Union Trading Company, which he later renamed the Farmers Trading Company. Robert was the GM and major shareholder. The catalogue continued until 1938.
This touches my heart - vegie catalogues are my happy place!