seed shopping, with lia babitch of turtle tree seed

LET THE seed shopping season begin. The 2024 offerings are being loaded into seed-catalog websites, and the earliest print catalogs are already arriving in our mailboxes, as if to help soften the separation anxiety we may feel if we’ve already put our gardens to bed for the winter.

One that I always look forward to is Turtle Tree Seed, a biodynamic company where years ago, I discovered a few must-have vegetable varieties that I’ve grown every garden season since.

Lia Babitch is co-manager of Turtle Tree Seed in Copake, New York, which offers about 400 biodynamically grown varieties of vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Turtle Tree is part of Camphill Village Copake, a nonprofit intentional community of adults with developmental differences.

We talked about biodynamics—and she enticed me with news of some of the upcoming seed offerings, too.

Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win you choice of $25 of Turtle Tree seeds.

Read along as you listen to the Dec. 4, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

seed shopping with turtle tree’s lia babitch

Margaret Roach: Hi, Lia. Are you going to get us shopping; are you [laughter]? We just did a recent “New York Times” garden column together, which was also fun for me… Any excuse to talk seeds with you. So, the catalog’s at the printer [order a free copy], and stuff’s being uploaded madly into the website. Is that where you guys are at?

Lia Babitch: It is, yes. And also, seed packets are madly being filled.

Margaret: Oh boy [laughter]. So, probably to briefly just set this scene, Turtle Tree is part