Seeds From Italy

We first noticed Franchi Sementi seed packets a few years ago. The big appealing envelopes with seed varieties for all kinds of wonderful Italian vegetables, greens, legumes, and flowers started showing up not only in our local gardening stores, but, better yet, in some of our Italian-specialty food markets. How convenient. We started pulling packets for seeds like wild arugula, Chioggia beets, and barlotto beans off the rack and tossing them into our shopping cart on top of the containers of fresh mozzarella, nice bottles of extra-virgin olive oil, and trays of handmade ravioli.

Eventually we went online, jumped into their great website growitalian.com, and didn’t come out for days! The seed varieties they offer are fantastic, everything we’ve ever dreamed of growing (and eating) from Violetta artichokes, Gobbo di Nizza (hunchback of Nice cardoon), and Cece (fresh chick peas) to Zucchini Romanesco and Zucca da Marmellata (Jam Pumpkin). And the site offers planting instructions, a newsletter, kitchen tools—don’t your tomatoes need a passata?—and simple recipes. The folks at Seeds from Italy believe that, “If you are going to go through the effort of growing your own Italian vegetables, you should make an effort to cook them like an Italian”.

With all we’ll be growing from Franchi Sementi, who has time to hang out in Italy!