Welcome to Our 8th Season Offering Staple Crop Seeds!

YAY! It's 2025 and what better way to spend a blustery winter's day than to dream of spring planting! Thank you for being here; what an honor it is that our little company which started on a "Let's give it a try and see what happens" whim, is now in its eighth season offering staple crops seeds that help you meet your plant-based lifestyle goals. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

As we open for seed sales, there are several details I need to highlight for your consideration.

While we have opened for sales, it wasn't because we were 100% ready with the behind-the-scenes tasks needed to go from your click of an "add to cart" button to seed packs being filled to your order entering the USPS system. We open because understandably people are eagerly planning their gardens (I know I am!) Please keep in mind that we have opened three weeks earlier than we did in 2024, so we are still in "holiday-mode" recovery and are a bit behind updating our inventory which includes over 400 SKUs!

2025 sees a HUGE shift in the Great Lakes Staple Seeds ethos in that now we are offering seeds from an off-farm source. The Sherck Seeds Collection is an exciting alliance that enhances the availability of reliably productive Michiana grown staple crop seeds to northern short-season growers. John and his original Sherck Seeds are a positively impactful influence on Great Lakes Staple Seeds' existance. His seeds have always done well for us on our southeast Michigan homestead and it's without any hesitation that we offer them for inclusion in your growing adventures.

A second, perhaps less exciting change for 2025 is you now need an account to place an order. This isn't some nefarious plan on my behalf to steal your identity, it's because unfortunately bots target the free Digital Downloads, spamming orders on a sometimes hourly basis - BOOOOO bots! Please be assured, as an e-commerce consumer myself, I understand wanting to preserve your privacy and I only use your information to fulfill your order. I will never sell your information and I would never share it without your express permission, not that a reason why I would share it comes to mind.

A fair majority of our listings are current when we resume orders; however, updates to varietal listings and inventories are probable. I do recognize this is source of frustration if you place an order and discover later there are varieties that are newly added or that have had their inventories updated but it is the result of a balance between expediency (seeds now! now! now! please!) and maintaining my sanity throughout a stressful resumption of orders and I mean no inconvenience.

And about some of our listings - apologies but I needed to rely on "placeholder" images as 2024 was a very distractive year for us and either the pictures were neglected or for those that I did take, I've somehow managed to misplace them (getting old sucks!) I will work to rectify this in 2025.

A gentle reminder - some seeds have a pack limit; please respect this limit. Why you ask do I place limits on some seeds? It's because we want as many people as possible to enjoy the variety. All our seeds are open-pollinated which means with intention you are able to save seeds for future plantings.

Every single order is processed by a single person - me, so it is probable that it will take up to at least 4 weeks before your order hits your mailbox. Rest assured I work diligently to fulfill orders and since starting to ship seeds in 2018, each spring order has arrived in time for spring planting. I sincerely appreciate your patience.

And a note about shipping - Please know I understand your frustration with the shipping charge. Shipping covers more than just USPS postage — it also includes materials, labor, and operational overhead such as payment processing fees, ecommerce platform costs, office supplies (like packing materials, packet labels, packing slips, and printer ink), as well as my time required to prepare your order. Our shipping fee is designed to recover these unavoidable costs. After covering postage and ecommerce fees, very little remains to offset material and labor expenses — for example, on a recent order of 115 seed packets, only about $0.20 per packet was left to cover those expenses and for a 21 item order, only $0.12 remained.

More than 90% of our orders include more than just one or two packets. To remain sustainable, our shipping charge must reflect the average order size, even though this can sometimes disadvantage smaller orders. Unfortunately, the system only allows a single shipping setting, which limits my ability to adjust based on order size. Another relevant point is that the starting price for USPS's Ground Advantage is at least $5.00 regardless if the order is a single pack of tomatoes or a quarter pound of corn, going 5 miles down the road or 5 states away.

Taking all this into consideration, please know I am not using the shipping fee to accumulate a massive hoard of cash to pad my "escape this too dang cccold, too dang grey of a Michigan day" fund at your expense (not that I have such a fund...) Please know I do not take your choice to include our seeds in your growing adventures for granted. I appreciate your support of our family-run business and I do my best to keep shipping and packet costs reasonable for you while still enabling Great Lakes Staple Seeds to remain operational. Thank you for your consideration, and with that I'll step off my soapbox...

Well, I need to get back to it! And again, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Great Lakes Staple Seeds. May your 2025 be abundant in love, laughter, health, and staple crops!

Kind regards,

Eleanor