Sowing the Seeds of Year 2000 Paranoia

The big plastic container under Ralph Kellner’s Christmas tree was labeled Y2K EMERGENCY KIT. Inside were duct tape, a fortune cookie, some fish hooks and Twinkies--”Expiration date: 1-3000.”

But among the gag gifts from his children were instructions that struck Kellner as entirely logical: “Plant seeds in spring.”

Joke all you want, he told his kids, but we’re doing just that. And seed companies say the Kellners are not alone.

Fearing power outages, empty grocery shelves and food distribution chaos, many Americans are stocking up on canning gear and planting apocalyptic vegetable gardens: potatoes, cabbage, beans, carrots--anything that will keep through the winter of 2000.

“We’re getting a lot of calls in our customer service department from people who have never planted a seed in their life,” says Renee Beaulieu of Shepherd’s Garden Seeds in Torrington, Conn. “Questions from people who have zero experience, but a lot of ambition--plowing up your entire back yard is not normally how you’d start gardening.”

The Y2K bug is a programming glitch that, come Jan. 1, could cause computers to think the year 2000 is really 1900 and chew up reams of data that run modern lives. Industry and government disagree about how widespread problems will be, and some companies see opportunity in the confusion.

On its Web site, Heirloom Seeds in West Elizabeth trumpets the “Y2K Special,” $115 worth of seeds for 92 vegetables and herbs. A bigger set includes 254 seed packs for $299.99.

Territorial Seed Co. in Cottage Grove, Ore., says its Millennium Victory Garden kit is its best-selling item ever.

Seeds of Change in Santa Fe, N.M., recommends “survival seeds,” from arugula to turnips.

And Millennium Seeds, a company started two years ago by Michael Morris, a Livermore, Colo., computer salesman worried about the Y2K bug, has seen monthly sales increase eight-fold since Jan. 1, from about $3,000 to more than $25,000 in early March.

“I’ve been in marketing all my life, so I know a good market when I see one,” says Morris, who quit his job to start Millennium Seeds. “We were out there buying seeds and I said, ‘Wow, this is an awesome market.’ ”

Gardener’s Supply Co. in Burlington, Vt., reports increased sales of greenhouses ($300 to $3,000) and rain barrels ($110).

The Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, Wis., says sales of canning equipment have doubled.

Even companies ignoring Y2K marketing opportunities say they are inundated. Venerable W. Atlee Burpee & Co. in Warminster and Johnny’s Selected Seed in Albion, Maine, report upticks since January.

Much of the sales boom is in so-called heirloom seeds. These come from open-pollinated plants, meaning gardeners can gather new seeds from this year’s produce and plant them next year. They can’t do that with the more common hybrid seeds, which are designed to resist certain pests or diseases.

“A couple of dozen people called and said they want one of everything that is an heirloom in our catalog,” marvels Ellen Ogden, founder of The Cook’s Garden in Londonderry, Vt.

This spring’s catalog for Chattanooga Shooting Supplies, a Tennessee mail-order company, offers packets of heirloom seeds alongside gun sights and ammunition.

“We don’t know how bad it’s going to be,” says company buyer Bob Johnston. “One thing we’re not going to do is not make money on it.”

Ogden calls the whole phenomenon “ridiculous.”

But Tom Johns, president of Territorial Seeds, wants to be ready for whatever happens.

“I’m trying to put myself in their position and say, ‘What would I want on my shelf?’ ” he says. “Whether the problems associated with Y2K come along or not, they’re going to have a real good collection of seeds. It wouldn’t hurt if people could be more self-sufficient anyway.”

Bernie Crooks, 76, knows something about self-sufficiency. She’s talked about Y2K and gardening to parishioners at church in Clarion.

“I’m old enough that I lived during the Depression, and we turned a whole back yard into a garden. My mother canned. I was only 6 or 7 then, but I have strong memories,” Crooks says. “My granddaughter said, ‘Oh, it can’t happen.’ I said, ‘OK, honey. But if it does happen, your grandma has some rolled oats.’ ”

The Kellners are former commercial artists from Brooklyn, N.Y., who moved to rural Berks County, 60 miles from Philadelphia, 18 years ago.

Ralph Kellner has researched the millennium bug, read information from every reasonable source he can find, watched congressional hearings on C-SPAN and talked with friends in computer programming.

All of it convinced him the power will fail at the start of 2000, for several weeks to a few months. So he and his wife, Mary, both 65, bought a generator to run the freezer and pump water from their 200-foot-deep well. They’ve filled four blue tubs with soup, rice and canned tuna. And they are planting vegetables in six beds covering 350 square feet.

Mary Kellner has never preserved food, but she plans to learn. Winter squash, carrots and potatoes will go into the root cellar under the garage. Tomatoes will make sauces. Corn she will freeze; beans she will dry.

“I’m going to do it too,” Ralph Kellner says, “and I’m the worst gardener in the world. I’ve been living here for almost 20 years, and I’ve had a vegetable garden and each year I’ve neglected it. It’s the joke of all our friends.”

“This year,” his wife says, “we decided we better get serious.”

And if Y2K glitches never occur or are solved in days?

“We’ll save a heck of a lot of money,” Mary Kellner says, “because we won’t have to go to the food store.”