Seed Stories

Meet a new vegetable! Stem lettuce, also called celtuce, is a Chinese specialty. Coming from the same species as regular old lettuce, these plants are grown for their large edible stems rather than their leaves. Stem lettuces are the aster family’s answer to kohlrabi. I first tasted stem lettuces in Yunnan Province in 2019, and fell in love. They have a great flavor. Mild and enjoyable: a little lettucy, a little asparagusy. This variety comes from Kitazawa Seed Company, and lives up to its claim to fame: […]

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How are great open-pollinated vegetable varieties created? Through years of careful tending, a certain amount of cross-pollination, and careful selection for the plants that thrive. Our friends at Wild Mountain Seeds in Carbondale, Colorado, bred the Sunfired Flare tomato. They often work with a plant breeding method known as “grex gardening”. Last month, we shared a little about carefully-controlled F1 hybrid breeding. Grex gardening is the other end of the spectrum from industrial F1 hybrids. “Grex” is Latin for “flock”, and refers to a population of plants that will […]

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This month, we bring you the story of a mustard defying the odds: Bekana mustard! This mustard has everything. Fast-growing. Beautiful. Mild flavor to eat raw in salads. Crunchy stems to cook like bok choi. What could go wrong with this plant? Truelove Seeds describes the history of these seeds: “Japanese soldiers returned home with Chinese cabbage seeds after the Russo-Japanese war in the turn of the 20th Century. Bekana (often called Tokyo Bekana) is believed to be a selection from these early Chinese cabbages, […]

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One of the most exciting and inspiring parts of being a seed grower is the understanding that our food and seed crops aren’t static relics of the past, and instead, living ecosystems that are constantly evolving and adapting to place. Therefore, the work of the seed grower isn’t only the maintenance of varieties from our past but as a co-evolutionary partner in the varieties of the future. For the past summers on our educational farm in Paonia, Colorado, we have been plagued by infestations of […]

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These seeds defied USSR government control to travel to the United States in the late 1980’s! One of our seed steward mentors, Bill McDorman, was visiting an agricultural research station in Siberia on a trip to find seeds that might grow well in the harsh conditions mountain west. He asked whether he could take samples of the seeds back to the US to grow and distribute, but the research director told him he would need permission from the Kremlin. As he was leaving, one of […]

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The beautiful Painted Mountain corn is a metaphor for our times, blending together different seeds to create something new and beautiful. Painted Mountain was bred by Dave Christensen in Montana over 20 years ago. He crossed a huge variety of native corns together, selecting traits that led to a short season, drought-tolerant and cold-tolerant corn variety. Typically, when heritage varieties of corn leave indigenous hands, the variety is re-named something generic, severing the ties between the seeds and their cultural stories and histories. All corn […]

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Seeds have a story… Groundwork grows and maintains over 200 varieties of seed. We partner with local seed companies that adapt seeds to our arid Colorado region, breeding resiliency for a changing climate. Indian Blue Pearl Millet. Millet is one of the most drought tolerant, versatile grain crops in the world. Millet is a broad category of grasses with edible seeds. In fact, the word “millet” doesn’t just refer to many species, but it includes 10 different plant genera (that’s the first word in the […]

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