Seed Stories

The Groundwork farm just planted our first biennial seed crops into the fields, including Green Luobo radish and Colorado Sweet #6 storage onion. Biennial crops are seed crops that require two years to complete their life cycle. This is compared to annuals that reproduce in one year and perennials that live and reproduce for many years. The first year of growth is mainly vegetative (leaves, roots and stems) while the second year of growth is mainly reproductive (flowers and seeds). Biennials require a process called vernalization, which […]

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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. Casey Piscura at Wild Mountain Seeds in Carbondale, Colorado, was a master plant breeder. In our April 2024 newsletter, we shared a piece on his Sunfired Flare tomato, and we’re reprinting an updated version today as a tribute to Casey. Casey was a part of a small collection of people developing and experimenting with a method of plant breeding known […]

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Seeds have stories. Sometimes those stories get lost. People forget. Somebody who knew where the seeds came from might hand a few to a friend, saying “these are great, you should try them.” And in an instant, the history of the seeds is broken, forgotten. I bought a packet of Za Hara eggplant seeds from the great seed stewards at Sand Hill Preservation Center. Sand Hill has a lot on their hands, stewarding hundreds of varieties of rare seeds with the goal of getting small seed […]

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In the high desert, growing squash is always a gamble. Our home, Delta County, used to be one of the biggest squash-growing areas of the United States, known for exporting Japanese varieties like kabocha squashes to discerning markets in Japan. We have faced increased pest pressure from squash bugs, recently, which both weaken the vines and carry diseases that can kill whole plants, and our region is now faced with very challenging growing conditions for Cucurbita-lovers like ourselves. This year, with a generous dose of […]

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Habanero-type peppers are their own species of pepper, capsicum chinense. Most of them are grown in extreme humidity and heat in tropical areas, requiring a longer growing season than the most common pepper species, capsicum annum. You see large amounts of habanero-types in places like the Caribbean and the tropical mountains of northeastern India (this is where ghost peppers come from). In tropical areas, peppers are long-lived plants, forming small trees that can live for several years. In areas with freezing weather in the winter, […]

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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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