Northwest Edible Life

urban homesteading in the pacific northwest

5Recent Posts by

Free Seeds! Free Seeds! Free Seeds!

Was that post title a little overboard? Sorry about that…I’m a sucker for free, organic, high-quality seeds, and (be honest) most of you, my wonderful readers, are too.

Part Two of our awesome giveaway week is here, and it rocks. (If you missed Part One of giveaway week, there is still time to go enter to win a copy of Food Grown Right, In Your Backyard from the guys of Seattle Urban Farm Company.)

High Mowing Organic Seeds emailed the other day and offered to send some free seeds to one of my readers. Yes, please!

This is High Mowing:

They sell organic vegetable, herb, and flower seeds.  Don’t they look friendly, and pretty much exactly how you’d picture organic seed farmers from Vermont to look?

Why Organic Seeds?

All of High Mowing’s seeds are 100% certified organic. You probably grow your vegetables organically and we’ve all heard about the various ways organic food is better for you, the environment, farmers, etc. But you may not have thought about seeking out certified organic seeds.

There are a couple good reasons you might want to buy and use organic seed whenever possible.

1.  Plants raised organically over several generations for seed tend make future plants that do better under organic culture. This is straight up adaptation at work. It’s like how heirlooms grown in one area over generations will become more and more adapted to the climate in that area. A plant raised successfully over time without the protection of chemical fungicides, insecticides and whatnot will tend to pass on genetics that make continued organic culture easier. A plant requiring more chemical help to get it to the reproductive finish-line (making seed) in one piece is going to tend to pass on more genetics for plants that do best with that same kind of chemical supplement.

2. Seed crops get hit with a lot of pesticides and fungicides (far more than typical food crops) which is pretty bad for the land and people involved in growing seed crops. In Oregon, for example, most vegetables grown for seed qualify for “nonfood/nonfeed site” status, which diminishes the labeling and pesticide residue test requirements for those crops. Further, since applications of pesticide and fungicide can be applied throughout the growing and seed development stages, minuscule amounts of these chemicals could remain on the seeds you plant in your garden. For someone very diligent about avoiding chemical inputs in their garden, that possibility alone might make the higher cost of organic seeds very worthwhile.

Thankfully, more and more growers are popping up to supply seed to organic home and small market growers, and so a broad range of organic seeds is now available from seedhouses like High Mowing.

So, About Those Free Seeds?

High Mowing Organic Seeds has put together several beautiful Seed Collections filled with up to 10 seed packets and worth up to $27.50, including this Heirloom Vegetable Garden Collection…

…and this Garden Starter Collection.

There are a lot more collections to choose from (Container Garden? Kids Garden?), and High Mowing is giving one of these collections away to one lucky NW Edible reader. The winner of this  giveaway can pick the collection of seeds that is most appealing to them. Some kits contain more seed packets and are therefore worth more. Just so you know when you are thinking about which you’d want.

How To Enter

To enter to win this giveaway, leave a comment on this post telling us which one the new 2013 High Mowing seed varieties you’d most like to try out. You can see all their 2013 introductions on one page here. The Iko Iko Pepper and the Prinz Celeriac look great to me.

While you are poking around the High Mowing site, check out the Seed Collections and tell us which one you’ll pick if you win.

Contest details: entries accepted until Thursday December 20th at 6 pm PT. Contest open to residents of the US and Canada due to seed shipping regulations.

Good luck!

Update: Contest now closed. Congratulations to Aibrean, the winner of the seed giveaway. Aibrean, please check your email for details on how to claim your prize!

High Mowing is sending me some free seeds too, and I’m going to trial them against established Pac NW seedhouse varieties! Yippie – I’ll report results sometime next fall. High Mowing has sponsored the giveaway item for this contest. No additional sponsorship has taken place. Full financial disclosure stuff here.
5

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. We are in the process of starting our first garden ever. Being a military family we’ve moved on a yearly basis for the last 5 years and for the first time we’ll be in the same place for 3 years! I am beyond excited and can’t wait to literally put down roots. That being said the garden starter collections has really caught my eye, but the kids garden collection also sounds like an amazing activity for my 2 and 4 year old to participate in. Oh I can’t pick a favorite. I suppose if I won I would pick the garden starter collection and buy the kids garden collection so I could have the best of both worlds.

  3. I’m already a customer and fan, so you had me at FREE SEEDS. I want their cannelli beans and Heirloom package. I am starting to save my own seeds so I have a mix of heirlooms and disease resistant varieties. It’s all good!

  5. I will most definitely be trying the Iko Iko Pepper and the Annelise tomato this coming season. High mowing is the only brand, other than Baker Creek, that I use. They’re so great! I would highly recommended them to everyone!

    If I won I would either choose the Summer of Sunflowers collection or the A Bee’s Garden collection. I have yet to try their flower seeds, and bees and sunflowers are two of my favorite things in the world! (:

    I found your blog when HW posted about this give away on their Facebook, and I’m absolutely in love. I will DEFINITELY be sticking around!

  6. What of the new seeds would I like to try? All of them, they are so beautiful. But if I have to chose, it would be the Topepo Rosso Pepper, Stocky Red Rosso Pepper, and Winter Luxury Pumpkin. IF I win, I would choose the Heriloom Vegetable Lovers Collection.

  7. My Fair Lady F1 Hybrid Sweet Corn is the one I would like to try and the collection I would chose would be “A Bee’s Garden” as I am setting up two hives this spring.

  8. I would love to try to grow the austral lettuce. I have bought it at my local farmers market and it is theist delicious, tender and beautiful baby head lettuce I have ever had. I would also like to support the breeding an development of baby head lettuce varieties which are adapted to California’s central coast climate. These varieties are hard to find even though there is a huge market for them!!! Thanks!

  9. I’m a sucker for “pretty” vegetables, so I’d like to try the Red Swan beans, but the the Australe and Rhazes lettuces and the Iko Iko peppers are also tempting. I love getting my seeds from New England-based companies on the theory they’ll adapt better to my local conditions.

  10. owl’s eye pumpkin! So pretty, and such a cool name. They all look pretty cool though. All the collections look great, especially the bee’s garden and the kids garden.

  12. Nothing’s better than free seeds for the garden! I’d love to try Iko Iko Pepper. The different colors are beautiful and I’m sure are tasty too.

  13. I’m glad you ran this one, I hadn’t heard of High Mowing and they sound like a great outfit. I’d go for the beginner’s collection. Thanks.

  16. My goodness, the description for the Organic Black Trifele tomatoes is mouth-watering. Looking forward to spring so I can get to work in my garden… maybe I’ll even graduate out or containers and into a real garden bed!

  18. Next year will be my first year gardening. We spent this year prepping the soil. We hope to plant things that can be used for “sauce”… marinara to be exact. So I would like to plant tomatoes, peppers, onions, chives, and garlic. I would try anything!

  19. the tiger tomato (green and red), the iko iko pepper, and the orange chard look good. if i had to pick only 1 collection i would pick garden starter , but the container collection is probably more for me since i have containers at this time

  20. For the collection, I’d be torn between the kitchen herbs and the winter garden. Probably the winter garden– I’ve never been great with late/early (I blame Maine….)

  21. Oh man, so many things look good! I’d have to go for the Iron Lady tomato (I want a whole garden JUST for tomatoes!) or Klondike Blue Ribbon watermelon (hope springs eternal–we ALMOST got watermelons last year).

  23. How to chose???? Never tried to grow my own potatoes before. This next year may be a first… Those German Butterball’s are calling my name!

  24. I would like to try the Megaton F1 Hybrid Leek. I love potato and leek soup and love trying new variety.

  25. Thanks for explaining why organic seeds are better…the selection over generations makes total sense. The winter luxury pumpkin looks yummy–my son loves growing pumpkins and cooking with them. Again with the end goal in mind, the heirloom vegetable lovers would be such fun!

  26. I would love the Container Gardening collection. I finally decided to leave the yard to the deer and moved all my edibles to my deck last year. It worked great and I can’t wait to do it again next year with more and different plants!

  27. The Vivid Choi looks great, and I’m sure my mother would love either the Container Garden mix or the Winter Garden mix (I’m helping her put in raised beds this year).

  28. What farmer could pick just one? or just 20? I’m interested in trying out mache for the first time, so I may order one (or both) of their new varieties. The heirloom collection would probably be my pick, but I’m also getting bee hives in the near future and they’d probably love some extra flowers from the bee garden collection!

  29. I’ve been hearing great things about Baron Mache, but we’ve never tried it. Always trying to experiment with veggies we can eat raw since I learned my husband vastly them that way to cooked. I’d love to try the Kid’s Garden collection. We get a lot of help in the garden from the little ones, and they absolutely adored the sunflowers they grew this year.

  30. I like the look of the black trifele tomato… with an 80 day maturity, do you think it’d grow here in the PNW? My favorite collections include the Garden Starter, Container Gardening, and the Winter Garden. I’d probably go with that last one – that’s the area I need the most work/encouragement!

  32. I would love to try the Cha-Ching F1 Hybrid Zucchini & Pink Tiger Tomato! I am newly Paleo/Primal and want a bigger, better garden next year. In the mean time, I have several heirloom and small organic varieties of tomatoes growing indoors from the summer. 🙂 Brought them in about a month ago, and they all have new blooms!

  34. I love chocolate and blue, so while the blue coco bean may have nothing to do with the later, That’s what I want from the 2013 collection. The heirloom collection looks the best to me.

  37. I’m about to move from Vancouver Island to North Carolina, so I would want something that grows there… Orange Chard? I’ll have a clean slate for a back yard that I will be building a permaculture garden from scratch with. I can’t wait!

  38. I have always thought that organic seeds would be best. Now I have good solid reasoning behind why I thought that way. The Heirloom Collection sounds fascinating to me. May have to get that one way or another.

  40. I have to choose?? Come on! I think the Topepo Rosso Pepper look fun and also the Winter Luxury Pumpkin. Honestly, any of them would be amazing! I took two years off and I am itching for spring already to get back out there and get my “therapy” back. Because I tend to get a little overzealous when it comes to planning my garden adventures, the starter collection is probably the wisest choice for me to make! And even if I don’t win, I’m so bookmarking their website for the spring 🙂

  41. i’m a sucker for peppers, even though I currently live in Seattle where growing peppers is a…challenge. I’d love to try out the iko iko peppers or the shishito peppers. the blue coco beans look gorgeous too!

    if i won, i’d choose the container garden mix!

  42. Is one of everything too much?? I do love the container gardening seed pack as it has everything that I love and I just got some repurposed containers in the late fall and now I am dreaming of all the ways that I will make them useful in the next year. Also the black and cannellini beans, as I want to try to grow my own and de-BPA my life through less use of store bought canned items. I’m hoping that over the course of the next couple of years to become much more self sufficient and healthy in what we eat by growing our own, even moreso than we do now. Starting today!!

  43. Ooo Ooo Ooo! The Garden Starter Collection would really kickstart my new garden! I am looking at the Cannellini Beans, the Klondike Blue Ribbon Watermelons, and the Cippolini Onions for possible first-year candidates, as I daydream my new garden. What a great give-away! Many mahalos to High Mowing Organic Seeds!

  45. I’m dating myself, but when I was younger, my best friend and I use to sit and page through the Sears and JC Penney catalog, taking turns choosing something from each page. I feel the same excitement when the seed catalogs start arriving. Like most gardeners, I have plenty of seeds, but I can’t help but order every year and try something new. I tell myself, if these times are as uncertain as I keep reading, then it’s a worthy investment. If I read through the comments, I’m sure I will have to add to my list, but for now, I have Belle Isle cress and Purple Orach circled in my catalog. Thanks for the insight on hybrids. I have always ordered heirloom or OP seeds and have not had much luck with sweet peppers or Brussels sprouts here in MA. I think it’s time to try a hybrid.

  46. The Black Trifele Tomatoes look gorgeous! I wonder how they’d be in a sauce with a Harissa paste? And the Orange Chard is just plain pretty and I love chard. Yum. I would love to win the Heirloom Vegetable Lovers packet. ps just discovered your blog and I’m now obsessed! So glad you’re out there!

  48. Wow, tough call, as so many people are expressing here! I’d say what I’d like to try from their 2013 line up is the Winter Luxury Pumpkin and Black Trifele Tomato. As far as the seed collections go, if I won, I’d like to have either the Bee’s Garden or the Winter Garden kits. The former simply to help the bees and our gardens, and the latter because I always feel like the late season is a missed opportunity here, but never really know what to grow.

  50. Looking forward to planting more greens. Overwintering spinach kale carrots for early spring harvest in the hoop houses, while picking daily spinach and kale. Looking at the been sprout mix n hot peppers for summer growing. Tasty goodness