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.

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