Northwest Edible Life

urban homesteading in the pacific northwest

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{Giveaway} High Mowing Organic Seeds Garden Starter Collection

I’ll make this brief so we can get to the good stuff, which is Free Seeds.

Something happened a couple months ago when I started getting death threats for writing this blog. I had my own “put up or shut up” moment and realized that, in writing here, despite what I’d been telling myself about how this blog was just my hobby, I had accidentally created for myself an awesome job, and I had two choices: quit and lick my wounds because sometimes people are jerks, or respect this gig for what it really is.

After the douche-waffle thing, I took a few weeks off and really thought about what the hell I was doing here. In the end I decided that, if the Universe hands you the opportunity for your dream job, you take it and you work hard and you don’t complain. That snapped me out of a kinda anti-consumerist delusion I’d been operating under, this idea that I would be a complete fraud if I got compensated at all for the inordinate time, effort and expense it takes to make this blog happen.

So, anyway, long-story-short, now I have a sponsor. No – I have the best sponsor. When you are a little advertising shy like me, it helps when your first and only sponsor is a small, friendly, super-ethical seed house that believes in the exact same things you do.

High Mowing Seeds Logo

Meet High Mowing Organic Seeds

High Mowing Organic Seeds is my new sponsor. They are a 100% organic, GMO-free, farm-based seed house. They are located in Vermont, and grow and trial many of their varieties in-house, but also have partner organic seed growers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Vermont, and New York.

I love them, and here’s why. High Mowing is doing something really important – they are aggressively developing more varieties of seeds that are successful for organic growers. That matters for two reasons.

The Selfish Reason – Organic Adaptation: You know how people talk about how heirlooms are awesome because they have become adapted to certain conditions over generations of seed-saving? Well, the organic thing is no different. Seeds grown from organically grown plants carry genetics that make them better adapted to successful organic culture in the garden or in the field.

Conventionally grown seeds come from plants that probably grew well with a lot of help from high doses of very strong chemical fertilizers, fungicides and herbicides. But you aren’t growing your veggies that way, so why buy seed that is adapted to that culture when organic seeds are more likely to thrive under the backyard organic conditions you’re providing?

The Big Picture Reason – Look, most people growing vegetable seeds are decent folk, but the regulations regarding what can be sprayed on seed crops is far more lenient than what exists for crops grown for human or animal feed consumption. Because of this, it’s pretty easy to spray stuff on your seed crops that you’d never be able to spray on your food crop. The Oregon Department of Agriculture, as an example, grants Special Local Need (SLN) pesticide registrations for crops grown for seed. These give the grower carte blanche to spray…um, basically whatever…as long as they include this message on the wholesale tag:

“This seed was produced using one or more products for which the United States Environmental Protection Agency has not established pesticide residue tolerances. This seed, in whole, as sprouts, or in any form, may not be used for human consumption or animal feed. Failure to comply with this condition may violate the requirements of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, the Oregon Department of Agriculture, and other regulatory agencies.”

That’s just not very comforting, is it?

Stuff like this makes me feel like insisting on organic growing methodologies from seed-to-sandwich isn’t nearly so paranoid as it might seem. And that’s where High Mowing comes in. 100% organic seed production means none of their products are part of the problem, and – in fact – by pushing more seed crop land into organic production, supporting their seeds is nudging acreage towards the solution.

Win Free High Mowing Organic Seeds

Okay, back to selfish…High Mowing is starting off their sponsorship here at NW Edible with a bang by giving away one of their 100% Organic Garden Starter Collections to one lucky reader.

The High Mowing Garden Starter Collection includes 10 seed packets of adaptable, easy-to-grow, organic vegetable varieties (I’ve grown most of these very successfully in the Pac NW) and – bonus!- it comes in a fab, reusable box.

Garden-Starter-Collections-Large-01

This collection includes one packet each of:

  • Provider Bush Bean
  • Detroit Dark Red Beet
  • Danvers 126 Carrot
  • Marketmore 76 Cucumber
  • High Mowing Mild Mix
  • Gourmet Lettuce Mix
  • Cascadia Snap Pea
  • Cherry Belle Radish
  • Sweet Basil
  • Dark Orange Calendula

This collection is valued at $27.50. One lucky winner will get the whole collection for free.

To enter to win, leave a comment on this blog post telling me what vegetable you have the most trouble growing. (Mine is carrots, which is why I am excited to see if this rust fly resistant carrot lives up to the hype.) The winner will be notified by email.

Contest open until Thursday, January 9th at 8:00 PM PST. Contest open to US residents only due to shipping regulations.

Thank you to High Mowing for sponsoring this giveaway. I encourage you guys to go check out High Mowing and request a free catalog. See if you like what you see.

Good luck everyone!

Update: Contest now closed. Thank you to everyone who entered, and to High Mowing for sponsoring this giveaway. Congratulations to winner Joy D, who said, “I started gardening in a field claimed as a community plot for gardeners. Therefore the root veggies were/are the hardest. (I could find no one with a rototiller. When I was a kid my Dad was busy with his rototiller every day after he came home from his job until dark. Helping everyone he could to get a good start in their gardening.)”

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Comments

  1. I can never seem to get broccoli right–if I plant it in the spring, the flea beetles devour it. If I plant in fall it never quite gets big enough. Either way I generally end up eating a few fibrous leaves and stems, not the lovely heads and florets my friend seem to manage.

  2. I have the hardest time growing tomatoes. I can grow them and I get a bunch of green ones but they always seem to never get ripe in time or contract some kind of blight. I’ve tried the last couple years and even started them inside, as well as making sure to not splash when watering them, etc. I’ve pinched off the sucker shoots too in an effort to get them to ripen before the warm weather turns to cold.

  3. Woot woot for High Mowing Seeds! I just discovered your blog through Pinterest so I’ve barely scratched the surface of the information you have but I like it so far! I live in Vermont and have been ordering my seeds from High Mowing for years. Congrats on partnering with them!

    Surprisingly my hardest vegetable so far has been zucchini! The only reason to lock car doors around here in the fall is to keep people from putting unwanted zucchini in it, but I can’t get it to grow! LOL

  4. It seems different things give me trouble each year, but potatoes have always been a disappointment. I have such fond memories of my grandpa’s potatoes, but I get next to nothing from nice healthy looking plants!

  5. I had the most trouble with zucchini but I have a feeling it was weather related and space related. My tomatoes didn’t turn out a good crop 2 years in a row so I skipped growing last year. I am definitely going to try again this year.

    • Try purple sprouting broccoli (plant in the fall). I always end up with at least one really good producer that survives the winter and feeds us well before anything else can be planted for spring.

  8. The veggie I have the most trouble growing is broccoli raab, since it seems to be very prone to pests.

  9. My most consistent failure is onions. I’ve had one good onion year, never repeated. They always bolt and end up pithy and/or small.

  10. My most challenging crop to raise would be a couple root crops. Radishes & carrots. Ugh, always seem to grow beautiful tops, but no bottoms. Such a disappointment when you go to harvest them after you have watered and weeded for so long and nothing. Have tried planting by the moon and several other suggested ways, but all have been more or less a flop. Knowing me, I will keep on trying.

  12. Cucumbers. Last year we started 12 seeds. They all died. So we bought 6 starters. One survived, and gave us 1 cucumber. Everything else thrived though, so I don’t know what happened!

  15. I have been struggling for three years to get strawberries to grow (Panhandle of TX) . . . I have amazing results and harvests with everything but berries. O.o

  17. Two things my family has always had trouble growing is carrots and strawberries. Hoping for better luck this spring.

  18. For me it’s cucumbers. They always did great in West Seattle, but in the two years I’ve been gardening in Belltown, none of the cucumbers have accomplished anything. They don’t get more than a foot or so high, and then quit. I did get two, tiny cucumbers this last summer; the year before, none at all. It’s not crappy soil; everything else does great. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going wrong. It’s my first time (well, first and second) trying to grow them in containers, but 3′ square and 14″ deep should be enough, no?

  19. Last year was my first attempt at growing vegetables and let’s say it didn’t go very well at all. I had started everything indoors and built raised boxes out side but I never got soil for the boxes so eventually everything went into the flower beds in the ground and well, instead of what vegitable didn’t grow well, let’s just say the only thing that did grow well were my black cherry tomatoes. But my boxes are set and ready for vegitables now!

  20. A garden period. With frequent moves, due to the military, we always move in the middle of summer. But for the first time in six years, I am finally staying in the same place in Washington! I plan on having my boys help me from start to finish so they can see where food actually comes from.

  21. I have given up growing Chinese cabbage…to eat that is. The cabbage moths have decided Chinese is their favorite every year I’ve ever grown it. I decided to continue growing it however because it makes a great trap crop for them!! Ie. The cabbage moths leave the head cabbage alone. Sorry Chinese cabbage, you are worth the sacrifice so we can grow cabbage for homemade sauerkraut!! Delicious!

  23. It’s spinach for me. I live near Seattle. It seems like it should be simple. Every single year I plant it, and every single year it bolts right away. I love spinach. At least the pak choy, chard and kale love me back.

    Oh, and I can never get my bell peppers to fully mature. Probably because I give the best hot spots to the tomatos.

  24. My radishes are always devoured by wire worms. Thanks for your educational posts and pnw gardening camaraderie!

    • Have you tried using onion seedlings instead of onion sets? made all the difference for me!

  29. I seem to have the most trouble with carrots and beats. Try, try again. I can’t wait to win the seeds! Either way I’ll have to check out this fabulous (new to me) seed company. Thanks for sharing!

  30. I have the most trouble with tomatillos – ton’s of vines, flowers and husks, with tiny tiny little bb sized fruit inside.

  31. Peas and beans so Legumes I suppose. First I didn’t use innoculant and they yellowed and died as seedlings, then I tried a raised bed with fantastic soil and inoculating the seeds and all seemed well until now (3 months later) when my 3 foot peas have yellowing bottom leaves. The soil feel well watered and well drained. I haven’t seen anything to lead me to believe there are pests or disease in the soil. It’s extra frustrating because I live in coastal Southern California where damn near everything grows!

  32. Eggplant…. I can’t seem to get eggplant to fruit…. blossoms, but rarely a fruit… Then only a little bitty one 🙂

  33. Well, my hardest that I should have had no problem with USED to be carrots. But I’ve resolved that problem, hooray!

    Now, I’m back to grumbling about tomatoes and other heat-lovers in the northwest. And corn. 🙂

    (p.s. my answer for the carrots was to put them in a tall pot on my tall deck, out of reach of the low-flying carrot fly)

  34. Radishes! I’ve tried for the past 3 years with no luck 🙁 Though I grow carrots and beets just fine. It is just so strange!

  35. So glad you’ve stuck with it! I really enjoy your posts about gardening here in the PNW! My family had a very large garden in Southern Wisconsin when I was a kid, so I had a lot of experience growing things, but the Eastside (of Seattle) is very different climate-wise! I am learning to look for “early” varieties of all those heat loving plants and getting used to planting early! I love your advice and your admissions of imperfection (which I find very comforting!). This year will be a challenge since we have a house now, I can move out of the community garden and make a few garden beds in our yard (which I’m very enthusiastic about!).

    The hardest thing for me to grow, though has been peppers. I got 2 or 3 last year from about as many plants. :/

  36. Carrots are my biggest challenge, too. I have heavy clay soil, and I don’t think I’ve gotten enough humus and other amendments tilled in yet to get it de-clumped to their liking.

  37. I have never gotten a decent melon to grow! They are always about the size of a acorn squash and usually rot before ripe

  38. I have trouble with beets. I just can’t get them to plump up and end up with tops with measly roots. Luckily, I’ve accepted that nobody in myfamily actually likes them, so there’s no point in even bothering. (OK, well maybe there is, like figuring it out, but it’s not as crucial as carrots.)

  42. I am embarrassed to say that the single most difficult vegetable I have trouble with is rhubarb. Everyone says how easy it is but I always manage to kill it off, whether by root rot or chickens eating all the leaves (and still surviving), or over-protection. I love rhubarb. Someday I’m going to have gigantic plants of it all over my yard, when I finally figure out the secret to keeping it alive.

  43. The hardest think for me to grow are tomatillos. I make fresh salsa verde as often as possible and spend a small fortune at the local farmers market when they are in season.

  44. I have trouble with carrots and radishes. The tops always look great but then the actual carrots and radishes are very tiny. I guess you could call them petite and enjoy them anyway.

  45. Cucumbers give me the most trouble. I got one good batch of them. Then they succumbed to some fuzzy white-ish coating that spread to a couple tomatoes and my peas (the tomatoes managed to survive it and keep producing). I still haven’t been able to figure out which disease attacked my poor cucumbers.

  46. Despite living in the supposedly perfect climate for spinach, mine never really makes it. Such a disappointment because I looooooove spinach. Oh, I hope I win!!

  47. Basil (especially thai, which I LOVE) and hot season herbs. I cannot… cannot… cannot… seem to get the warmth-to-water ratio right to do these puppies from seed. I’ve had some success with well grown basil starts, but those babies from seed just seem to go between wilting and blooming with no time for growing nice happy leaves.

    Also, cheers on getting a sponsorship. Isn’t it weird how hard it is to ask for money when your job is what you want? It’s some weird puritan thing- suffering = success – and as a freelancer as well, I salute you for finding such a great way to make your work contribute to your living!

  48. I have a hard time with squash, but I dint know if it’s me or the squirrels…they ate everything in my garden last year!

  49. I totally deserve to get these seeds because: 1) I live in Canada and so that is also where I garden…its just more convenient, so when I get those seeds I will grow the bejesus out of them and then tell the world how wonderful they (and of course your sponsor) are. 2)I got thumb cramps scrolling down to the bottom of the comments so I could post my own comment….these peeps haven’t got even 1 good reason for wanting seeds 3)I have never had any success growing cukes 4) come on ERICA we are practically neighbors….GIMME A BREAK

  50. Kale is my problem vegetable. Some small or large pest gets to it first every time. I haven’t given up hope yet, but find solace in other greens in the meantime.

    P.S. Glad to see you’re persevering with this whole blog thing! I recently discovered your blog and enjoy the treasure trove of posts.