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.
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.
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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My biggest issue is with root vegetables in general. But then again, I’m new to planting them. I have hope.
Now clearly I’m not going to be eligible to win this, but I’ll second, third, fourth, or fifth (as needed) those who say they struggle with tomatoes. Epically a challenge here in the Northwest, though with last year’s long, warm summer we actually harvested a bounty like we’d never seen before.
That would look rather odd for you to win 🙂
For us (here in SW WA) we didn’t have that great of a year with our tomato plants. They kept getting yellow leaves at the bottom of the plants but still produced some. I haven’t had that situation before so not sure what happened. The year before was a bumper crop for us- especially our Sungold plant- we were crazy with tomatoes over here! Couldn’t find enough things to do with them, ended up freezing a few gallons. Made some great soup out of those!
I’m hoping this year will be better- we are doing raised beds this time. We also can’t grow a carrot longer that a couple of inches, so I’m hoping the raised beds will remedy that (with new soil, too)
Thanks to early tomato blight and late tomato blight having spread to our area several years ago, tomatoes are a no-go in my garden. Looking for other things to grow in my garden. I am an organic gardener – no fertilizing with blue stuff.!
I have the hardest time growing carrots.
Like you, carrots are a problem crop for me. I always plant them and they grow, but they ALWAYS have bugs in them. Is it just me, or is it because I, too, live in the PNW…on the Olympic Peninsula. That said, I’d love some carrot seed that would produce beauties for me.
Little brown tunnels through the roots? That’s carrot maggot, the hatchings of the carrot rust fly. I have them terribly in my yard. I’ve had far better luck with overwintering sowings planting in October after the last flush of the flies, but even that isn’t fool-proof. Hope springs eternal.
Watermelons. Apparently they like heat and water and food, even more than the rest of my garden. I’ve only ever gotten a single puny one.
This year we had to hand- pollinate our squash because there was a mismatched timing between male and female flowers. Also, our bell peppers fizzled.
Erica, I fully support your point of view about making an ethical connection with a worthy sponsor. It’s actually a good thing, because interdependence weaves the fabric of our culture. So when we choose consciously and we build conscientiously, we actually make the world better. I really appreciate the work that you do. Thank you.
Thank you Sanj!
Broccoli is probably the hardest vegetable for me to grow but lately so is zucchini and I love my zucchini.
Beets! I live in Portland, OR which should be a great place to grow them but some insect (leaf miner?) always decimates the leaves before they have a fighting chance. I’m hoping 2014 will be my year for success with beets!
It’s tomatoes for me. This year I had a handful of red ones and buckets of green ones.
Beets for me. They just never seem to plump up. Any roots, really, except for turnips – which are invincible, and which my family has no interest in eating.
Lacto fermented turnips are great, if your family likes pickled things they might go for them.
I have never been able to grow broccoli.
Carrots for me too…I’ve never even had them germinate. But I just learned that they ate weak little things and have to be kept moist the whole time or can’t push through the soil crust. I guess that explains it! I’m trying again armed with info!
I think making some money off doing what you love is awesome and certainly benefits the rest of us!
This is sort of embarrassing, but I can’t ever seem to figure out how to get a great crop of salad greens. Either I don’t know how to seed them or how/when to pick them or just don’t grow enough, but I never feel like I can pick a big hearty salad.
I always read carrots and beets are so easy to grow–but they despair in my garden. The tops are tall and lovely–but the carrots and beets do not get very big. Frustrating!
I also have problems with carrots. Though this last year I was finally able to grow them. It had to do with how early I was putting them out. This last year I tried earlier than normal and the ground was still wet enough that they actually grew. Often times when something doesn’t grow well in my garden I take it as an extra challenge to find a way!
Brussel Sprouts. A girls got to dream tho’.
Of all things I have trouble with it is potatoes. I over-feed, irregularly water or whatever and get minimal harvest. Will keep on trying though after some study.
I have trouble growing cilantro, keeping it from bolting.
I just sow a little bit every couple weeks because it will bolt. The seeds are really tasty green and if you dry them you have coriander.
And the flowers of cilantro are enjoyed by beneficial insects (the good bugs!)
I have given up on potatoes. Not sure why, but the foliage always dies too soon before there is any kind of decent crop. 🙁
Tomatoes and peppers. I have walnut trees in my neighborhood and they’ve done terrible things to the soil. I can’t seem to fix it except by containers, and even then something always seems to go wrong.
It’s radishes for me. Those insidious little maggots find their way in just when I think I’ve dodged them. I liked your your definition of “organic” seed, by the way.
Corn. I love corn but I have never been able to grow an edible ear. One year I managed to grow decent sized ears but the kernels weren’t filled out.
I have trouble growing tomatoes!! Great giveaway.
I have never successfully grown carrots. I don’t know why they’re so hard but they are!
So many things to well: tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, hot peppers
Things we have trouble with: broccoli (few teeny heads that blossomed quickly); onion sets that never get very large; green peppers that are small
Sweet peppers! They only get to be the size of a grape… Shoot!
The thing I have the hardest time growing is everything. Just everything. I want to be a good gardener and it’s slowly, very slowly, getting better, but my biggest yield ever out of our gigantic garden was this past summer when I got 1 leek, 7 tomatoes, a bit of kale and 2 pumpkins. I’m not going to stop trying, though!
I’m a broccoli challenged kind of gal. Kind of silly for the PNW, isn’t it? I also have trouble with growing any tomato other then cherry tomato. Oh, and radishes, it’s a real hit and miss with those little guys. Sometimes they plump up and sometimes all I get are tops! Thanks for the great giveaway. I love High Mowing too!
Yay for finding an honorable sponsor! That is no small feat. As for a vegetable that I have trouble growing, I would have to admit that squash is my garden foe. I’ve tried zucchini, yellow squash, and just last year Delicata winter squash. The only squash I’ve ever produced from all this squash growing is a tiny two inch long winter squash last year. Fourth year is the charm, right? I’m not ready to give up on the entire squash family yet.
I haven’t been able to get my cucumbers to grow for the past 2 years. Last year I had grand plans to grown them up onto a chickenwire screen so that they would shade my spinach to help prevent it from bolting in the summer sun. The result? No cucumbers and lots of bolted spinach. I also have trouble with carrots and beets, but I can grow some fabulous beet greens!
I have given up on melons, don’t know if the problem is living in Seattle, or something I’m doing wrong, but I never got anywhere.
Basically the problem is living in Seattle. I wouldn’t beat yourself up about that one.
Carrots are my nemesis too. I can’t seem to get them to grow to a decent size, and when I do dig them, half the time something else has eaten them, or part of them. And yes, I start them under cover to keep the carrot fly out. Thanks for the lead to a seed producer that I have not heard about. Will definitely request a catalogue.
I got all of 8 green beans this year. Frustrating when you have a daughter who LOVES them
I wish there was some way to squash my slug population. They are having a convention in my garden!
I have the worst luck with cukes. It seems like every single year I bother trying, the starts get eaten (even if protected), or the darn birds swoop in and devour the baby cukes, or worse – they wind up diseased and inedible.
All that aside, I am thrilled to see a fully organic, non-GMO seed company highlighted here. I’ve been ripping my hair out trying to find a reputable seed catalog like this, that does not require me to pay $40 or join a club or otherwise become part of something I may not even want to be part of – hard to find! I just want to grow some freakin’ organic, non-GMO crops!
And way to go on getting sponsorship! With no reliable home internet, I don’t bother with much online anymore… your blog is one of the few exceptions. =)
Pumpkins, I can never get big nice pumpkins
Tomatoes, in Costal Oregon they NEVER get ripe…
Any brassicas. Stupid cabbage moths eat them up! I had lovely big cabbages just about ready to pick, went out the next day and they looked like swiss cheese 🙁
I can’t get zucchini to grow well. I only get a couple and they’re never very big.
Here in N. Colorado I have been having a terrible time with my cucumbers.
They start off ok but just before picking they seem to go into grow rush and as lettuce bolts my dukes bolt into bloated yellowed weird things.
My husband and I love parsnips. But we seem to have both good and bad luck with them. One year in a raised bed they developed many forks shooting out from the root. I read they don’t like a strong fertilized soil so then the next year we planted them in a sandy soil and they didn’t do well there either. Maybe we planted them too late. We may have been successful once or twice in the past. They are so sweet and delicious when you dig them in the spring.
Getting cauliflower to size up. They’re always tiny.
Everything. Haven’t been able to get out of the (home/farm) office and out of the kitchen to start planting. Plus we moved here during an unseasonable hot early summer later year. We have help now, so this spring I SO look forward to learning how to grow food here in Montana. (Ha! I just noticed you wrote “Wheaton’s Law” for your comment policy.) Congratulations on the fantastic sponsor!
I have a hard time with carrots too! Mine are always so shrimpy and I get impatient with their slow growth.
Tomatoes!! Some day when I win the lottery and can build a greenhouse, I’ll have tons of them. until then, I can dream:)
Almost unbelievably, I am a zucchini-growing failure. I have tried over 15 years in 3 different states, and pretty much failed every time. The only real “success” I had was the one year a volunteer plant showed up in my compost pile. Go figure. Every other year, they have failed due to squash vine borer, squash bugs, rot, or a general failure to thrive for unknown reasons. Fortunately, other people aren’t as cursed, so I can easily get my zucchini fix from someone else’s garden!
Carrots (variety of issues) and corn (sometimes we don’t have a long enough warm season). And sometimes brassicas thanks to slugs and cabbage moths.
Tomatoes. I keep trying and failing. Last year I bought a cheap -o greenhouse. I cooked them to death:(
I have problems with carrots also. I think I didn’t thin them enough. They were all very spindly. We’ve also had problems with peas! Our crop last year was invaded by some worm inside the shells, it was disgusting (especially if you had already bitten into it!).