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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Tomatoes or green beans..flip a coin. Too many green tomatoes at 1st frost and green beans are iffy if they will be tender, stringy or have rust.
Well, I have trouble growing tomatoes consistently. They grow in fits and spurts, or they topple or they get leggy like a forest – we put in a lot of plants, we grow a lot of plants, we don’t get a lot of consistent fruit. I froze exactly 3 gallons of sauce last year and that was primarily from a bucket of over-abundance from a friend’s tomato garden. *sigh*. I got to get it together.
I have a hard time getting ripe tomatoes
Broccoli! I get great heads of greens and long stalks with a few small heads but I can’t get it to grow in a great, big usable bunch
firstly, congratulations on such a fine sponsor. you obviously write with a passion that needs expressing, but to have someone recognize the worth in that sharing is top notch! as for difficult growing — i could write volumes! i am a farmer on the luscious island of kauai and grow for a 50 member CSA. we simply cannot grow any vegetable that flowers – so, no cucumbers, no squash (except kubocha pumpkin), no tomatoes — all because of the fruit fly which has no real natural controls. sigh. still we live a great life, both in the gardens and out!
Since we have naturally heavy soils, it’s any root crops that we have trouble with. I asked a farmer friend and he said if we didn’t have sandy soil then we might as well leave carrots to the professionals, but I did have some success with them the next year when I grew midget ones in flower boxes with high quality potting soil!
I’m glad to know you have a sponsor and that your great blog will have greater stability and longevity that way. Can you say what post drew the death threats? I’ve been hearing stories of such toward scientists and farmers who dare to questions anything Monsanto says or does, but it’s hard to get that substantiated.
Can I get extra credit for being your editor? Trail/Trial in the first paragraph of your post. 🙂
Saw that, too! =]
No, not Monsanto, and lets hope they never turn their One Eye towards me. 🙂 I wrote a post about witnessing a beef slaughter that got picked up and spread around by some particularly militant extreme animal activists. The comments I got were…interesting.
Thanks for pointing that the typo! Fixed!
Cauliflower! I’ve never been able to eat a home-grown head of it. Some catastrophe (bugs, disease, random failure to thrive) always comes. This year I finally had a tiny head developing and the DOG STOLE IT from the raised bed. The dog.
This made me laugh out loud! I am so sorry about your cauliflower, but it is still really funny 🙂 One of my friends can’t ever get cucumbers because her lab will eat all of them off the vines.
Bulbing fennel. I just have zero luck with germination indoors or out. Every year for five years, I have tried to grow this amazing and delicious stuff to no avail.
Hmm. Last year my peas and beans didn’t grow well at all. I only got a handful of each off of a 5×5 box of each. Our peppers didn’t do much either till fall and then it was too late. Im still eating fresh tomatoes that I picked green and stored though!
Definitely lettuce. Spinach, arugula, no problem, but regular lettuce never does well.
Carrots. Then beets. Am lucky to get half a dozen.
BTW, hope you’re not beating yourself up over the “douche-waffle” moment. Totally justified. Understood by your readers too.
Happy New Year!
We are just getting into Organic Gardening (and living more self sustainable). The most difficult vegetable is tomatoes. We put up a lot and are having to supplement product from other farmers. Would really like to produce enough of our own to put up all we need.
Brussels sprouts. Either get too buggy or way too bite sized to enjoy. Giving it another shot, so we’ll see how it goes. On another note, Erica, you have a large following of people who love what you do. so just wanted to say thank you. it may not balance out the crazies out there, but please know that you and your work are appreciated!
Carrots and garlic though I battle the squirrels for everything. Hope the seeds will grow in FL
I’d mentioned on Facebook that I have a terrible time with mustard seeds (we get the greens okay, but the aphids smother the seed pods before the pods are ready). Carrots seem to do okay when I remember to grow them in a bin instead of the ground (I live in a part of Portland, OR where there’s clay and rock everywhere). We have a terrible time with beets. Maybe I should try them in a bin as well to see what happens.
I have the hardest time growing radishes and beets – probably all root vegetables. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. The leaves certainly look good. I plant them early and leave them long, but I get the tiniest of little veggies.
Tomatoes- we love them too! I have been trying different seeds, soil, etc.
We try every year… Hopefully this year is the year!
Cucumbers! My husband built me a beautiful trellis for them to grow on and I planted a couple of different varieties. They all looked like poorly blown up balloons and never grew more than a few inches. (I felt bad for the trellis) Determined not to waste them, I painstakingly sliced them up and figured I would make the best of it. They were tasteless and awful.
Brussels sprouts – my kids would love, love, love for us to grow them and every time I have tried they have been the biggest aphid magnets you have ever seen. Icky squishy little gray aphid bodies covering every tiny bit of sprout *shudder*. On the bright side, they work as a very effective trap crop for us – but I really want some sprouts, darn it!
In southern Oregon I have had trouble growing corn and watermelon that tasted sweet so we leave that up to our local farm that does it wonderfully. I focus on lots of greens and things I want a steady supply of.
Thanks for your always interesting work. Your post on making your daughter generic sandwiches with Costco ingredients made me let go of always trying to get my kids to eat the healthiest/greenest food that often went to waste. We have to do our best. And I was making myself crazy always trying to get them to eat what I would like to eat.
Thank you!
Carrots and Spinach. The spinach is a timing thing. I never get it in the ground at the right time, and then when I am successful it seems to go to seed IMMEDIATELY after growing the first leaf.
I’m having that same issue with my bokchoy right now.
I’ve had that. I had better luck with the dwarf green variety – Ching-Chiang/Shanghai. Cute too!
We have never grown a pumpkin on purpose, but have had a few minis and a biggie come up voluntarily. It would be nice to have one of the seeds we plant take and turn into a nice orb!
I haven’t had great tomatoes yet. I am still learning to garden in Colorado after moving from California. It’s quite the learning curve and I’m sure it’s me and not the tomatoes.
Hooray sponsorship! High Mowing is lucky to have you.
My beets consistently suck! I’d be so happy to try this variety (and everything else!)
Potatoes are the bane of my gardening existence. Seriously, my first year growing them was my most successful. But even that harvest was disappointing. I keep trying different setups in hopes of hitting on one that works here. I think the real problem is that I’m all gung ho when I plant them, and then as the season wears on, I fail at the follow through. Maybe this year…
Definitely going to check out High Mowing. I need to fill in a few various seeds in my inventory for the upcoming spring garden. Congrads on the sponsorship! And screw the douche-waffle!
Broccoli, bolts or aphids.
Beets. I plant half a bed of beets, get one or two decent sized ones, a handful of tiny ones, and nothing else. I keep trying though.
I had the worst time with sprouting broccoli and cauliflower last year. They grew and grew and grew and I think I got 1 actual “head” of broccoli florets and no cauliflower. It was a bummer to have to just chop up the big stalks and throw them in the compost. I might try a different location this fall and hope for better results.
Beets are my trouble plant. I don’t know if I start them too early or too late but I never get a great harvest :s
I love High Mowing Seeds! Their selection and pricing is great, and their commitment to responsible agriculture is second to none. I love their Brussels Winter Chervil and have tried many of their other seeds with success. The one crop I have the most trouble with is cauliflower which is crazy because I can grow broccoli and other cole crops like there’s no tomorrow. Sigh. I suspect cauliflower is a bit more sensitive to less than perfect temperature conditions than the more tolerant broccoli.
I live at 9000 ft so I have trouble growing a lot of things! But mostly hot weather crops! Cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers are by far the hardest!
I am just getting started, and it’s hard because I live in an apartment and all I have is a 3 by 6 porch, and a few pots. Strawberries have been good (the handful we got, but I’ll have more plants this year!) , and the two blueberries might have to go because they take up more space than they produce. I tried brocolli in a pot last fall, but it never grew beyond a few leaves, probably the pot was too small, but it was what I had. I’m hoping to try for mint and potatoes this year, I read they grow really well in pots.
My mom has volunteered her yard, but since it’s way across town I would be dependent on her to do the day to day stuff, and I know she’d do it wrong. (Seven dust, for example). Also, she forbade me from carting any of the really nice rotted horse manure from my sisters barn into her yard, so soil amendments won’t be as easy as I’d hoped. But if I had all sorts of neat seeds, maybe I could convince her to just let me do the heavy stuff and she only needs to water it twice a week (YES, MOM. NOT EVERY DAY.). LOL.
I have the most trouble with zucchini. Everyone says they are very easy and give tons, but mine always only give me one or two and then die away.
Okra! I can’t seem to get it to do very well….. it is hot enough here, I water enough… Just when it looks like it is going to do well, the red ants find it and drill holes into all the fruit 🙁
Tomatoes do well for a while, but often do not make it to ripeness. Could be the Texas heat…
Well it is called gardening. So last year it was okra in hot Texas. Peas seem to be our problem. They will be doing great then one rain and everything molds. What gives. We are organic. Use mushroom compost. Grow a 50 X 150 ft garden. Oh yea squash have been molding too. Is it the mushroom compost????
They sound like a fantastic sponsor…and their logo looks very nice…like it really does belong on your site. Still working on my garden plan – first year for me having a garden and I am amazed at all the things I need to take into consideration – so will definitely check them out. With my past minimal gardening, I’ve struggled with my tomatoes – probably too small of pots that I’ve been using, and then some wishy washy PNW summers a few times. Might see if the husband will put up a little greenhouse for me this year, just to see if it will help out.
Lemon Basil is so lovely but stays so small in my garden.
I have had trouble with carrots, too, although my awesome husband built me a tall bed that worked better. I know that it’s likely due to living in the PNW, but okra is something that I keep trying and can’t even manage to keep the plant alive long enough to flower. 🙁
Broccoli Raab, we love this stuff! Every year we have trouble getting a decent crop. Too woody, too small sets seeds with a Tiny , REALLY TINY head. I have seen photos of this stuff with several 50 cent sized heads on each plant, we get dime sized or smaller or all wood! We tried planting early, late, and even mid season, sun shade, no compost, mostly compost and all compost, still cruddy crop!
For some reason, I have trouble growing cucumbers–which is a huge bummer because it is one of the few vegetables my son will eat. I’ve started seeds successfully, transplanted them, and the plants died a couple weeks later. I’ve bought organic starts that either died (2012) or produced two cucumbers each (2013) and then died. I live in Seattle, plant them on raised beds with organic soil and compost against a south-facing fence. I’ve tried a few different varieties. I’d really love to have the kind of cucumber overflow this summer I remember from my family’s backyard in Maryland when I was growing up.
I too have major problems with squash bugs and summer squash is my major difficulty.
I can’t seem to get any decent lettuce to grow.
Sadly, this Northern girl has moved south to where her rhubarb cannot seem to grow 🙁 Also trouble with squash…squash bugs are defeating me every year!
I too have problems with Carrots. Although we live in a rain forest, we have a complete drought in the summer where I live. My soil is sandy sandy sandy (I amend like crazy) and I seem to have problems keeping stuff watered – especially during the seed sprouting stage. (I have the garden on drip, but now (finally) realize I need to hand water some areas until established. My son grew carrots this summer, babied them, and actually won second at the Fall Fair….but alas, me thinking he wouldn’t really be successful (bad mommy) meant that I wasn’t diligent keeping the floating row cover on them and they were ruined by the rust fly later on. This summer we BOTH intend on growing prize winning super storage carrots. As he says, to munch on!!
I live in Sacramento and I have a kick-ass winter garden, especially anything leafy and green but I have yet to have any success with beets. I love them but they are not loving me back.
I have trouble with brassicas. I’m not giving up though. I will grow them well, one of these years 😉
Don’t tell anyone. It’s eggplant. And cilantro. I have 8 organic raised beds. I grow everything in the world. And I cannot grow eggplant. WWAaagaghhhhhhhh.
That said, I’m gonna check out High Mowing, because I usually buy from Baker Creek or Territorial. Or save my own seeds…which I’m getting better and better at.
I could always use some free seeds though.
Broccoli. As other posters have indicated, the aphids and other bugs enjoy the broccoli as much as we do, and usually get there first.
The last couple of years I’ve had trouble growing tomatoes,Brussels sprouts & Walla Walla sweet onions. Over time, I’ve gone from having great crops of tomatoes,Brussels sprouts & Walla Walla’s to nothing.
I grew up with a dad who always had 3/4 acre of garden until he passed away. I’m from Eastern Washington, we grew cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, Walla Walla sweet onions, radishes, green onions & much more. I moved to Western Washington, where it’s not as dry, warm. Over the last 15 summers I have grown potatoes (I really want to try growing sweet potatoes for my husband) tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflower.