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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I’ve had trouble planting carrots! They look like healthy tops but no carrots .
Despite many attempts, I have never been able to grow cauliflower or broccoli. I’ll keep trying though, and maybe one year I’ll be successful!
Squash! Each year I hope for the overwhelming squash harvest that some people complain about, but for some reason; summer squash, winter squash, any kind of squash, I SQUASH!
I am fairly new to gardening (about 4 years) so I am still very excited to go pick ANYTHING!
I have been struggling with something that attacks my vine plants. Last year, it hit my squash, watermelon, and zucchini hard. On the positive, it left my loofah vine alone!
Spinach
High Mowing Seeds looks like a great sponsor.
Cucumbers. Never could grow a good crop anywhere I tried. Now that I have to grow mostly in containers, I don’t imagine they would do better, so I probably won’t use any of the meager space trying.
Definitely cucumbers. I think that it’s mostly been a moisture/soil issue for me each time but they have always been the trickiest for me!
First YAY you! I’m glad you have an awesome company that has your back, you deserve it!
Ok and now for shining a light on my veggie failure, radishes. As I type this I hear ” they are as easy to grow as lettuce” NOT. ” They are a no brainer in the NW garden” NOT. I could go on but I’ll leave it there. What I know is that I succeed in growing incredible radish ‘tops’, sigh………..
The maple trees in my area have powdery mildew and it happens to be the same kind that really likes acorn squash plants. Once it got on my squash, it took out my peas as well. I have fond memories of my mother growing various squashes when I was a kid and I’m heart broken I can’t grow them where I am. I confess I really understood why people resort to chemicals, but I don’t want to go that route so I’m looking for a new crop to fall in love with. 🙂
I’m not sure if these would be any more resistant to the powdery mildew, but I can tell you I grew them last year and they are my new favorite squash. The flavor is fabulous and they are “easy sized” for meals (no machete required to open them).
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/organic-seeds-sugar-dumpling-f1-hybrid.html
I have the worst time with carrots! I can get very few to start (even using lots of methods like sand, covering with wood and using radishes to break the ground). The few that grow get mangled and twisted! I just moved to a new home on the Oregon Coast so I plan on making a whole new bed JUST for carrots! I am a huge canner/dehydrator so carrots are part of my foundation when it comes to preserving food! Help!
last summer I had the most trouble with Carrots. But in years past it was cucumbers. Nots sure what I did differently but my cucumbers rocked it last season and hardly any carrots. Summer squash has been tough due to squash bugs.
No matter what I do, I can’t grow cauliflower. It absolutely depressing!
We’ve been invaded by cucumber beetles and are having a wicked time trying to rid the garden of them! 2nd runner up would be tomatoes due to the late blight that inevitably strikes.
What a great giveaway- we love HMS too!
I have trouble growing cabbage, it doesn’t form a head, just a loooong stalk with what should be the head at the end.
I am committed to organic, and sent for my catalogue. Thanks!
Carrots are definitely one I have trouble growing. I have tried a few types, giving up on ‘full size’ carrots because those were clearly not working and going for smaller varieties…I still ended up with very, very small, gnarly twisted BUT delicious things. I read about a new technique for distributing those micro seeds in one of my textbooks and I’ll try *that* next time.
Last summer, I had a terrible time with zucchini. Don’t laugh! I had blossom end rot, a late start, and I think not the best seed. Of course, this was my first year back in the gardening game and my beds were not amended, prepped or anything fancy at all. My cukes didn’t do well either… *sigh* Is it Spring yet? I’m ready to start planting!
Carrots for sure, ours were small and contorted last year. But on the plus side they were quite sweet.
Bell Peppers. I always want sweet, juicy peppers. I can only grow stunted, bitter, and twisted ones. Thanks for hosting such a nice giveaway. Free seeds are always awesome.
My gardening challenge has been turnips and rutabagas – the tops grow great, but root maggots are having a buffet under ground, and I never get out there soon enough with Remay to cover them up. And total congrats on your choice of a sponsor – a fabulous company now sponsoring a fabulous blog!
After a bumper crop of winter squash in 2012, I had not one single squash grow in 2013. It was so disappointing because I got use to roasting and eating squash for the first time the year before. So I’d love to know how to insure that your squash will always grow. I love High Mowing seeds and their philosophy of gardening. Thank you for hosting this giveway.
Also my biggest struggle was getting rid of a vole who ruined all my baby spinach and chard that I was trying in an experimental approach to winter over these crops. The dang Vole ate the roots and uprooted some great veggies I had covered with remay with a plastic cover over my raised beds!!
I haven’t had any luck growing cucumbers because the plants get eaten by squash bugs. I’m going to try extra hard this year, though, because I want to make some lacto-fermented pickles. High Mowing seeds are amazing. They graciously donated seed to our community garden a couple of years ago.
What makes vegetable gardening so thrilling and frustrating for me is that it’s sort of a crapshoot. After years of just so-so eggplants I had a bush last year that would just not quit. Couldn’t grow calendula to save my life. Had snap peas the year before that became the new zuchinni: I would anonymously leave bags of them at people’s doors.
I so wish I would have better luck with butternut squash. Darn squash bugs get me every time.
Honestly I wish I had better luck with just about everything, but if I have to pick, I would say carrots. I think I need to plant them in looser soil that’s deeper because they come out so short!
Congratulations on your new sponsor! I just love your blog, even though I never post comments. Your posts are super helpful for those of us living in the NW that are trying hard to turn their black thumb green. Please stick with it!!
Beets are easy to sprout but they just don’t produce decent quality in my hardpan soil.
I can’t get carrots to grow, at all, ever.
Squash for me!! I know I know, if you CAN grow it theres too much! well, I cann’t and want to so bad, love the stuff. The fresher the sweeter and the flowers, yummm…. I SO wish it’d grow for me. My husband can’t grow it either. We’re hoping our sons have squash fingers, at least one of them.
Tomatoes – they never really start ripening until the last week of Sept and rot sets in the very first of Oct.
Congrats on the fantastic sponsor Erica, HM is a great seed company!
Any type of beans or peas are the bane in my garden for some reason.
I have trouble growing good lettuce. It’s always bitter, which I know has to do with incorrect watering, but I can’t seem to stay on top of it. My other crops end up more forgiving.
Congrats on the sponsor, and on supporting yourself with this blog. Nice work!
Congratulations on your sponsor! I love your blog and FB posts, and I am still putting together my copy of your garden journal:) I have trouble growing spinach and chard, leafies that normally do really well where I live…but leaf miners love my plants. Chard usually outgrows the problem, but spinach has been a struggle between leaf miners, slugs, and heat at the wrong time.
Cucumbers. Mine all powdery mildew no matter what I do. 🙁
lettuces. Something must be wrong with my soil. They are always too small, weak, yellowing. I do very well with bush beans and pole beans. Last year for the first time I grew tomatillos. They were excellent.
Sounds like a classic case of not enough nitrogen. Beans can fix their own nitrogen but lettuce needs a pretty constant supply from the soil. Try sprinkling some blood meal around your lettuces when you plant or seed them and let me know if that helps.
I have the most problems with broccoli. I’ve never actually successfully gotten anything edible, though I sacrifice a space to it every year!
I cannot grow a single thing. The only outside space I have is a shady 8×8 deck sandwiched between a giant maple tree and my three story building. I can grow tomato plants, but not ones that produce actual tomatoes. I am praying for a space in the nearby Community Garden this year, but it is hard to get in. I guess I really shouldn’t win. The seeds could just go to waste. I think I just needed to vent. 🙂 Thanks.
🙁 Good luck with your community plot! Hope you get it!
Hi Erica!! Thank you so much for this blog! It is funny!! and gives me great information. I have trouble with full size tomatoes. They never seem to have enough time to turn red! Great with the sungold variety.
carrots. For some reason, I cannot get them to grow in my garden
Zucchini or any summer squash. My area is too marine-like for this plant. Powdery mildew comes and it bites the dust.
Beets! Supposedly the easiest to grow and one of my all time favorites! They do fine until they are just getting big and then WHAM! grey spots all over the leaves. At first I thought it was leaf miners, but do leaf miners come out in November? So then I thought it was water on the leaves, but i=under a PalRuf row cover? Fungus? Sins of my past returning to haunt me? What did I do? I hope I enjoyed it….
On my fourth planting now, still hoping to turn the corner and get a beet.
Squash bugs take out my summer and zucchini squashes and then tackle the pumpkins, so I get a few squash and zilch pumpkins. I try to smash eggs and drown nymphs and adults but just don’t have the time to keep up with their legions.
Cabbage. Or broccoli. Or cauliflower. I cannot grow a heading vegetable to save my life. Actually, this fall I managed to grow enough broccoli for an omelette for one. And man, was that a good omelette.
roots – actually radish and beets . . . probably fertilization or something. But radishes are supposed to be the easiest. At least I get radish greens from the efforts.
broccoli
This past year my bell peppers did terrible, but usually carrots are my hardest!
Ah, being in the PNW as well, beets are no issue but I’ve battled to keep the beet greens safe and have never won. They get infested with little leaf eating larvae. I have stopped short of netting…that’s in the realm of too much effort for some beet greens!
^sorry, yes, I know they’re leaf miners. No, no pesticides used. I have neem oil but it’s so icky.
No matter when I start them, my bell peppers never get bigger than 1-2 inches :/
I have trouble with cucumbers! Last time I tried they got wilt, in turn giving it to my zucchini nearby, and the ones that grew tasted bitter. I haven’t tried again but would love to since homemade pickles are the bees knees. I love your blog btw. I’m sorry you have been treated so nastily.
For those of you who have had trouble with cucumbers, please try the Marketmore 76 seeds. I grew them on a trellis last year in our community garden and they produced a ton and resisted powdery mildew!
I have given up on growing rappini/broccoli rab. It always bolts when it is just inches tall. I’ve tried direct sowing, transplanting, spring sowing, winter sowing, fall sowing, row cover, no row cover, tight spacing, far spacing, self sowing, different gardens. I’m done with it.
It varies from year to year, but tomatoes are often a problem. They start out nicely but end up getting spotty and gross. You go, Erica, make this blog work for you! We need your inspiration.
Corn. I gave up after I just couldn’t get it to sprout, but rather the seeds rotted in the ground. I “know” why: too cool soil and too much moisture. So I decided to take Steve Solomon’s advice and use the space a bit more intensively for others crops and buy my sweet corn…
Last year I had such a problem with zucchini mildew.