Way back in 2012, I wrote what became a fairly popular and referenced article on the Monsanto buyout of a seed company called Seminis. To briefly recap: Seminis was a provider of lots of garden seed to lots of different seedhouses. Then, overnight, they were a Monsanto subsidiary and seed companies like Johnny’s Selected Seeds…
GMO
All the Seed Terminology You Need To Know
Gardening has lingo. Some of the terminology surrounding seeds, seed starting, and growing is pretty intuitive and some is more obscure or weird. But it helps to understand these seed-related terms if you want to navigate a seed catalog, ask accurate questions, look things up, or just sound like you know what you’re talking about….
{Giveaway} Can Seeds Save The World? A Conversation with Tom Stearns of High Mowing Organic Seeds.
Regular readers know that I’m pretty proud to have High Mowing Organic Seeds as a sponsor. Now, I’m more proud than ever. High Mowing has always been 100% organic, and soon will be the first and only seed house to be certified non-GMO by the Non-GMO Project. They are defining what it is to be an ethical…
{Giveaway} Scratch and Peck Organic Chicken Feed
When I first got hens, I didn’t understand how critical they would become to the entire system of my productive home. I just had that fresh-egg fantasy. You know the one: pastel-hued eggs in a Pinterest-worthy little wire basket. They would be laid by happy, fluffy hens and I would have omelets that were as…
Plant Sex: Open Pollinated, Hybrid and GMO Seeds
As a vegetable gardener, you care about seeds. You buy them, plant them, nurture them and curse when, 36 hours after hard-fought gemination, the goddamn slugs eat all the sprouts emerging from them. To understand the difference between Open Pollinated (OP) and Hybrid (F1) seeds, you have to understand that what distinguishes these types of seeds is the type of plant sex partners their parent plants were allowed to have.