Growing Food
Over the last few weeks, 2023 seed catalogs have appeared online and, if you’re one of the lucky Islanders with a mail carrier still serving your route, your mailbox. For landowners interested in food-growing, the options these catalogs offer can be dizzying.
For the decades when our parents and grandparents were growing a garden during the post-war era, only a few large seed-houses were known to the public at large. Their seeds tended to be geographically “generic”—that is, they weren’t always bred to accommodate the differences characterizing the various USDA growing zones. If Grandma wanted to grow a melon in the Maritime Northwest, her choices for seed were from among melon varieties suited to the country at large. Since most seed buyers were from warmer, dryer climates, this meant that those varieties were intended for their gardens, not Grandma’s cooler, moister one. One reason Northwest food gardeners failed and grew discouraged in droves in that era stemmed from planting the wrong seed for this climatically peculiar corner of the country.
In our lifetimes, the world of seed sources for the food-growing landowner has moved beyond several big-business seed houses to an array of houses that also includes specialty seed producers, large and small. You can dial in your seed-buying to suit our climate to a much greater degree. You can also seed-save now, thanks to the reintroduction of open-pollinated, often heirloom seed lines that aren’t hybrids (many of which are infertile) and therefore produce fertile seeds you can collect from what you grow this year for planting next year.
Or you can tap into seed-sharing among groups, which allows you to try seeds from crops grown successfully under local conditions by Island neighbors. No need to go through seed retailers at all in this scenario. If you’re interested in seed-saving and seed-sharing networks, call the Land Trust for ideas about getting in touch with Island growers and groups who will share seeds with you.
If you want to grow food on your property, the wisest strategy is probably the oldest one: give things a try and learn from failure and success; favor seeds from regional seed houses or seed-savers; talk to your neighbors and Island growing groups like the Vashon Fruit Club; consult local and regional sources of info like WSU’s Extension Service; volunteer at the Land Trust’s Matsuda Farm or other farms on the Island to see what fruit and vegetable varieties these small farmers are growing.
