We have been passing through the darkest days of our season, heading towards the Winter solstice. And even when the daylight hours begin to grow, the earth still inhales, recuperating and invigorating below the ground in anticipation of Spring growth.

Our season as seed growers is a bit different. While we completed the majority of the seed harvest by mid to late April, we still needed to dry and clean the seed.

Although cleaning can be broken down into one formula for wet seeds and another for dry seeds, each crop is actually very unique and each season cleaning may entail removing debris that we have not encountered in that seed before.

Although we have moved on to stocktake, we still do have a few seed crops requiring further cleaning.

We are germination testing our entire seed collection, ensure seed viability and vigor

And then we write descriptions and fill packets!

‘Amazing Grey’ Shirley Poppy available now

We have been adding new season seed to our website store as we completed these tasks.

We will begin our annual stocktake on Wednesday 22 June ensuring all seed is packed and ready for the season ahead. During this time, we will NOT be shipping orders. Although you can still place your order and by doing so, you secure limited stock, the orders will not be shipped until 11 July.

The cut-off for orders shipped this week is 7pm Tuesday 21 June.

We have indicated when we expect seed that is still listed as ‘Coming Soon’ to be available. Our current seed collection is listed though. Enjoy imagining next seasons colors and tastes!!

We are still maturing winter squashes before harvesting their seeds, evaluating winter squash and capsicum stock seed, catalogueing all of the extensive breeding notes we recorded this season and making plans for the 2022-2023 growing season.

I am excited to share some of our breeding work with you throughout the Winter and Spring. This year we set breeding goals for all of our seed crops and ruthlessly evaluated the crops keeping these goals in mind. Each season these goals may stay the same, be refined, offered further rogueing criteria. All of this work embodies our efforts to form a rich genetic history within the seed, not only regionalising it but also ensuring that varieties are maintained and improved.

We were excited to see the results of this work this growing season —-one example was an improvement in the overall yield of our ‘Honeynut’ Winter squash harvest —- 4 times that of last season! In addition to selecting for the earliest female flowers, we also selected for parent plants that produced female flowers every 4-6 nodes and did not carry through those plants that produced female flowers on every 7+ node. It is very heartening to see crop improvements like this in just 3 generations and also highlights the slow work of improvements – 3 generations translates as 3 growing seasons or 3 years.

In the coming months, We will be releasing more helpful guides such as:

Spring Lettuces to grow and savour
Spring and Summer Cut Flower sowing guide
What to Sow When

We will also be sending out simple answers to frequently asked question such as:

Will you be offering more varieties than what is currently available?
What do we sow when?
What difference does using organic seed make?
What are your recommendations for successful seed starting?

If you have questions, please ask them in the comments below. and we will endeavour to keep the answers coming.

And please join our mailing list below to receive these guides and seasonal specials.

peas and a variety of grasses in our Green manure crop. This is how we renew soil fertility, maintain soil life and build structure and vibrancy.

Happy Solstice and may your imaginations wander through your Spring, Summer and Autumn gardens and your taste buds be tantalised by the flavours you would like to enjoy when Winter breaks.