Category — Seeds

“I focus on selecting varieties that grow well in containers and can handle our crazy urban heat island weather.”

Founded by Zach Pickens

Launched in 2010, Rooftop Ready Seeds has launched a new website and online store, offering 25 varieties of vegetable, herb, and flower seeds for urban gardeners in New York City. Rooftop Ready Seeds is the first seed company to offer New York gardeners a line of locally-grown seed tailored to their unique urban climate and container planting conditions.

All Rooftop Ready Seeds are open-pollinated and grown using only organic methods in several rooftop locations in and around Brooklyn–including a special seed-saving partnership with Brooklyn Grange. Each variety of seed is collected from individual plants that have proven to thrive year after year in the urban garden environment, with some varieties representing sixth-generation seeds.

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The reality of urban farming continues to express itself in every nook and cranny of the city.

By Daniel Rotsztain
Popupcity
February 4, 2013

Excerpt:

Hawaii-based Eating in Public’s Seed-Sharing stations are unmonitored installations that have started to pop up all over the USA and Canada. They offer an easily accessible space for urban gardeners to exchange seeds and important information about how to best grow their fruits and veggies.

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Four of the winners.

Grants Support Community Gardens and Sustainable Farming Programs Nationwide

Los Angeles
January 22, 2013

Seeds of Change®, maker of nutritious organic foods, is excited to announce the 12 recipients of its $10,000 “Share the Good” grants in support of community based gardening and sustainable farming.

The 12 recipients were selected from more than 13,000 entries and nominations received as part of the grant program to enhance the environmental, economic, and social well-being of gardens, farms, farmers and communities. Organizations told Seeds of Change® how they share the good in their communities through sustainable gardening and farming for a chance to receive one of 12 $10,000 grants.

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Author of ‘The Zero Mile Diet’- A Year Round Guide to Growing Organic Food

Published on Dec 18, 2012

Carolyn Herriot is a food security consultant and regular columnist for the BC Home & Garden and CommonGround magazines, as well as the best-selling author of A Year on the Garden Path: A 52-Week Organic Gardening Guide, The Zero Mile Diet, and The Zero-Mile Diet Cookbook. Herriot grows certified organic seeds for “Seeds of Victoria” at The Garden Path Centre in Victoria.

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7 generations still in the same family

Franchi Sementi S.P.A., of Bergamo in northern Italy is a family company that was formed in 1783 and has grown to be one of the largest seed companies in Italy. For more than 220 years thay have been selling traditional seed varieties to discriminating gardeners and cooks in Italy, and and recently around the world.

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‘The Gift’ by Jean-Marc Abela

The Gift is a portrait of Dan Jason, a pioneer in seed farming who has gone against the grain of industrial agriculture. He shares with us an alternate vision of the bounty nature provides.

Salt Spring Seeds

This is our 25th year of promoting a safe and sustainable, local agriculture. It is very gratifying to now see so many individuals and communities across Canada embracing this concept! We hope that some of the vegetables, beans, grains and herbs in this catalogue will help you to become more self-reliant in food and medicine.

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Urban Farm: Build a Garden, Sustain it for Life

By Jarrod Tishhouse
Kickstarter Project
Nov 1, 2012

Custom build your own heirloom garden – sealed and encapsulated, so you can plant when you’re ready!

The concept behind Urban Farm is to create fully customizable, sustainable gardens that will provide renewable food year-after-year and even continue thriving in economic crisis. Most “survival gardens” I’ve researched on the web are way overpriced, don’t give you much of a selection, and are far too generic. Guess what? I don’t like cauliflower, and I don’t want to grow it! You do? Great! But maybe you don’t care about melons – or maybe you’re a melon fiend! This project allows you to create your own garden with what you want in it, which I will then seal into a custom-made capsule to be stored for however long you want!

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Following this English with Portuguese subtitled edition, online versions in French, Chinese and Japanese will be made available.

Now online. Full version of “Our Seeds” shot in eleven countries.

By Seed Savers directors, Michel and Jude Fanton

In September 2008 Seed Savers released “Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi”, a 57 minute documentary that celebrates traditional food plants the people that grow them. It has been fitted with Chinese Japanese and Portuguese subtitles.

There are developed instructive motion graphics and a rich sound track, mostly indigenous music recorded on-location. Audio is English or Pacific Pigin. Subtitles are in English or French.

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Garden Grant Application Available Online, Due Dec. 23, 2011

Press Release
Oct. 25, 2011

Burpee Home Gardens(R) is now accepting applications for the 2012 “I Can Grow” Youth Garden Award. In its third year, the “I Can Grow” program continues to support urban school and community gardens in cities across the United States. To date, the “I Can Grow” program has provided more than 8,000 vegetable and herb plants to help create 16 gardens nationwide.

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One of four episodes about the Hull-House Urban Farm from 2010.

Hull-House Museum Opens Seed Library with Federal Grant

UIC News Release
University of Illinois at Chicago Office of Public Affairs
May 18, 2011

Excerpt:

The University of Illinois at Chicago’s Jane Addams Hull-House Museum will open a public heirloom seed library with a federal grant of more than $15,000.

The library will provide free, regionally adapted seeds to urban farmers and gardeners. People may apply for library cards to obtain seeds if they agree to plant the seeds, nurture the plants, and return some seeds from the next generation at the end of the season.

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From Seed to table with One Seed Chicago – 2011 seeds are Radish, Eggplant and Swiss Chard

Childhood obesity is a serious problem facing our country, and it is compounded by the fact that many of our youths in urban areas live in so-called “food deserts.” Experts in the field of childhood nutrition are working on remedying this decades-long problem, but there is a short-term solution with potential to change live for the better. Give people seeds to farm their backyards, windowsills, patios and community gardens. Then follow the seeds with gardening information and a network of community gardeners ready to embrace the new crop of gardeners. That’s exactly what’s happening in Chicago, IL.

Through the One Seed Chicago project NeighborSpace, Chicago’s land trust for community gardens, has given away more than one million seeds since 2008. Every year three seeds are put up for a vote and residents vote for their favorite and the winning seeds is distributed absolutely free to everyone who voted. The goal is to unite the city in a celebration of gardening by giving seeds away for free to local residents.

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Doylestown PA’s W. Atlee Burpee was just eighteen, when he started his own mail order business in 1872. By 1888, he had transformed the family home “Fordhook Farms” into his own experimental agricultural station where he grew and tested new varieties of flowers and vegetables before offering them for sale in his catalog. When W Burpee died in 1910, his was the largest seed company in the world.

Children can learn to enjoy healthier foods if they grow them with their parents. It’s easier than you think.

By George Ball
Opinion – Wall Street Journal
Jan. 3, 2011
Mr. Ball is chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee Co. and past president of the American Horticultural Society.

Excerpt:

In our research at Atlee Burpee, we have found that kids who grow vegetables alongside their parents eat them regularly and with gusto. Peas, green beans and raw carrots—the very vegetables that kids are told to eat, their parents’ admonishing fingers wagging—are particular favorites.

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For $61 in seeds, we can grow about $1.3 million worth of vegetables

The Dinner Garden provides seeds, gardening supplies, and gardening advice free of charge to all people in the United States of America. We assist those in need in establishing food security for their families. Our goal is for people to plant home, neighborhood, and container gardens so they can use the vegetables they grow for food and income.

Since beginning our mission in early 2009, we have provided seeds to over 48,000 families and over 120 community gardens! We have reached into all 50 states, from Maine to Hawaii and Texas to Alaska! Our volunteers and partners are hard at work, packaging and delivering seeds in many of these states. We have received donations from all over the country from individuals. We have also received seeds, gardening supplies, and cash donations from numerous companies.

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Richmond, California – The seeds are rented at no cost, but you do have to fill out the correct forms and attend a small workshop

By Eric Thomas
ABC East Bay News
Aug 16, 2010

Excerpt:

RICHMOND, CA (KGO) — Urban farming is not a new concept. But, finding the time, the seed and the gardening knowledge has been hard — until now. In the city of Richmond, people can get everything they need to start their own gardens, with a little help from the local library.

“If left to my own devices, I could spend all day out here, but it’s not required,” said backyard gardener Kelli Barram.

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Sasha, Emilee and Jere Gettle at the recently revived Comstock, Ferre & Company seed business in Wethersfield, Conn. Photo by David La Spina for The New York Times.

“Let’s rock the food supply in 2010!”

By Christine Muhle
New York Times
August 11, 2010

Excerpt:

Seed catalogs are what sustain most gardeners in the pit of winter, the pictures of bright blooms and fleshy melons stoking their fantasies. When my mother-in-law sent me the beautiful Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog in February, it reanimated me, but it befuddled me too. There was an “olde tyme” painting of a melon on the cover, while the editor’s letter — “Let’s rock the food supply in 2010!” it implored — showed an attractive young family whose father has a thing for overalls and loud shirts. What followed was the cutting edge of heirloom seeds: 1,400 varieties from 70 countries, including vegetables yet to appear in any canvas market bag.

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The Ritchay family’s garden.

15Thousand Farmers – Planting A Seed To Feed Ourselves – Louisville, Ky

by Greg & Michelle Vittitow,
Impact Dash
March 11th, 2010

The Vision:

15Thousand Farmers helps create, empower, and inspire 15,000 new, organic, neighborhood backyard/front yard farmers in Louisville, KY to feed their families and themselves and to give away! How? By using simple and easy instructions, checklists and materials and ongoing support provided through local organic growers and resources that will provide everything needed to start Easy Farms in our yards, on decks or in community gardens.

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Watch Crisis Garden Mock in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Huffington Post excerpt:
March 10, 2010

Said Colbert: “Glenn’s advertisers know nothing moves product like the hot stink of fear.” Case in point: a commercial for a product called Survival Seed Bank, in which the spokesman claims nonhybrid seeds will be more valuable that silver and gold, and thus save you from the impending economic meltdown.

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4 million cracker packages with seeds inside and a pledge to build 50 community-based home farms

Home Farming is about growing your own herbs and vegetables, no matter where you live. To help people on their path to Home Farming, four million packages of Original and Reduced-Fat Triscuit crackers will include cards with basil or dill herb seeds that can be planted directly into the ground.

A recent Triscuit survey found nearly two-thirds of Americans are interested in growing food in a backyard garden. And three out of four of those surveyed prefer to eat foods with a few, simple ingredients, reflecting a popular desire to get back to the simple joys in life. (The Triscuit Home Farming Study, fielded by StrategyOne, is a national telephone survey among a representative sample of 1,018 U.S. adults conducted January 14, 2009 and January 17, 2009.)

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This ad was aired on controversial TV program, the Glen Beck show.

Survival Seed Bank

Excerpt from Survival Seed Bank website.

You don’t have to be an Old Testament prophet to see what’s going on all around us. A belligerent lower class demanding handouts. A rapidly diminishing middle class crippled by police state bureaucracy. An aloof, ruling elite that has introduced us to an emerging totalitarianism which seeks control over every aspect of our lives.

As the meltdown progresses, one of the first things to be affected will be our nation’s food supply. Expect soaring prices along with moderate to severe shortages by spring. If you don’t have the ability to grow your own food next year, your life may be in danger. Supply lines for food distribution in this country are about three days, meaning a dependence on “just in time” distribution systems, which will leave store shelves empty in the event of even the smallest crisis.

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Larger image here.

WWI Home Garden Seed Advertising by Haskell Coffin 1919

Haskell Coffin (1878 – 1941) A versatile illustrator, gracing covers for several magazines, Redbook and The American being two long-term stints. Becoming famous as a portrayer of American beauty, the Coffin girl could be found on note cards, sheet music, calendars, decorative boxes, fashion catalogs. His “Joan of Arc Saved France” WWI poster is well known.

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