Comments

Episode-1148- Tom Stearns of High Mowing Organic Seeds — 14 Comments

  1. Giving the show a listen now. Seems things always come together in weird ways. I just picked up a good book, Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener: How to Create Unique Vegetables and Flowers by Joseph Tychonievich. What drew me in was his trials of ridding his squash vine borer with his zucchini. He crossed it with something that was resistant to the borers and got what he needed.

  2. Been a customer for a while now, but I’m just curious Tom, how do you come up with a name like “High Mowing” ?

  3. haven’t listened to the show yet but i’ve bought a lot of seeds from these guys. great company!

  4. Definitely enjoyed the interview. I have a question about heirloom seeds: are those seed packets at big box stores that are labeled “heirloom” really so? I’ve seen lots of Burpee seeds in the stores and while most don’t have that label, some do, and because of what I’ve been hearing on TSP I’ve considered buying them, but was wondering if they were really an heirloom seed or simply some marketing ploy. Thanks!

    Rich

    • Yes they are heirloom types. If you take the name of the seed variety and look them up you’ll see thats the case. An example would be the black krim tomatos that I’m growing now.

      I’d say about a third of my seeds this year were burpee, while the others were from Victory and High Mowing.

  5. My wife’s uncle selectively saved seed from the Cock’s Comb flower for 20 + years to end up with a magenta color that I’ve not seen anyplace else. He has been dead 12 years now and I have some of that seed. I last grew it out in 2010 and am trying it again this year. I have some seed form 2010 and a lot more from around the year 2000.

    This is a piece of family history and it is easy to let is slip away when your life gets busy. If you wait too long the seed is no longer viable, which gives the lesson save a larger amount of the seed if you can. Even if viability drops to 1% and you have 1,000 + seeds you can still rebuild your seed stock.

    • Nope GMOs of existing varieties are listed by your government as GRAS.

      Generally Recognized as Safe

  6. This was a great conversation. I really, really, really enjoy this sort of thing and I learned a lot from listening to it. It’s the experimenting and learning part of growing things that make it so exciting.

  7. I placed a small order with High Mowing earlier this week. The day they sent me an email with the tracking information, it was in my mailbox the same day. Great shipping time. I plan to start some of these seeds for the ‘second season’ here in North Texas. If I start them now and put them out in the middle of Summer, I’m sure I’d loose more than if I wait another couple months.