Episode-1280- Stephen Scott of Terroir Seeds on Seed Saving
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Cindy and Stephen Scott of Terroir Seeds
Stephen Scott is co-owner of Terroir Seeds along with his wife Cindy. Terroir is a family owned and operated heirloom seed company that focuses on the “Cycle of Terroir” defined as “from the soil, to the seed, to the food you eat”. Terroir seeds provides unique varieties of heirloom seeds, education and information for all phases of the “Terroir Cycle”.
Stephen has a business background, from management of a nationally known rental car agency to warranty administrator for a local car dealership. He is an acknowledged chili-head who loves the hotter side of things and loves to cook.
He feels one of the biggest appeals of the garden and growing is to supply the freshest ingredients for the meals! He has a large interest in self sustainability and resiliency- being able to do and produce most of what one needs, and building a strong community of local food producers.
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Thanks for having me back, I really enjoyed it! I hope that this helps everyone’s knowledge that is interested in saving better quality seeds. Here are some resources mention in the show –
Seed Savers Exchange – (http://www.seedsavers.org/)
GRIN, the Germplasm Resources Information Network of the USDA (http://www.ars-grin.gov/)
PFAF, Plants for a Future (http://www.pfaf.org)
“Seed to Seed” by Suzanne Ashworth (http://bit.ly/Seed2Seed)
“The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds” by Robert Gough & Cheryl Moore-Gough (http://bit.ly/CmplSeedGuide)
“The Organic Seed Grower” by John Navazio (http://www.amazon.com/The-Organic-Seed-Grower-Production/dp/1933392770)
Great show. I found the discussion about the worms a “I could have had a V8” moment. This makes sense that we want to introduce worms not just in our garden and composting bins but all over our yard. We need to stock the pond so to speak, especially if we are thinking of our soil as a lake. It makes a lot of sense to start converting these systems to self perpetuating composting systems. Maybe a bit of a leap there, but I am definitely going to intruduce worms everyplace I have dirt. Thanks.
We all have different viewpoints and it’s good to see things from another perspective. Good to see that we jogged your thinking and gave you an idea to try!
Jack and Stephen,
This was a great show, thanks for all the information. Stephen, I’ve ordered a seed catalog but I’m going to hit you up with a few questions later via your site, hope you don’t mind. I work out of the country and set my vacation times back home so I can make the best use of spring planting and fall harvest so I can be the most help to my wife. With this schedule I’ll be looking to add to our normal plantings things that are out of the ordinary but no maintenance.
Thanks,
Dave
Glad to help! There are a lot of unusual varieties that will do well for you to provide more food without a lot of extra work.
Sound like a very promising show. Seeds make good gifts.
Oddly I’ve never thought of gifting seeds. Still a novice seed saver but some decent heirloom seeds from a great company would totally say it was from me. Thanks for sharing.
SHEESH. What a good idea.
This podcast is exactly what I needed to hear. I was prepping my garden and listening and man my mind is racing !!! Thanks for all you guys do!
I only have a 6 mile drive home from work. I made it about 20, driving slow on snowy back roads, cause the show was great. Just got the kiddos to bed, can’t wait to hear the rest. Thanks Jack and Stephen for sharing you knowledge and passion.
Great show, I never realized the part about trading for identical seeds to diversify your gene pool was a good thing to do.
As a request, if you do another show could you give some additional advice for those of us with smaller plots? I have maybe 1/10 an acre so in reality I can do just a few things. I buy hybrid corn (sorry, I just love Silver Queen) but am trying to start getting a few different tomatoes each year, 3 maybe 4 kinds. Zukes, and pumpkins but those I mainly give away. But advise for us smaller lots would be great!
Regarding the composting.
We actually save our eggs separate in brown paper bags. We crush them up. And then we have them stored for whatever we want to do with them. (Put them in the compost, directly into beds, etc etc).
We literally have the same pail. Can thank the wife for that one. When I went to my sisters for thanksgiving this year and I saw how I used to deal with food scraps (just throw them down the drain) it definitely made me feel extremely uneasy. hah. Definitely not something I would do today. Hell where we live, just throw it off into the trees, i’m sure there are microbes out there that would want it. (We don’t have a racoon big animal problem)
Jack did you ever try grinding the sorghum to make glutton free flour? We use a good bit of glutton free flour to make fried breadings, and homemade pizza, so we’re thinking about getting some to try that out (amongst other things).
Regarding saving seeds and beans. I saved seed from Purple Hull peas I used last year. One single packet of purple hull peas, yielded me at LEAST 5 pounds of dried peas (food backup, or more likely next years peas) and 2 gallon freezer bags of green peas. I definitely feel the next this next year to go crazy on the purple hull peas. With 5 pounds I could just broadcast those guys hah.
GREAT show. It really makes me wish that I still had some of my fathers seed especially his banana squash. It made the best “pumpkin” pie.
Jack! Excellent show. I’ll definitely be listening to this a few more times to get more of this information. I got lost a few times the first round through, but Scott has such excellent info. Great work!
I think your comments about the climate were spot on. A brief mention of the policy and high school dropout in charge of writing it showed up today on a channel that surmises space weather on a daily basis. Very informative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDMnA91SBq8
you inspired me to try the wheat and pepper M! order placed! You casually mentioned that you are putting red wrigglers directly into your beds. I tried a worm box twice…as you know I’m even more south in Texas than you, and cooked’em both times. Worst smell ever! The wife won’t let the worm box come inside so can you share more info about the red wrigglers going directly into the beds?
Samthecook, I have a good one for worms in your raised beds. Sloted 4″ pvc pipe,put news paper in bottom 6″ soked and real loose. Put your worms in with dirt. Make sure u have a foot or more of space from worm dirt and top and place a rubber cap on top. Dig in 2′ from side of raised bed down in that spot and put the pipe in ground so it only sticks up 8″. Now put scrap food in and put lid on. Worms go in and out slots, eat, then leave to poop away from scrap. Will put worm castings in a 3′ circumference.
I tried this with a black slotted flex pipe used for french drains. Not sure how well it has worked. May need to try a rigid PVC pipe to compare.
I don’t bother saving Broccoli, Carrot (due to cross pollination with Queen Ann’s Lace), most squash and some others. But I save Lettuce, Kale, Peppers and Tomatoes. BUT, I like to try new varieties and I still order from the vendors. My foray into hot peppers was seeds ordered from ‘Pepper Joes’ in 2005, I have ‘Turkish Cayenne’ seeds that have been saved and grown out for eight years. I still order from him since he always coming out with new varieties…
We just started getting Burpee up here in Canada a few years ago, I’ve had excellent success with their ‘Early Jalapeno’ and ‘Lemon Pepper’
Brent, just make sure that those varieties are open pollinated and not hybrid, as hybrids won’t grow true next year. Burpee is coming out with more open pollinated seeds from almost all hybrids a few years ago.
Yes, I am careful. I grew Burpee Jalapeno M, as well as their Chinese Giant, which is Giant!. I have to finish them off in the greenhouse (up here at 46N, we just dont get the heat)
Order placed. I was particularly interested in the Par-Cel Leaf Celery , since I find Celery a pain in the ass to grow up here, and further reading revealed it is cold tolerant to -12C. Jack mentioned mouse melon last year, so I am going to try those as well
Do you have any info on small scale harvesting ow wheat or other grains? That has always been a blocker for me in growing grains.
Jerry – here is an article I wrote on growing and harvesting the White Sonora Wheat that I talked a little bit about on the show – http://bit.ly/SonoraWheat. What you need as a home gardener is an heirloom wheat that has a thin husk so that you can remove it without needing a commercial mill. This is one of the reasons we are helping to re-introduce the White Sonora wheat.