Golden Gate Gardener

Is There a Seed Shortage?

Recently, as I browsed online seed catalogs, I noticed more varieties than usual listed as “Out of Stock.” In addition, some seed companies are warning that delivery may take longer than usual. Some are even shutting down periodically while they catch up on orders. I’ve wondered: “What’s going on? Is there a seed shortage?” At a National Gardening Bureau-sponsored panel presentation in March, I learned from seed suppliers what challenges they are facing and also their advice for gardeners.

Diane Blazek, Executive Director of the Bureau says that last spring, seed retailers were selling to 100-400% more customers than in previous years, and this year is headed in the same direction. Last year, the greatest sales increase was in vegetable seeds; this year, more people are also buying flower seeds and plants, fruit plants, and bedding plants.

Packaging small amounts of seeds in small packets like these is more time consuming than selling seed in bulk.

The main reason for last year’s increased sales of vegetable seeds was probably insecurity—like the rush to buy toilet paper. Last March, people noticed food shortages at the grocery store and decided to take matters into their own hands. Then also, people were at home more, looking out the window at their gardens and imagining food growing there. (It’s telling that more time at home revived the urge to grow food, along with an inspiration to bake bread. It seems these enthusiasms are running just under the surface, only waiting to be daylighted by having more time to partake in them.)

            This year, many people feared that the mails would be slow, what with holidays and so much online shopping taking place, so they sent orders on early, in December and January. Meanwhile, seed companies are having problems filling so many orders while dealing with the pandemic. They have been struggling to keep employees safe—requiring temperature taking, masks, and handwashing; spacing workers farther apart and adding deep cleaning between shifts. Some of these policies slowed the processes of packing seed and filling orders, sometimes requiring work into the evening and weekend, or two shifts a day. If seed companies sought more workers, they found them hard to come by, especially in rural locations. Larger companies have automated filling seed packets, but smaller companies that can’t afford the expensive packaging equipment, are less able to increase seed packet preparation without additional workers.

            Add to this that very real Postal Service slowdown, the storm in Texas and the East that caused several FedEx offices to close down temporarily, a shortage of labor to unload container ships at ports, and a shortage of air transport, and you have a bottleneck that starts with wholesalers and then impacts retail customers.

            So is there a seed shortage? Seed wholesalers and retailers say mostly there is not. Seed retailers on the panel reported “Out Of Stock” situations for only 83 out of 2,300 varieties (Jung Seeds) and 136 out of 2,000 (Johnny’s Select Seeds). In some cases, the problem is just a lack of time to get the seeds out of cold storage and into seed packets ready to mail. In a very few cases, the seed has not yet arrived from a wholesaler. It could be in one of those ships waiting to be unloaded or could actually be not ready for to harvest. However, because seed production now is a worldwide business, and includes tropical and southern hemisphere locations, seed could be arriving soon to bolster the supply. While few shortages are expected this year, Jeannine Bogard, of Syngentia Seeds, said that seed of biennial crops, such as carrots, could be scarce next year because of this year’s high demand.

            Advice to this year’s wise gardener is to order seed well in advance of the date you plan to plant, avoid ordering more than you need or hoarding seed, and to read websites or catalogs carefully to learn how long delivery might take. (Don’t clog communication avenues by calling or emailing before this time has passed.) In addition, you may find, this year and next year, you’ll need to substitute a different variety for one that has been your favorite.

            It’s good news there are so many new gardeners, and especially good news so many of them are younger than the previous average age of Americans gardeners that they have lowered that average. There has also been more interest in organically produced seed—which is good news for the earth. Those of us who have been growing food a long time will have much help to offer new gardeners when they need it. Grow on!

The harvest from my San Francisco community garden on one day in the early summer of 2020. 

San Francisco Community Garden Report--Spring 2019

Since the demise of the private nonprofit San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) in about 2003, there hasn’t been umbrella organization overseeing SF’s community gardens, but the gardens themselves have continued to thrive. About 40 percent are located on San Francisco Recreation and Park Department property, the rest on both private and public lands.

Rec and Parks Community Garden and Urban Agriculture Program Manager Mei Ling Hui helps match aspiring urban gardeners to plots and answers other questions along the way. She can be reached at [email protected] or 415-831-6846. The program’s website (https://sfrecpark.org/park-improvements/urban-agriculture-program-citywide/community-gardens-program/) is in the process of being updated with a comprehensive list of gardens on both public and private land. 

            While I hope to have more to report soon, there are upcoming free San Francisco events hosted by Rec and Parks’ Community Gardens Program to announce now. 

Saturday, April 27, from 11 AM till 4 PM, there will be an Earth Day Celebration at Alemany Farm, 700 Alemany Blvd. Details are still being decided. You can learn more, closer to the date of the event, at the Alemany Farm web site (AlemanyFarm.org) or you can email your query to [email protected].

On Saturday, May 4, there will be a Seed Saving and Plant Propagation workshop at Potrero del Sol Community Garden (Potrero and Cesar Chavez), from 10 AM to Noon. RSVP required at [email protected] or 415-831-6846.

Open Source Seed Initiative

 

Photo by Jack Kloppenburg

Have you purchased a plant and found that the label says it is illegal to propagate the plant? Illegal to make cuttings, divisions, or to to save seed? Increasingly, when plant varieties are being patented, making it illegal for a customer to get them without purchasing them from a certain company.

A separate issue affecting gardeners who want to save seeds is the increase in the market of F₁ hybrid varieties. These are bred to display a certain set of desirable traits in the first generation, but not in subsequent generations. There is no law against saving F₁ hybrid seed to grow, but if you do so, the positive traits will break apart in the next generation (the F₂), some appearing in some offspring, others in other offspring. A certain number of the plants that grow from the seed won't have any of the positive traits of the first generation.

Older plant varieties, the so-called "heirlooms," are not F₁ hybrids. This is because throughout human history, farmers and gardeners didn't know how to breed plants to create those hybrids. They just saved seeds from their best plants from year to year. (Another word for these non-hybrids is open pollinated. So all heirloom seed is open-pollinated.) The heirloom seed movement has been finding these old varieties and selling them through their seed catalogs. 

Besides this salvaging of old varieties, certain plant breeders, university researchers or public-minded private individuals, have been breeding new open pollinated varieties with positive traits that rival the hybrids. They may "grow out" a hybrid, saving the best seed from several post-F₁ hybrid generations until they obtain seed that will stably reproduce the best traits of that hybrid. Or they may make crosses themselves, transferring pollen of a plant onto the female part of the flower of another, hoping to create offspring with the best traits of both parents.

In my San Francisco Chronicle column of January, 2016, I reported on some open-pollinated sweet corn varieties that carry the supersweet gene of some hybrids. Then, in my July column, I reported on some new open-pollinated vegetable varieties that will be useful in cooler gardens near the coast. (You can access my column at sfgate.com, with a search for Pam Peirce.)

However, in my research to locate these new varieties, I came across a new initiative that gardeners should know about. This is the Open Source Seed Initiative. Some of the new breeders of open-pollinated varieties are registering them with this initiative. By doing so, they are stating that they will not patent the seed of the variety, nor can it, or other varieties that are bred from it to be patented. Here is their logo:

 

You will start to see this logo in seed catalogs. If you are viewing a catalog online, you will often have the option of sorting the offerings to just show the ones registered with the Open Source Seed Initiative. You can also read more about the organization that registers the varieties at osseeds.org.

One of my favorite varieties covered by the initiative is 'Flashy Butter Oak' lettuce. It is a looseleaf lettuce with broad, oakleaf-type leaves, speckled with maroon. I find it to be sweet and nonbitter even when it is mature and about to form seed, and that it grows well in cold or warmer weather. (I garden in San Francisco, so my definition of warm is not what it would be inland.)

Photo by Pam Peirce

This lettuce was selected or bred by Frank Morton of Lupine Knoll Farm at Grant's Pass Oregon. At my last reading of catalogs, you could buy seed at Bountiful Gardens (bountifulgardens.com), Territorial Seed Company (territorialseeds.com), or Wild Garden Seed Company (wildgardenseed.com). (I have also been saving seed to donate to the Seed Library at the Potrero Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, but they will not always have it, as my donations may not be large enough to meet the need.)

Frank Morton has released several other nice open-pollinated varieties, several of which are under the Open Source Seed Initiative, and you will see his name listed next to his  varieties in seed catalogs. So that you can have a face to associate with these varieties, I offer his photo, collecting lettuce seed. Thanks Frank!

Photo by Karen Morton

 

 

 

 

A Shout Out for Nichols Garden Nursery Seed Company

               When I first arrived in San Francisco, many years ago, living in a rented flat, wanting to plant a few vegetables in a neighbor's yard. I discovered the Nichols Garden Nursery herb and rare seed catalog. They had everything I needed to try out my new climate and microclimate. They are still there, still carry old and new favorites, and now, of course, they are also on the web.  

               Located in Western Oregon, the nursery is experienced with cool summers, especially with cool summer nights. In their catalog I discovered many varieties that were to become staples over the years. They had purple-podded bush beans, which are your best bet to grow regular garden beans in near-coastal microclimates because they germinate well in cold soil. If those worked in a particular location, then I tried 'Roma II', a bush romano bean, the kind with broad, flat pods and a buttery texture. If the garden was too chilly for the purple bush beans, then I knew I had better plant Scarlet Runner beans, because they are, as the Nichols catalog states, "an excellent cool weather variety." If I had great success with the Roma II beans, it was time to try some regular pole beans, like 'Goldmarie', a yellow-podded pole romano or old standby 'Kentucky Wonder Pole'.

Left to right: Scarlet Runner climbing bean, 'Royalty Purple-Podded Bush Bean, and 'Goldmarie' yellow-podded pole Romano bean.

               Nichols still carries all of these bean varieties, all open pollinated, all heirlooms, and many more. And they still carry 'Early Sunglow' corn, a variety listed at 62 days to maturity. It succeeds in milder San Francisco neighborhoods, taking 90 days due to the cool microclimate, but still allowing two plantings a summer--one in May and another in July. That second planting comes out in mid-October, right before the usuals start of the rainy season. The stalks are short, but bear 2 ears. The ears are smaller than supermarket corn, but worth it for the chance to eat fresh, fresh, corn-on-the-cob.

               They also still carry overwintering cole crops like 'Purple Sprouting' broccoli, the beautiful and the delicious 'January King' cabbage. And many kinds of kale, including two packets of kale mixes that let you see the wonderful diversity of this nutritious leafy green.

               It was also the place I first found 'Stupice' tomatoes, early and tasty in cool summers. They carry 'Early Girl', 'Green Zebra', and 'Oregon Spring', all of which have borne fruit well in my Mission District community garden. And they have kept up with the times, now the sweet golden cherries 'Sungold', and offering late blight resistant 'Jasper' cherry and larger-fruited 'Mountain Magic'.

               There are many other choice varieties in this catalog that I discovered since I first saw it. They have sweet, orange cherry tomato 'Sungold', reliable and early 'Snow Crown' cauliflower, the choice color-mix 'Bright Lights' chard, striped and ribbed heirloom zucchini 'Costata Romanesco', red-splashed and long-bearing 'Flashy Butter Oak' lettuce, and 'Bull's Blood' beets, the red leaves of which seem not to interest leafminers in my garden.

'Bright Lights' Swiss Chard

               They have also kept up with the issues of the day when it comes to garden seeds. They signed the Safe Seed Pledge, which promises they will not carry seed that is transgenic or genetically engineered. They have also joined the brand new Open Source Seed movement, offering many of the varieties that are pledged never to be patented, keeping seed these open-pollinated varieties available for seedsaving and further selection by gardeners and farmers.

               The first page that attracted me to Nichols was the "New and Unusual Vegetables" page. Here I found the uncommon crop, the surprises, unusual varieties and little-known crops. Many unusual crops are also in the rest of the catalog. They have 5 varieties of hops roots, 4 kinds of potato starts, walking onion bulbs, seed for the exquisitely flavored herb, Shiso, 'Lemon Gem' edible marigold, 3 varieties of Quinoa, miner's lettuce, magenta-leaved orach, and Tromboncino climbing summer squash.

Walking Onion is a scallion (green onion) that propagates by stem-top bulblets.

I have only ordered seed from Nichols Garden Nursery, but they sell many other products, from essential herb oils, herbal teas, and 2 kinds of sourdough starters to ingredients and equipment for making beer cheese and wine.

               Nichols Garden Nursery is a family-owned business founded in 1950 by Nick and Edith Nichols and run currently by their daughter Rose Marie Nchols McGee. They are located at 1190  Old Salem Road, in Albany, Oregon. At their brick and mortar nursery, they sell herb plants and seasonal seedlings, including many specialty plants they don't sell through the mail. You just missed their annual Plant Day, with the traditional serving of Lavendar/Ginger ice cream, but it is the Saturday after Mother's Day, in case you are planning a trip through Oregon next spring.

               The website of Nichols Garden Nursery is nicholsgardennursery.com. Pay it a visit and discover a treasure for our west coast gardens.

Overwintering Vegetable Crops: Seed Sources

California gardeners who live in mild winter climates (all but the Sierra foothills and mountains), can grow overwintering types of broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. We may also be looking for varieties of some other crops that grow well in our winter months. For example, some lettuce varieties handle cold better than others. In addition, if you live in a coastal part of California, you will want to locate vegetable varieties that will thrive in cool summers. For the widest choice of varieties, you can start them from seed.  In my book Golden Gate Gardening, I have described many of the best overwintering and cool-tolerant varieties, given sources for seed, and included a chapter explaining when and how to start seedlings. Following is a short list of some of our best mail order seed companies for regionally adapted varieties, and two local stores that sell seed from some of these otherwise mail order companies.

Overwintering 'Purple Sprouting' Broccoli

Bountiful Gardens  Bountiful Gardens Web Site

Kitazawa Seed Company  Kitazawa Web Site

Niichols Garden Nursery   Nichols Web Site

Territorial Seed Company  Territorial Web Site

Two East Bay stores offer seeds from some of these seed companies:

Pollinate Farm and Garden, 2727 Fruitvale Avenue, Oakland, 510-686-3493

Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, 1310 McGee Avenue, Berkeley, 510-526-4704

 

 

Fall Plant Sale--Master Gardeners of San Mateo/San Francisco

Coming soon is the fall plant sale of the Master Gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco. Here is their announcement:

Please join us for our Fall Plant Sale on Saturday, September 20^th from 9:00AM to 1:00PM.

 

We are offering an exciting array of vegetables, succulents, perennials, edible flowers, cover crop seeds and a wonderful choice of garlic seed and shallots perfect for your Fall Garden!

 

Vegetables Varieties

Beets_Chioggia, Bull’s Blood, Golden, and Shiraz

Cabbage_ All Seasons, and January King

Broccoli_Quartina, Di Ciccio, Romanesco, Piricicaba, and Solstice

Peas_Maestro, and Alderman Pole Peas

Spinach_Giant Winter, Monnopa Low Acid, Monster of Viroflay

Lettuce_Outstanding Red Romaine, Bronze Arrow Looseleaf, and Arctic King Butterhead

Chard_Fordhook Giant, Rainbow Mix, and Perpetual Spinach Chard

Kale_Vates Blue Curled, Lacinato (Dinosaur), Dwarf Green Curled, Portuguese, and Russian Red

Bunching Onion_White Spear

Endive_Frisee Fine Cut

Mustard_Red Giant

Leek_Musselburgh

 

LOTS of GARLIC and SHALLOTS!!!

Artichoke Seed Garlic_Inchelium Red                                     

Rocambole Seed Garlic_Killarney Red

Porcelian Seed Garlic_Magic

Shallots_Dutch Red

 

Succulents and Perennials…too many to list

 

Cover Crop Seeds

 

Our sale location is 2645 South El Camino Real San Mateo, CA 94403. Parking is limited so please park off-site.

 

Let us help you get your FALL GARDEN off to a good start.

Saving Miner's Lettuce Seed

If you live in California, and want to grow this wonderful edible native plant, miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), now is the time to save some seed. I wrote about it in Golden Gate Gardening, as an edible weed, but it's so good it is worth growing on purpose.

If miner's lettuce grows somewhere nearby, you can collect it now, save the seed. Then, in Fall, you can scatter it. It should be well up in December, and then will make its lovely, succulent leaves, so delicious in a salad, until the following April.

To find seed for next year, look now, in late April or in May, for plants with circular leaves that are still green and have long flowering stems. Thse will have a number of seedpods forming on the stems, with maybe a flower at the top. Gather some of these leaves, or, if you like, a whole plant bearing a few of them. 

Spread what you have collected on newspaper indoors. Use a fully opened piece of newsprint, or maybe two or three together. As the pods dry, the seeds will pop out, and will actually jump up to a couple of feet from the pod. Thus you will find them all around the paper, or, if it is too small, on the floor nearby. The seeds are small, rounded, and shiny black. They have a white tip on one side where they were attached to the pods.

The process will take a week or two. Here you can see the seeds and bits of pods around a plant that is drying. After the seeds pop out, you will have to separate them from the chaff. You can do this with various kitchen items, such as collanders or sieves. I used a sieve, which left me with some tiny fine chaff mixed with seeds, then blew lightly to get the chaff to fly away. It doesn't have to be perfect, of course, but seeds are easier to sow if they are free of debris, and also any bits of plant mixed with them can bring moisture that can lead to decay.

Here's a closer view of some of the seeds before I cleaned out the chaff. After you've removed most of the chaff, keep the seeds in an open dish or jar for a couple more weeks, to make absolutely sure they are dry. Then you can store them in a paper packet or you can close the jar. Be sure to label your seeds as Miner's Lettuce and write the date of the year you saved the seed.

Make a note in your calendar so you'll remember plant the seed in October. Scatter it in an out-of-the way corner of your garden, in moist soil you have amended and dug. Scratch the soil surface a bit after you sow, pat the surface lightly, and then water. Water to keep the surface moist if rains don't do it for you. The seed leaves are long and narrow. The first few leaves will be triangular. Then the mature leaves form, the round ones. You can eat them, flowers and all, after the flowers start to form in their centers, but when the flower stems elongate they are ready for another year of seed saving. Or just let some fall in place, in hopes the plants will self-sow!

Here's a salad containing miner's lettuce, corn salad, edible flowers, and some cut up chard stems.

Some Links for Seed School Class 1 August 20, 2011

Growing plants from seed is fun and saves money. I have written about saving and growing seed in both of my regional books Golden Gate Gardening & Wildly Successful Plants: Northern California. The first covers seeds of vegetables and herbs, the second covers many common California garden flowers.

Because Seed School at the Garden For the Environment in San Francisco (http://www.gardenfortheenvironment.org) starts tomorrow, I am putting a few links on this blog. The first class is on saving seed, so these are links that will be particularly helpful on that subject.

Here is a link to a series of articles by Tom Clothier, on every topic you can imagine relating to saving and starting seeds from Botany for Seedsavers and Genetics for Seedsavers to conditions for growing many kinds of seeds and dealing with damping off (decay) in seedlings.

http://tomclothier.hort.net/index.html

I also found his template for folding a seed packet that needs not tape or glue, for those times when you need to enclose some seeds when you are "in the field" with no access to other containers.

http://tomclothier.hort.net/templat3.htm

To find many wonderful printable templates for making paper seed packets when you have more time and materials, do a Google search for "seed packets" with "template". Here is one example of some of the pretty templates you will find with such a search:

http://content.bbcmagazinesbristol.com/gardensillustrated/pdf/GI_seedpackets.pdf

The following link is to native plant seed collection guidelines of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden. It covers getting permits for collecting on public land, keeping records, guidelines for amount of seed to take, and other important information for those who are thinking of doing this.

http://www.hazmac.biz/aboutus/Seed%20Collecting%20Guidelines.pdf

Another link of use to those who are interested in native plants is that to the Presidio Native Plant Nursery. They grow native plants for restoration projects and welcome volunteers. Much of what they do is starting plants and tending them as they grow, but they also sometimes involve volunteers in wild seed collecting and cleaning. They welcome volunteers 1-4 on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

http://www.parksconservancy.org/help/volunteer/volunteer-native-plant-nurseries/presidio-native-plant-nursery.html

 Finally, here is a google search engine that has been set up to deal with all aspects of saving, obtaining, or growing seeds:

http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=017813469075022978746:zxwdeucohtq

Hope to see you in Seed School. In the first class, I will cover the basics of seedsaving, and then we will clean some seeds I've saved and I will advise on ones you may have saved or plan to save.

(If you missed the class and would like to see it repeated, send me a comment and we will see if we can do it again.)