Tom and Julie's first Territorial Seed catalogs offered a fresh-from-the garden look and alternative, as Tom focused on expanding selections of customers' favorites; more tomatoes from 15 varieties to 75 , then sweet peas, garlic, year-round lettuces and sunflowers for the birds. After the regional catalog came a national catalog and a Canadian catalog.
Their Winter Garden Catalog, first published in , remains the only winter garden catalog in the United States. Each year Territorial's research garden staff grows and evaluates thousands of varieties for best taste, Northwest hardiness, and good germination.
More recently they began reclaiming older, favorite vegetable varieties sometimes shelved by their seed suppliers. Harvesting their very tiny product has been their biggest challenge.
In Lorane, they dried the bean pods on ground tarps and winnowed the seed from the pods by hand. Then they tried grinding tomatoes in a garden variety chipper-shredder and fluming the seeds out, similar to panning for gold.
But seeds still keep their age-old secrets of survival, and Territorial's seed saving techniques range from natural fermentation to the newest processors. Currently they find themselves in good company ''capital-O Organics'', excited about taking leadership in advising the evolution of organic agriculture from a movement into a mainstream market.
There are about 70 full-time and seasonal employees locally, strategic alliances with universities and European plant breeders, and a zillion worms making compost and plant teas. Plant the seed, they say This secluded 75 acre farm is surrounded by tall firs and flanked by the crystal-clear Coast Fork River, which runs through the valley, provides irrigation water for the farm and serves as the headwaters of the Willamette River. At an elevation of approximately feet, our last frost date typically falls on May 12th and the first frost around September 15th.
We have a reasonable growing season, but our cool summer nighttime temperatures make long, hot season crops a challenge. All of the seed varieties we offer were trialed and evaluated at our farm.
Only crops that have proven to thrive and yield the highest quality crops will receive our stamp of approval and be included in our offerings. In addition, the live plants that we offer and send to you are raised in our farm greenhouses.
Our resident seed analyst tests every lot of seed we sell to insure success in your garden. In addition to providing our customers with the highest quality seeds and plants, we strive to operate our farm in an environmentally safe and sustainable manner.
Here we offer complete growing instructions and share with you a step by step process to planting your garden. Each year we evaluate thousands of cultivars, and we bring over 30 years of experience to our growing instructions.
Newest Oldest. Like Save. Embothrium 10 years ago. Hi all, Roo checking in. Goodness you are all chatty today, takes me ages to read and catch up. Only a bit of painting today, damned fiddly bits, I am getting so over it all. BH had to go play grandpa and do the after school run this afternoon so he didn't get to do too much today.
May have to stay overnight as one of the littlies has a sleepover at school tonight and DD has to go too. Anyone want a clean house fanatic husband? BH drives me insane, everything has to be done according to his idea of things too.
Of course he generally gets ignored or told to do it himself these days. Don't know where it comes from, his mother was the laziest, dirtiest, slob out - unless maybe he is overcompensating for her, but he goes so over the top with everything. I am actually almost wanting to do housework at the moment. The only room that is regularly cleaned now is my gorgeous new ensuite. Have to keep on top of that when it is the only working bathroom.
All the other rooms are either almost bare being painted or some work being done or filled with everything from the empty rooms so you can barely get in them let alone clean. Before the builder started on the bathroom, I suggested he remove the bathroom and toilet doors so we could give them a good rub back and paint - one side is painted and the other stained - so will freshen up the staining too.
He has an electric sander to do a pretty thorough job but after spending almost all one day sanding with all the fine dust floating through the house he suddenly remembered his heat gun so is now scraping absolutely every bit of paint off the doors. He has spent 4 days so far just doing two doors and keeps calling me to look at how much paint he has taken off. A simple rub back just isn't in his vocabulary, it is all or nothing.. You can't make me hungry with your cannoli talk - never had one and have no idea what they are like, just hear about them on US TV shows all the time.
I'll stick with creeser and her cheesecakes. So - olldcan - translations please, what is a krumkake and what are ice wreaths? I had surgery about 12 years ago and stayed at DD's while I recovered. I slept on their sofa bed which had horrible legs where you least expected them to be. One night answering a nature call, I crept back to bed and rammed my big toe into one of the legs and tripped myself up.
I was so scared of pulling my tummy stitches or doing something equally stupid, I just let myself fall on the sofa bed and managed to break a finger. One miserable roo, with huge purple toe, tum stitches and broken index finger - and a broken finger always has to touch absolutely everything to make sure it is still broken doesn't it!. No wonder the peanut butter is expensive - organic - that word just automatically doubles prices.
I want to know why when they usually only have half the ingredients!!! I know we don't want to turn this into a "bitch session" excuse my French , but there are some days you do just need to vent or gather some sympathetic support for a nasty experience so don't feel bad bobbi - Rocky sure sounds one cute doggie, it is amazing what personalities animals can have.
If I recall, you can go to the website for Dept. Or get a really good seed catalog, like Territorial Seed Co. The problem is that there are many microclimates that make it difficult to rely on these large divisions. A good plant store might actually provide better info.
There's a downloadable software package called, "When To Plant, v1. Should I just start over and buy new cabinets Q. Honestly, I'm a bit lost as to where you are in the process. I read most of the posts and perused the rest and one minute it was keeping the cabinets and the next not and vice versa - or so it seemed. If you are getting new cabinets and are looking into a standalone piece over that palm tree, it really would be a nice homage to use the old doors where you can on it.
I'm not a huge fan of the backsplash - it's very heavy looking. The countertop is nice but make sure with it being light that the material won't stain. I'm not a big fan of beige but I make exceptions for countertops! If you want green, put it on the walls, a piece of furniture like a cabinet on your long wall or accessories. The right backsplash in green could also work but it would have to be just right.
Again, you'll be living with it for a long time. As a final note, don't switch to stainless steel just because you think it's trendy. SS has a lot of problems of it's own - it limits your style, looks poor after a short time, shows fingerprints, smudges and cleaning efforts, etc. I've had white appliances ever since I got rid of my avocado ones just aged myself! It really depends on the kid whether you will do well buying a house if you are also renting it out to roommates.
It does add a lot of stress to your child to maintain a house and collect rent and pay utilities and put up with questionable roomies. We were not in a position financially to buy a house when our youngest went to college. Fortunately he received lots of scholarships and his college is one of a few in the nation where they give you all your scholarship money the first day of Validation so money was sitting in his account when he got thrown out of the dorms for having a hot plate.
He bought a fixer upper house a block from campus so can easily still rent it out after he graduated a few years ago. We had traveled there many weekends 3 hours to help him fix it up and everything is new. The profit from his rental pays for it all. What we learned: Never buy a rental more than 15 minutes from your front door!
We ask often if there are any maintenance issues but still find that they don't tell us until we come to visit and we don't have the proper tools. Get first and last month's rent plus a security deposit NO pets. Plantknitter, Tomatofest carries that tomato and it is on sale, too! Rain both my name and the weather condition, unfortunately Here is a link that might be useful: Tomatofest.
When the seed catalogs start arriving in the mailbox, I start talking about Territorial Seed, from whom I buy about half my seeds. AKA — The Devil! How can you support them?!? People are under the impression that Territorial Seeds and other beloved seedhouses are owned by or otherwise eager to peddle Monsanto seed onto unsuspecting home gardeners. Seminis was a dominant, well-regarded independent seed company specializing in vegetable and fruit seed. They were and remain huge — breeding, trialed and growing out more vegetable seed than anyone else in the world.
This left gaps in their seed offerings but their customer base was very supportive. See more here. These are big companies by seed house standards selling product to very particular customers — small farmers and market growers and discerning home gardeners — and I understand their decisions not to slash a huge number of seed offerings from their inventory overnight. I believe that seed houses who began to distance themselves from Seminis and find alternate seed options as quickly as possible while being sensitive to the potential business hit from lack of inventory were reacting to the Monsanto buyout of Seminis in an ethical way.
Meanwhile, Seminis, now under control of Monsanto, began to dramatically downsize the seeds they offered. Variety lost out to classic profit-makers. Now, the Seminis Home Gardener offerings are slim and not particularly impressive: one green cabbage, one red one.
A single variety of broccoli. In other words, Seminis has become progressively less and less relevant to the needs of garden and market growers, while becoming more and more like its parent company.
No real surprise there. Territorial is owned by Tom and Julie Johns, who have owned the company since they bought it from its founder, Steve Soloman. The truth is, in the real world of real business practical considerations, I think they are both running superb businesses and doing much to educate gardeners. Territorial is amazing at bringing Cascadia-specific varietals to the seed market, something I greatly appreciate. I believe Territorial handled the Monsanto buyout of Seminis ethically and reasonably, and have been happy to do business with them through this protracted transition as they have worked — successfully — to replace all their Seminis varieties with other successful strains of seed.
I may go plant some seeds to celebrate! I encourage all gardeners to do their own research into where to buy seeds. There are many, many wonderful regional seedhouses that are working hard to get the best seeds to the gardeners in their biozone.
All else being equal, buying local is a good idea with seeds, as with so much else. Any seed house worth supporting will be thrilled to talk seed with you and answer whatever questions you have.
Please feel free to pass this along when you see — as you will — misinformation or confusion about this issue. This is the full text of the email I received from Territorial in regards to their Monsanto ties:. We are owned by Tom and Julie Johns. They purchased the company from Steve Solomon in Thank you so much for your inquiry regarding our situation with Seminis Seeds.
We do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants. We believe this pledge is important and is consistent with our value system. Presently we offer 15 or so vegetable seed varieties from Seminis, all of which pre-existed their acquisition by Monsanto. This is a very small percentage of our overall seed selection and we do not see this relationship growing in the future. We have been asked to continue to carry these items until a suitable replacement with adequate supply is obtainable.
We have many cooperators from all over the world that help us bring the best varieties of seed to our customers. We will continue to plant our own trials where we can observe growth and yield performance as well as conduct our own taste tests to insure our customers are getting the best of the best.
As we find improved varieties to our Seminis offerings we are replacing them. We continue to add many heirloom and OG seeds, at the level of quality that our customers expect, as quickly and as reasonably possible. I hope that this explanation helps to clarify and answer your question.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to email us or contact us at ! I garden, keep chickens and ducks, homeschool my two kids and generally run around making messes on my one-third of an acre in suburban Seattle.
Thanks for reading! Thank you, Erica! You have done a great service to all gardeners by clarifying this issue.
Happy New Year and happy growing! I know for a fact that Territorial Seed Company is not owned by Monsanto. I hope that you fix this wrong information. Erica posted to clarify why there was confusion around the issue and I simply thanked her as did many others for letting us know. Myself or my family and friends will never purchase seeds from territorial. I am glad they are not doing business with Monsanto , but that is not my complaint.
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