The Seed Producers

"Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds." Norman Vincent Peale


I have been lucky in my life to have met a few of the amazing seed collectors like Ratko and Halda, who enriched our gardens. But I have also been lucky to have met some amazing seed producers as well. Today we toured Heritage Seedlings amazing native seed production facility in the rich soil at the headwaters of the Little Pudding River outside of Mcleay.

Lynda Boyer is an amazing seed grower, producing some very high quality native seed for restoration projects around the valley. The tour of her production fields was knowledge filled to say the least. 

You have to look closely but this is an actual seed production block of Calochortus tolmei. Pretty cool to see little rows of plants all lined up producing copious seed pods

Kinda made me think of the possibilities of row cropping a few of the illahe Rare bulb selections for mass production!

Amy Bartow literally wrote the book on native seed production, I mean literally and it's called the "Native Seed Production Manual for the Pacific Northwest". Some years ago she gave a group of Chemeketa Community College students a tour of the Corvallis Plant Material Center NRCS production facility, amazing tools and technology combined with grass roots farming knowledge makes for a pretty spectacular operation.

My hats off to the seed producers, the ones who work hard to bring us the material that starts our gardens, our restoration plots, our wetlands, and prairies would be long gone if it weren't for them. 

Sunny, warm, bulbs senescing for the season, veggies and bedding flowers coming on strong. 

Cheers, 

Mark