Spring Into the Season: Garden Seeds are Here!
With every cold, dark, rainy PNW winter eventually comes a sunny, colorful, (though likely still rainy) spring. And if you want to add some color and life to your backyard, planting garden seeds is the way to go!
Whether you like to grow your own fruit and veggies, create a beautiful flower bed, or just toss out some pollinator-friendly seeds for your bee and butterfly friends, our Garden Department has a wide variety of seeds to choose from to suit whatever you're gardening interests may be!
Keep reading to learn more about our garden seeds and get garden-inspired recipes to enjoy once the fruits of your labor are ripe.
Territorial Seed Company
Family-owned and based out of Oregon since 1979, Territorial Seed Company specializes in high-quality heirloom, organic, and hybrid seeds. They offer fruit, vegetable, herb, and flower seeds and carry a variety of plant starts on their website as well.
Owners Tom & Julie Johns bought the company in 1985, after coming across a newspaper ad that read "... mail-order seed company in Lorane for sale." 30 years later, the rest is history! Tom & Julie's goal for the company is to encourage others to become just a little more self-sufficient through growing their own food at home.
All of Territorial's research and plant production happens at London Spring Farms: a 75-acre farm facility that's located in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. As far as certifications go, Territorial's farms are certified USDA organic, Biodynamic, and Salmon-Safe.
Uprising Seeds
If you're looking to shop for seeds that are a little more locally grown, consider Bellingham-based Uprising Seeds!
Their seeds are USDA certified organic, open-pollinated, and grown by small family farms in the Pacific Northwest. 70% of the seeds they sell are grown on their home farm in Bellingham.
Carrying fruit, vegetable, herb, and specialty cut flower seeds, Uprising is committed to "strengthening the public commons of seed genetics by working to preserve and improve open-pollinated varieties."
Deep Harvest Farm
It doesn’t get much more local than Deep Harvest Farm.
Located in Whidbey Island, Deep Harvest specializes in 100% organic, open-pollinated, and non-GMO seeds and offers over 170 varieties of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. The majority of Deep Harvest Farm’s seed varieties are grown on Whidbey Island, making them well adapted to our Pacific Northwest soil, climate, and disease pressures.
Farmers Annie and Nathaniel have grown veggies, seeds, and flowers on Whidbey Island for 12 farm seasons, and have been farming on a gorgeous piece of land (as in, waterview!) in Freeland, WA since 2015.
In addition to seeds, if you ever make it out to Whidbey in the summer, Deep Harvest sells their fresh veggies at their farmstand. Talk about full circle.
Garden Recipes To Enjoy Your Harvest
If everything goes well, you should find yourself with a harvest of fruits and veggies come summer! And if everything goes especially well, you'll have more fresh produce than you know what to do with.
Here are a few recipes packed full of fresh veggies and herbs to keep on hand when the beans, carrots, zucchini, squash, and other garden delights start packing your fridge.
Photo Courtesy of Feasting at Home
Farmers Market Vegetable Soup
One of the best ways to use an abundance of veggies is tossing them all up into a soup.
And this recipe is designed to make use of whatever you've got growing in the garden!
Simply chop up some onion, carrots, celery, zucchini, or whatever other veggies you want to include, pressure cook them with some other simple ingredients, and give it all a healthy portion of herbs, salt, and pepper.
Serve your soup with some crusty bread and some freshly grated cheese.
Photo Courtesy of Half Baked Harvest
Super Green Sun-Dried Tomato Herb Salad with Crispy Chickpeas
If you like to grow a lot of greens in your garden, this salad from Half Baked Harvest is a great way to utilize them!
Featuring oregano, kale, arugula, carrots, tomatoes, dill, basil, and chives, this salad is all brought together with some crispy-crunchy chickpeas and a homemade lemon vinaigrette.
Bonus points if you grow and dry the sun-dried tomato yourself!
Photo Courtesy of EatingWell
Grilled Garden Burgers
Grilling and summer go hand in hand, so why not incorporate your home-grown veggies into the mix, too?
In this recipe, ground beef is combined with a variety of garden vegetables to create a juicy and veggieful burger that's perfect for summer cookouts.
You can follow the recipe suggestions and add your patties to a slice of baguette, or treat them as traditional burgers and top them with all your favorite condiments and fixins.
Photo Courtesy of Co+op
Garden Vegetable Saute
An even easier way to enjoy your fresh garden veggies is in this simple saute!
Simply round up your fresh harvest, some herbs, tempeh, soy sauce, and dry red wine, and you're on your way to creating a side dish for any meal.
Why Grow Your Own Food?
Along with being a great activity for building self-sufficiency, gardening, in general, is great for your physical, mental, and emotional health. And if you garden with kids, it provides them with responsibility and helps them learn more about where their food comes from. Plus, the glimmer in their eye when they pull that first carrot out of the ground is a pretty special moment.
Gardening and growing your own food is beneficial for the planet, too. By planting pollinator-friendly seeds, you're helping support all the birds, bees, and butterflies that are necessary to our survival. And when you plant heirloom seeds, you're supporting biodiversity in our ecosystem and ensuring that many generations to come will have a dizzying array of varieties of plants to choose from, all with their own unique colors, shapes, and flavors.
If you ever have any questions or want to pick the brain of some local gardeners, our garden department is happy to help you out. Or, you can always get in contact with the Skagit County Master Gardeners. Happy planting!