On August 25, twenty seven people came out to Winnow Seed Co. to spend the morning learning about organic seed production. Owner Julie Fletcher gave us a tour of her seed farm, where she grows over 80 varieties of open-pollinated vegetables, herbs, and native plants.
The farm is located on an upper bench of the small agricultural community of Krestova, BC. Julie has three separate growing fields surrounded by forest, slightly isolated from one another to prevent cross-pollination between crops. Her rows are filled with vegetables nearing the end of their life cycle – frilly bolted lettuce heads, beans drying in their pods, overgrown yellowing zucchini ripening their seeds. Many people commented on how neat it was to see what garden crops look like if left to mature, and the beauty of plants as they go to seed and dry down. It’s a stage of the life cycle that you don’t get to see in most market or home gardens.
Julie is a wealth of seed saving knowledge, with over a decade of farming and seed production experience. One of the reasons why she chooses to grow only open-pollinated varieties of seeds is that they have the ability to adapt to their bioregion, as well as challenging growing conditions. This season has had a lot of growing challenges so far – a cool, wet spring that delayed germination, a late killing frost in June, water shortage issues resulting in severely reduced irrigation, and an intense heat wave in July. Not to mention the very sandy, high-drainage soil on the farm, which makes water retention very difficult. Krestova has a short growing season, and with the first frost of the season just a week or two away, Julie is already thinking about how to protect her ripening seeds and help them reach maturity before the season ends.
Although these conditions are stressful to navigate as a grower, the seeds Julie is able to create through them are truly adapted to our local Kootenay climate. With open-pollinated crops, each individual plant is genetically unique, with some plants thriving more than others under certain conditions. Julie is able to identify which plants do well under such stress and select seeds from those to grow out in future seasons. Over time she is creating a plant population that grows well in sandy soil under drought conditions, can handle periods of extreme moisture and extreme heat, all in a very short growing season. This kind of regional seed selection is so vital to helping our food system adapt to changing growing conditions. Especially in the mountainous growing conditions of the Columbia Basin where many growers deal with short seasons, rogue frosts, and challenging hillside soils, this kind of careful selection greatly improves local seed genetics.
Julie has also added some native flowers and plants to her seed collection this season. It is difficult to source truly local native plant seeds. By growing these out she can make the seeds available to habitat restoration projects and enable more gardeners to choose native plants for their landscaping. Unlike some of the more finicky vegetable crops, these native plants have no problem growing in the sandy soils of the Krestova hillside with minimal irrigation.
After the farm tour, we gathered to learn how to clean fresh seed. Julie gave us a demonstration of winnowing – pouring mustard seed in front of a fan, allowing the chaff and debris to blow away, and the heavier seeds to fall through to the bin below. She showed us her homemade seed screens that remove plant debris and allow smaller seeds to fall through the various screen sizes. We learned about germination testing, best storage practices, and the standards commercial seed growers maintain to ensure customers get quality seed for their gardens. There’s so much that goes into producing good seed!
Not only does Julie run the one-woman farm business of Winnow Seed Co., but she does so on top of her full-time job working at another local market garden. In this very busy time of the season for both farms, we’re incredibly grateful to Julie for sharing her wealth of knowledge and passion for seed saving. You inspired many new seed savers with this tour!
If you are interested in purchasing seed from Winnow Seed Co. you can visit the online store www.winnowseedco.ca or look for her seeds a local gardening stores around the West Kootenays.
THANK YOU!
The Columbia Basin event series is made possible with funding from Columbia Basin Trust.