A Royal Vegetable Garden and more


Some of you may have seen this already, but it’s worth repeating.  The British Royal family has started a vegetable garden at Buckingham Palace. This is great news! The idea seems to be similar to what we are seeing here- to promote family gardening and growing one’s own food, if even on a limited scale.  It is interesting to note that a lot more of the British have continued the concept of the Victory Garden than Americans.  A friend who had just returned from a visit remarked on the train ride from the airport,  he could see into the backyards and a vast majority of them had gardens from fence to fence, with a lot of growing in evidence.

Another item of interest is from the Washington Post.  The headline states the increased seed demand is based on the recession, yet the article also states that a lot of the growth is from people who are concerned about the safety of their food and where their food comes from.  Here is the full article. This follows what we have seen here, most people aren’t as concerned about the economic impact; they’re concerned about the safety of their food and how fragile the distribution chain is. They remember the $5/gallon diesel last summer, and the resulting $2 tomatoes that still tasted like cardboard. People are starting to realize that the supermarket model is not sustainable, as the food travels an average of 1200-1500 miles to get to them. The increasing popularity of the farmers markets and home-grown veggies is the result of this unease and resulting realization.

Hope your garden is going gangbusters, and you’re wondering what to do with all of your veggies!

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How to Store Your Seeds for Next Year

Cleaning Pumpkin Seeds


We get a lot of questions on how to save seeds. Most of them are general seed saving questions, but most boil down to how to save seeds for the next year. Most of the seed packets have more seeds than will be used in one year, and most seeds are good for several years in proper storage conditions.

Please realize that seeds are meant to be planted, not stored!

We get a chuckle from the e-bay seed sellers and survivalist stores that proclaim their seeds are nitrogen flushed, vacuum packed in tin cans or aluminum foil pouches, and are good for 5 or 10 years.

That’s great, but if the seeds are tossed out in the unheated/uncooled garage for 3+ years- guess what?

They’re DEAD!

The temperature/humidity fluctuations shortens the life of the stored seeds drastically. Seeds are the plant’s mechanism for propagation and survival. They have evolved to survive for a short time- e.g. a winter or two- in the ground until the optimum conditions arrive to sprout.

For almost all domesticated varieties that are used for food, the optimum conditions  mean next spring. There definitely are seeds that will last longer, but most are non-food plants. Throughout history people would collect and save seeds for the next year or two and have kept plant varieties alive for thousands of years.

Today we have methods to stabilize temperature and humidity; we have advantages in prolonging the life of the stored seed.

The best way to save seeds for future plantings are to keep the seeds in the original seed packets; that way you know where they came from, the name, planting instructions, etc. Then put them in clear Ziplock sandwich baggies with the date on the baggie.

This way you know when you started storing them.

Put all of the baggies in a gallon Ziplock and put it into the freezer.

“But won’t that hurt the seeds?”, people ask. Not at all!

This is why the Vavilov Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia uses liquid nitrogen to freeze seeds for a long time. This is also why the “Doomsday Vault” in Svalbard, Norway is located above the Arctic Circle and dug into the side of a mountain and several hundred feet down, to keep the vault below zero if the cooling system fails.

Your freezer is cold and has low humidity. You probably don’t go into the freezer several times a day like the refrigerator. Each time you open/shut the door, the outside air comes in, raising the temperature and humidity.

This isn’t good for your seeds if they are in the fridge. The freezer is more stable. Please understand the fridge is better than the garage or basement, but the freezer is even better, and you probably have space!

When time comes for planting next spring, take out the packets you will use, take out the seeds you will plant if there are a lot left, and put the bag back into the Ziplock and into the freezer. Let the seed to be planted come to room temperature before planting into the soil.

Most varieties will keep for 3+ years with no loss of germination.

There are exceptions, of course. Onion seeds are good for 1 year, no more, no matter the method of keeping. Garlic only grows from the bulb or clove, freezing kills it.

There are some other varieties that have a short life in storage, but don’t get too caught up in that. If you plant each year, you will be fine.

When you start to save your own seed, the same procedure applies- just be sure the seed is DRY, or else the freeze will expand any moisture in the seed and destroy it.

Label the bag with the name, date harvested, date stored and freeze it.

If you get into seed saving, or want a lot more information on the methods and details for each variety of vegetable, Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth is a wonderful book. It is not light reading, but if treated like a reference book or text book, you’ll do just fine. 

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Raised Garden Beds at Underwood Gardens


We are finishing up our raised bed garden, and wanted to show you what we have been working on.  The raised beds will be both production garden for our family, and a test garden for the seed business.  Our garden is 35 x 70 feet;  smaller than some,  larger than others. There are several projects that we are working on that we will keep you up to date on with the blog, so check back often!

Today is an overview of the gardens, our climate and challenges that we face, as well as an introduction of some of the projects that we are working on.

We are at 5000 feet elevation, with 4 full seasons, and are located between Phoenix and Flagstaff, so we avoid the temperature extremes of both places. Our temperatures range from 110 to 20 degrees F. We are in a high desert environment with about 12 inches of rain annually. The soil here is good, but needs organic matter worked into it to be productive.  Arizona has a lot of microclimates, as does most areas of the US that have hills and elevation changes, so this presents unique challenges to growing depending on where you live.

Some of our challenges include the wind, heat and dry climate.  These combine to dry out a garden severely unless measures are taken.  Wind protection, drip irrigation and lots of mulch are some of the things we do to keep moisture where we need it.  Even with our challenges, we can grow a ton of food, and so can you!

Let’s take a look-

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

This South facing shot shows the raised beds, the blue wind break on the fence and the wood chips in the walkway. Over the fence in the background is the native grassland. There is weed cloth under the wood chips;  this gives a good walking surface that keeps the weeds out!  We are moving worms into each bed to help build soil and keep the beds aerated and healthy.

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

Here is a  photo of  the worm bed. We haven’t put the weed cloth and chips in the walkway yet, but the weed cloth under the bed is visible. This is where we will have lots of worms, in addition to charcoal, coffee grounds, and horse manure compost.  The worms love coffee grounds, which also retain a lot of moisture to help jump start the soil building process.  The white PVC piping is the drip manifold with the shut off valves and the garden hose that connects each bed to the next. The charcoal is visible under the drip tape.  It acts as condos for the micro-organisms that live in healthy soil. The humus-like soil will be used to amend or top-dress the other growing beds in the fall and spring. Once we have enough, we can use the excess humus as another product to sell locally. We will keep you updated on the progress.

This should give a good overview of what we are doing and where we are going. We will give more detailed info in the next few posts, so stay tuned!

Please don’t think that this level of gardening is required to be successful, it’s not! A lot smaller garden can be just as productive on a smaller scale- all the way down to 2×2 feet… The most important thing is to just get started! We will go over options on sizes in future blogs. As always, if you have questions or comments, please leave them on the comments section, or call us at 888-878-5247!

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