Nampa farm shows benefits of producing organic seeds for gardeners in Idaho, beyond
I’ve gardened in the Treasure Valley for nearly 50 years, and in that time I’ve met or at least heard of most of the important growers in the valley. I was startled this spring to buy seeds from a company in Minnesota who credited a grower in Nampa for having improved the seed.
The name of the Nampa breeder-seed producer was Beth Rasgorshek, a name I’d seen a time or two, but otherwise new to me. The improved seed was Ed’s red shallots, which the present vendor claims last a full year. The first person I contacted to locate Rasgorshek turned out to be a friend, who directed me to the Canyon Bounty Farm website. Rasgorshek is an active grower, usually out in her fields or one of her four large hoop houses, so I was lucky to make telephone contact with her.
Her formal education is in journalism, not horticulture, the same as my education. We’ve educated ourselves in horticulture, although she had the advantage of growing years on a farm, while all I had was weeks each summer on my grandparents’ farm.
Rasgorshek still has family support for her seed production endeavor. Canyon Bounty Farm is a seven-acre site outside of Nampa that she had certified as organic in 1999. Her family had farmed at that location while she was growing up, and she returned to that site for seed growing. Our long, dry growing season is especially fine for seed production, one of the best in the world, according to George Crookham, of Crookham Seed Co. in Caldwell.
Rasgorshek looked to the future and saw special opportunity in producing organic seeds for organic growers. Organic seeds bring higher prices than nonorganic, partly repaying the high cost of organic certification. Organic gardening and farming continue to grow in popularity, as farmers and gardeners know better how to take care of their soil. The University of California system has recently established a long-overdue Institute for Organic Research and Education, joining advances in many public universities around the country.
Rasgorshek’s seed production is all contracted for, so she doesn’t sell any seeds at retail. She grows wheat, winter peas (used as a cover crop), beans (snap and dry), bell peppers (isolated 1,000 feet to prevent cross-pollination), lettuce, flowers and soybeans. She especially likes to grow edamame soybeans. Organic seeds for flowers she produces include sunflowers, zinnias, asters and marigolds. If you buy organic seeds from Johnny’s Seeds, Fedco, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Seed Savers Exchange, High Mowing Seeds, Botanical Interests or Uprising Seeds, you’re probably bringing those seeds back to their original home.
Rasgorshek said she is more involved in producing seeds than in breeding plants. The only breeding she’s working on now is a leek, King Sieg, that she “accidentally crossed and has been trying to select and improve upon for the last 15 years or so.” It’s registered with the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), a plan started by a group of breeders to enable and encourage plant breeding. OSSI breeders pledge: “You have the freedom to use these OSSI-pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives.”
OSSI is essentially a plant breeders’ declaration of independence from the multinational seed-pharmaceutical companies that are devoted to genetic engineering and hybridization, requiring growers to buy new seeds each year rather than save their own. The new quarantine on tomato and pepper seeds further limits our options for those crops, but the quarantine is necessary to keep plant disease out of our country.
▪ Gradually acclimate your self-started seedlings to direct sun and wind, a few hours a day, for several days. If and when we have a drizzly or overcast day, put on a slicker and transplant, even though you’re cutting short your acclimating period, for drizzly days are magic for gardens.