Friday, February 10, 2012

Seed Uprising

As a reward for planning my garden out ahead of time this year, I splurged on some unique varieties of flowers, fruits and veggies from Uprising Seeds.  Based in Bellingham, Uprising is an amazing business. They offer only organic and open- pollinated varieties while supporting a strong network of seed growers in the state. They do meticulous research on varietial performance, and they know their seeds extremely well!  They don't carry the variety that some of the larger seed companies do, but each seed description is extremely thoughtful and helpful, and all of their seeds are chosen with our Northwest maritime gardening climate in mind.

The bulk of our garden will grow from seeds on hand from last year- but, I still found an eclectic mix of beauties too add to our garden space. I chose exotic blooms (for the bees, and to feed my love of cutting flowers), some unique greens, and some heirloom veggies which I hope will become jewels of our harvest.

All photos from Uprising Organics online seed catalog.  



The breakdown, from top left:   Poppy "black swan" (I was taken by the outrageous ruffles), Exotica Nigella (another beautiful blue flower, for the bees), Cosmos "Diablo," (because there is never enough orange in my garden), Anise Hyssop (a favorite for bumble and honeybees), Black Forest Kabocha squash (reported to have the best flavor of all squash), Poppy "cornfield," (a classic and Wizard-of-Oz-esque), Uprising Spicy Mesclun salad mix (our first time doing a salad mix and this one looks yummy), Shintokiwa cucumber (gets rave reviews for flavor and ubiquity), Black Cumin (because I love cumin, and I fell in love with the alien-spaceship-looking flower stamens), Bees Friend (obviously, another bee favorite which did well last year), Radicchio "Castelfranco" (an heirloom whose lovliness I couldn't resist.  Seed catalog said "please grow this," I had to oblige), Eel River melon (that milky pink color just looks delicious to me).  


I'm really looking forward to seeing these lovelies blossom and fruit.  


1 comment:

Kimberly C. said...

Those photos are delicious! Thanks for the tip about Uprising Seeds. I will give them a look!

Kimberly @beenerdy