Common Wealth Seed Growers is a new project of four Central Virginia seed growers from three farms: Living Energy Farm, Twin Oaks Seed Farm and All-Farm Organics. We offer organic, regionally-adapted, open-pollinated seeds for a limited number of outstanding varieties. We grow all the seeds we sell, and we only sell what grows well here.
Farmer Direct: We are farmers, and our goal is to connect with other growers in our region in a way that benefits all of us. We get better prices by selling directly, enabling us to do the quality work of selection, variety trials and breeding that we care about. What you get is better seeds, directly from the farmers who grew them. All our seeds are labeled with the name of the farm where they were grown. Ask us a question and the response will come from an experienced seed grower.
Open Pollinated and Regionally Adapted: Open-pollinated seeds keep farmers and gardeners in control of what they grow. Unlike hybrids, they can be adapted to regional and even farm-specific conditions. We have been selecting and adapting many of our varieties for several years, for disease resistance, productivity, appearance and flavor. We have seen that open pollinated varieties can outperform the best hybrids when we diligently select, adapt, and track our seedstocks.
Variety Trials: We are committed to ongoing variety trials to identify outstanding open-pollinated varieties and seedstocks from many sources, including university breeding programs, amateur breeders and heirloom seed savers. We include market standard hybrids in our trials for comparison. Read about Twin Oaks Seed Farm’s 2013 and 2014 trials of cucumber, melon, winter squash and watermelon. Read about Living Energy Farm’s 2014 sweet corn trial.
Organically Grown: Disease and insect resistant varieties are especially important for organic farmers and gardeners because our options for disease and insect control are limited. Our seeds are chosen and selected for good performance in low-input organic conditions. All our seeds are grown organically – most are certified organic. A few seed lots are produced in our home gardens, which aren’t certified. Labels and variety listings indicate which varieties are certified organic. All our seeds are untreated and non-GMO.