Vegetables

(Physalis philadelphica) The ubiquitous sight of the monocrop cornfield we have all grown accustomed to is truly a construct of modern industrial agriculture. The traditional cornfield, or milpa, consists of a loosely intentional and diverse mélange of plants growing in and amongst the maize. In this system, the wild greens...

(Physalis ixocarpa) This unique tomatillo comes from the Mexican town of Malinalco, about 70 miles southwest of Mexico City. Elongated, tapering fruits ripen to bright yellow and are much sweeter than most tomatillos with a flavor somewhere between a tomatillo and the sweeter more tropical notes of a ground cherry....

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Italian storage tomatoes, or "pomodoro d'inverno", are a class of tomatoes we are increasingly excited about. If you are not yet familiar with them, they tend to be saladette sized with firm thick flesh even when ripe. Picked ripe (or just slightly under-ripe) by the truss during the...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Up North, the name of the game for field-grown tomatoes is early, early, early. We’re very selective about what we put out there for tomatoes, and we’ve enjoyed Black Prince in hot summers and rain-soaked, cold ones. First brought to our attention years ago in Maine, where the...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) With so many favorites already in our tomato collection, it takes something extraordinary for us to add new ones at this point, and we found that in Blush. A relatively new variety bred by Fred Hempel of Artisan Organics in Sunol, CA (with his then 8yo son in...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Captain Lucky is perhaps the best known and most commercially successful of the many wonderful varieties to come from the late North Carolina tomato breeder, Millard Murdoch's garden over the years. Green fruits streaked with bronze and red are sliced to reveal a kaleidoscopic marbled interior. The juicy...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) The taste test winner many years in a row, Carbon is one of the most successful beefsteak size tomatoes we’ve grown, uncovered, out in the field yet. We easily harvested a couple of hundred pounds of fruit from about 50-row feet of plants. Flattened 12-16 oz fruits have...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Oh-my-goodness-these-are-so-cute! Ceylon has all the look of a big ruffled beefsteak type tomato but in a miniature little package, only slightly larger than your average cherry tomato. From seed we originally got from Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seed over 20 years ago, this prolific and early tomato...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) We’ve looked at many new-to-us varieties of tomatoes over the years, and few have left us as excited as this Cuor di Bue (“ox heart”) type tomato from Ligurian coast town of Albenga, just west of Genoa, in Northern Italy. When most people think of saucing or roasting...

*Ark of Taste Heirloom*(Lycopersicon esculentum) Fiaschetto is a regional treasure of Puglia in Southeast Italy complete with a designated Slow Food presidia. These small, 2-3 oz, plum-shaped tomatoes with a slight nipple at the blossom end hang like grapes from the bushy determinate plants in such prolific quantities that we...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) We cleaned up a contaminated strain to bring back this cultivar we first tasted while living in VT. Potato leaf variety with very early, bright yellow cherry tomatoes approx 1” diameter. Taste is somewhat reminiscent of a yellow pear tomato grown in the heat of the Midwest. Fragrant...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) A contender for our “New Variety of the Year” several years back, we've fallen hard for this cherry tomato. Bred in Maine by longtime seedsman extraordinaire Will Bonsall, Sweetheart is adorable: fire engine red, mini apple-shaped cherry tomatoes with a firm texture and incredibly sweet flavor. And those...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Recommended to us by many farmers we know, Gold Medal was an all-around stunning tomato in our very first grow out. Maude and Tom Powell of Wolf Gulch Farm who grew some seed for us had this to say about it: “We loved growing this tomato! The plants...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) These deliciously rich and sweet tomatoes produce fruit with abandon! About 1-1.5” with chartreuse-yellow (allow them to yellow slightly) skin when ripe, they hang in clusters on compact vines that reach about 3.5’ max. One of our most commented on tomatoes at market that we never grew enough...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) The gangly vines will grow 6- 8’ tall. They will be covered in flowers and hang heavy with green fruit. Big, 3/4 - 1+lb fruit. You will taste the first one and there will be no going back. Suddenly you will notice more flowers, more vines, and more...

(Lypersicon esculentum) We were introduced to this variety as a coveted secret ingredient to a fellow farmer’s “heirloom tomato mix” while living and farming in VT years ago. Beautiful, perfectly round, small 4-5 oz fruits are bright orange on the outside and often have a reddish blush in the flesh....

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Very early maturing 3/4-1” tomatoes hang in long clusters of up to 8 bright red fruits. Whole clusters generally ripen together making them a good variety to pick by the bunch for fancy-pants presentation at market. These taste much more like a juicy slicer than a sweet cherry and...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Kurtovo Konare is a village in the south of Bulgaria with a rich agricultural history. Set in the fertile area between the Vacha and Maritsa rivers, it is one of just a handful of Slow Food Presidia in the country and has listed several threatened regional specialties in...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Pronounced “Lay-tah”, this is hands down the earliest tomato we have ever grown (and we think it should be called “Earli-ah”). Although developed by the University of Idaho (and named after the Idaho county) it seems to have gained more of a following across the pond in the...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Manyel is not new to us but has proved to be a real standout, with enticing flavor and heavy production well into the rainy weather. We were continually surprised every time we picked a crate and tasted it anew. For some reason, we always forget how wonderful it...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) We don’t like to make crazy, bold proclamations (which, as you can tell from the intro, means we are going to anyway), but Matina might be our best all-around slicing tomato. It’s nice to be a small family company where we can write something like that and not break...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Karen Olivier is an independent tomato breeder here in the PNW based near Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island. We are very excited to have been introduced to her work on the recommendation of a farmer friend and had the opportunity to trial some of her varieties at the...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) It’s high time you added more green tomatoes to your mix! Moldovan Green is not just a terrific green tomato but a wonderful tomato all around. In fact, when it came to fresh slice-salt-and-eat, straight off the vine, tomato-ing, just about everyone who visited us at the farm agrees:...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Nepal was a very pleasant surprise for us, producing the earliest and heaviest sets we’ve seen for a tomato of its class and quality. Nearly beefsteak-sized 1/2lb fruits hung in abundance and delivered the season's first glimpse of that ripe complexity of flavor we celebrate during the main-season...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) This variety was handed to us by friend and seed steward Rowan White at a seed swap many years ago. Originally a Heintz variety, it was maintained by a Montana grower for over 20 years, selecting for early maturity and a compact shape. In the field, it often seemed...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) If you've ever seen pictures of rustic Italian kitchens with huge masses of tomatoes hanging by loops of twine above the counters, chances are you were looking at "Piennolo del Vesuvio." This world-famous tomato (this listing is for the yellow version, though there is a more common red...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) If you've ever seen pictures of rustic Italian kitchens with huge masses of tomatoes hanging by loops of twine above the counters, chances are you were looking at "Piennolo del Vesuvio." This world-famous tomato (this listing is for the red version, though there is a less common yellow version)...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) A tomato has to taste very good. Full stop. But once that baseline criterion has been established, we find ourselves drawn to the other special characteristics that set a truly great tomato apart. Hailing originally from Japan, Pinky is a fabulous tasting mid-sized cherry tomato: pinkish-red, firm, and...

*Ark of Taste Heirloom* (Lycopersicon esculentum) So named because they were used as a substitute for dried figs in winter's past (18th century), these vines are vigorous and heavy yielding with pear-shaped fruits. We had been on the lookout for a good red pear tomato for our mixed cherry pints,...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Perfect! Originally bred by long-time biodynamic market farmer Ruth Zinniker of Wisconsin, Ruth’s Perfect is another strong, vigorous grower bearing simply gorgeous blemish-free half-pound fruits. During one pretty mediocre summer for tomato growing, we were very impressed with the yield and quality of this new-to-us variety. From field-grown...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Bred in North Carolina by independent tomato breeder Millard Murdock, who passed in 2019, leaving behind a legacy of wonderful tomato varieties, Sandburg is the result of a natural outcross from a variety called 'Lilian's Yellow'. Perfect, half-pound creamy yellow fruits feature a pink starburst at the blossom...

*Ark of Taste Heirloom* (Lycopersicon esculentum) We’d been looking for a paste tomato that was not too (or at all!) mealy on the tongue, productive, and early with a vibrant, complex taste we wanted to eat fresh...Got it! Grown since the early part of the 20th century in Sheboygan, Wisconsin,...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) We know the color may seem off-putting, but these are always a farm favorite both for their full-flavored sweetness and highly productive vines. Approx. 1” tomatoes that are not a true white but rather an attractive creamy pale yellow when fully ripe. Very good acid/sweet balance and an excellent...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) This is a very early and very productive Czech variety that has a strong following amongst PNW gardeners. Bred in the mid-’50s at an ag station in the community of Stupice just east of Prague and introduced to the US by the Abundant Life Seed Foundation in 1977....

AKA Super Lakota. We've been working with this seed for over a decade now and decided it was high time to change the name. As far as we've researched, the original breeding has nothing to do with the Lakota Nation, and enough indigenous names have been co-opted for marketing purposes....

(Lycopersicon esculentum) We were on the hunt for a good round orange cherry to replace the ever-popular hybrid “Sungold” in our cherry color mix. Sweet Orange II fits the bill with vigorous vines and tons of bright orange medium-sized round fruit. Its flavor is very sweet, fruity, and delicious. More of...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) Karen Olivier is an independent tomato breeder here in the PNW, based near Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island. We are very excited to have been introduced to her work (on the recommendation of a farmer friend with impeccable taste) and had the opportunity to trial some of her...

(Lycopersicon esculentum) This might be the most consistently enormous tomato we’ve ever grown, occasionally topping out over 3 pounds (field grown in northwest WA, no less!). An innkeeper and gardener in the village of Vernazza (one of the five villages that make up the “Cinque Terra” on northern Italy’s Ligurian coast)...

The perfect ingredients for stir-fries, pizza toppings, quiches, hearty raw salads, and tossed into your mesclun or lettuce mixes. A colorful mix of Red Russian kale, Dazzling blue kale, Bok Choi, tatsoi, Ruby Streaks, Rainbow Chard and Mizuna. Can be cut as baby leaf for a tender addition, let to...

A mix of our favorite lettuces including butterhead, romaine, oakleaf, reds, bronze, greens, speckled, wavy, frilly...you name it.  A celebration of lettuce's many colors and forms. 50-55 days-ish. Packet: 1g [split] Growing Info SOWING: Sow indoors 2-4 weeks before your last frost. Seeds germinate best below 70F. Transplant out 3-4...

Similar to the salad mix our customers loved at the farmers market, this mix contains a diverse blend of red, green, and speckled lettuces, mild Asian mustards, arugula, red spinach, amaranth, and other specialty greens intended for cut-and-come-again baby leaf salad. For a festive flair, try an addition of edible...

This mix packs some heat, with some of our spicier greens added to the classic blend. Mixed red, green, and speckled lettuces, arugula, Wrinkled Crinkled Cress, and Ruby Streaks, amongst others. Not overwhelming by any means, but certainly friskier than the mild in its “cool” mustard heat. Like the above...

(Citrullus lanatus) Since we first started farming in Northwest WA almost 20 years ago, we've had our share of dismally wet non-summers, and while the idea of watermelon was not necessarily enticing on a 50 degree harvest day in the pouring rain, such conditions are the true test for hot...

(Citrullus lanatus) When it's in season, we generally don’t need to be asked twice when it comes to eating our weight in watermelon. It is one of the great joys of late summer, and we are always on the hunt for the great, short-season adapted cultivars. People are continuously incredulous...

(Citrullus lanatus) I don’t think I ever would have guessed, with all our beans and corns, our many species of flowers with their intricate seed designs and adaptations, that perhaps the most beautiful seed in our collection would come from ... a watermelon. This Turkish variety, whose name translates roughly...

(C. maxima) Bred for short-season production for the old Garden City Seeds of northern Montana, Bitterroot has earned its keep in our farm production. One of the more prolific varieties in the cooler seasons, it matures early and stores well. Like Kabocha, it is richer and flakier than the finer...

(C. maxima) When we grew for market, come fall, everyone would go gaga for the sweetness of the Delicata, the thick, rich flesh of the butternut, and the classic beauty of a stuffed acorn. We would quietly smile and nod, knowing we had a pile of kabocha at home to get...

(C. moschata) This small, bumpy, heavily ribbed Japanese squash is gaining in popularity, showing up at more and more farmers markets and produce departments, and for good reason. Fairly early for a moschata family squash, it has a very smooth, fine-grained flesh and a fruity flavor at harvest that lends...