2013 Gift Guide: Day Nine

December 3, 2013

Organic Seeds

Farming-july-oct-09-058

There were a lot of impressive speakers at last September’s Seed Conference at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, including Ferran Adria, Dan Barber, Alex Attala, Sean Brock and Glenn Roberts.  But the person who impressed me the most was Frank Morton, who’s been raising salad for chefs since 1980 at Gathering Together Farm in Oregon.  He spoke so passionately about conventional seed breeding that I began surfing his website, reading the essays. 

But Morton doesn’t just raise salad for fancy restaurants; 15 years ago he and his wife created Wild Garden Seeds, and since then they've been selling their organic seeds all over the world.  The catalogue is amazing: they offer 82 kinds of lettuce, 9 kinds of kale, 18 kinds of mustard, 5 kinds of quinoa, huazontle… the list is very long.   

They’re constantly adding new vegetables to the list.  This year’s great find is this Pandero Lettuce:

PanderoLettuce

 "With a single cut, these mini-head type romaines create instant salad mix."

If you know a passionate gardener, a gift certificate would make a wonderful present; they start at $12. Actually, just turning a good gardener onto the site would be a gift all by itself. 

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