Frank Morton is a seed grower outside of Philomath, Oregon. Frank runs Wild Garden Seeds with his wife Karen and the help of Victor Sauvie and Mark Luterra.
They sell seed retail through a print catalog and online store, and sell seed wholesale to seed companies.
We had a pretty long conversation so I’ve broken it up into two parts.
In Part 1. Frank talks about the evolution of their farming career, scaling the farm up over a number of sites over the years to growing 15 acres of seed with multiple employees. And now they are slowing down the farm to only growing seed on a hectare (which is 2.47 acres for those of you who don’t speak metric.)
Frank discusses how they are more profitable at this smaller scale than when they were growing 15 acres of seed.
Frank talks about the differences between selling retail vs wholesale and how anyone who sells seed should find a way to retail their seed.
And Frank talks about the evolving crop mix over the years from starting with salad green seed, to food crop seed, to now mostly growing flower seeds.
Part 2 is all about saving lettuce seed.
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More about Frank Morton:
https://www.wildgardenseed.com/
https://www.instagram.com/wild_garden_seed/
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You can listen on
- Apple Podcasts
- Spotify
- Or use this RSS feed to subscribe in your podcast player of choice: https://feeds.libsyn.com/412058/rss
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A huge thanks to Frank Morton for being on the podcast and for sharing all his seed work so publicly and generously. I would not have jumped into plant breeding and selection work with as much gusto if it wasn’t for Frank’s example. And I know I’m not the only seed grower out there who feels that way.
Thank you to Farmer Jesse and Jackson Rolett of No-Till Growers, and the podcast’s sponsors The Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security and The Organic Seed Alliance – Their support is what has made this podcast happen.
And thank you for listening!!!
