Feb 25, 2021
Organic seed companies highlight top offerings of 2021
Here are some selected offerings that organic seed companies are highlighting in spring 2021.
Harris Seeds Organic
Harris Seeds Organic announces the following organic seed offerings for the 2021 season:
Thyme Ayelet Organic has small oval gray-green leaves that grow on upright shrubby perennial plants. With excellent aroma and flavor, Ayelet is suitable for culinary and medicinal uses
Squash Essex F1 Organic yields large, 3-4 lb. fruit. The deep orange flesh has exceptional butternut flavor and sweetness. With intermediate resistance to powdery mildew and the vigor and yield of a hybrid, Essex is a strong performer in all conditions.
Tomato Medusa F1 Organic is a hybrid indeterminate purple tomato with heirloom flavor and appearance. Vigorous plants with strong disease package set large uniform fruit with reduced cracking. Performs in open field and protected culture. Intermediate resistance to late blight, verticillium wilt and nematodes.
Lettuce Marciano MTO Organic is a compact variety with smooth leaves showcasing deep burgundy color and fresh bright green, well-filled interiors. Sweet tender leaves and short cores, tolerant to tip burn and slow to bolt. High resistance to downy mildew, lettuce leaf aphid, and tomato bushy stunt virus, and intermediate resistance to lettuce mosaic virus.
Squash Autumn Frost F1 Organic has uniquely ribbed, round fruit that ripens to dark tan with a frosted overlay. The flesh is similar to butternut with superior flavor, quality, and storage of up to four months. Prepare by cutting lengthwise for roasting or cut the top 2 inches to stuff and bake upright. Intermediate resistance to powdery mildew.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds
Johnny’s Selected Seeds is highlighting the following organic seeds for the 2021 year:
Prospera Italian Large Leaf Basil exhibited the highest level of downy mildew resistance in the company’s trials. Fast growing, with high yields of 4-inch long leaves, the exceptionally uniform plants have a sweet aroma with notes of anise. This variety is suitable for field and greenhouse production.
Calibra Onion, a “long-intermediate” onion forms large bulbs farther south than our other hard storage onions, with adaptation to 35-45 degrees of latitude. Calibra sports robust, upright green tops for improved thrips resistance. This onion has excellent storage potential – more than 6 months.
Hampton Lettuce is a gorgeous, easy-to-harvest one-cut with high downy mildew resistance. Hampton has fast initial growth and an upright plant habit for easy harvesting. It yields an attractive, brilliant, deep-green, oakleaf-type leaves are excellent in salad mix; a great complement to Salanova. Leaves are meaty, lofty, and yield well for a specialty one-cut type. It displays high resistance to downy mildew races EU 16–36, US 1–9, Nasonovia ribisnigri aphid, and tomato bushy stunt virus; and intermediate resistance to lettuce mosaic virus.
Giant Golden Yellow Zinnia boasts large, high-performing golden-yellow blooms. Sturdy stems and vigorous plants yield multiple cuts of 4-6 inches wide with double blooms. It’s comparable to Benary’s Giant Series in bloom quality and timing. Plants are shorter but tall enough for cutting at 24-36 inches tall.
Osborne Quality Seeds
Osborne Quality Seeds is delighted to offer an expanded selection of vegetables, flowers and herbs for commercial growers in the U.S. and Canada.
Committed to sustainable agriculture, it provides organic options whenever possible, as well as conventionally produced untreated seed. It has added over 250 exciting new additions, including organic beans, tomatoes, winter squash, untreated lettuces with added resistances, baby leaf greens, pumpkins and fall ornamentals, and an expanded sweet corn lineup.
Extensive trialing and product development are spearheaded by the newest addition to the Osborne Quality Seeds team, Tim Terpstra. Tim oversees Osborne’s internal trials as well as university, Extension, and grower cooperator trials. An extensive list of varieties is planted throughout the country and evaluated by product development and the sales team to make the best selections for your growing needs.
Osborne’s 2021 catalog is available now and offers unique and diverse varieties for many geographic locations. It has been updated with new symbols to help you identify marketing opportunities, which include container growing, Orna-Edibles and cold tolerance.
Five exciting new introductions this year include Celine F1 Magenta organic bean, Blue Rock MTO Romaine lettuce, Death Star F1 pumpkin, GinFizz F1 Heirloom Hybrid organic tomato, and Steph Kuri F1 organic winter squash.
Visit www.osborneseed.com to see the company’s full lineup.
Growers are encouraged to visit Osborne’s virtual shows this winter or to contact their regional sales reps via phone or email:
- Linda Fenstermaker (Western U.S.) linda@osborneseed.com, 425-533-5270.
- Rebecca Morse (Eastern U.S.) rebecca@osborneseed.com, 360-826-3046.
- Dave Murray (Canada) dmurray@gowanseed.com, 604-518-6953.
- Josue Rosales (Spanish-speaking) josue@osborneseed.com, 360-770-2870.
Seedway
Seedway is highlighting the following varieties for the 2021 season:
Dagan Brussel’s Sprouts have a perfectly tall and straight stalk, and early maturity. It also has excellent yield potential and fancy quality. Dense, round sprouts are dark green. If you fertilize well early, and then cut back, the lower leaves will shed for easy harvest. Dagan takes 100 days to reach maturity.
Fusion Romaine Leaf Lettuce has the taste, texture, and leaf shape of romaine. When fully grown, Fusion looks like romaine, but, as it’s growing it makes a beautiful, dark green leaf lettuce. Very likeable at all stages, Fusion is perfect for romaine single leaf pack. Fusion may be the easiest lettuce of all to grow, handling heat and cold with no problems. Fusion takes 73 days to reach maturity.
Passat YR Kraut/Slaw Cabbage grows as a healthy upright plant. Dense heads are suitable for processing or fresh market. Good for mechanical harvest. Passat has the highest vitamin C content of our processing cabbage. This helps keep the kraut white. Heads weigh 8 -15 lbs. The variety has high resistance to fusarium yellows. Abiotic conditions may cause tip burn. Passat takes 85 days to reach maturity.
Bermeo Cauliflower is one of the best early heat tolerant varieties. It has a very good inside wrap but may need to be tied for larger sizes. Excellent quality and uniformity. Bermeo takes 66 days to reach maturity.
Cash Machine Zucchini produces very high quality medium dark green zucchini with light flecking and a small blossom scar. It sets fruit prolifically on a compact to medium, upright, semi open plant, and when combined with its excellent disease package, promises to deliver high yields of uniform fruit. The variety has intermediate resistance to downy mildew, zucchini yellow mosaic virus, watermelon mosaic virus, papaya ringspot. Cash Machine takes 42 days to reach maturity.
Havana Butternut Squash is a boxing type butternut; Havana is productive and will box cleanly with little waste. Three to four-pound fruit is uniformly blocky with a thick neck and a small seed cavity. Flesh is dark orange. Intermediate resistance to downy mildew and zucchini yellow mosaic virus. Havana takes 110 days to reach maturity.
Sunfresh Fresh Market Determinate Tomato is a broadly adaptable hybrid that offers a robust flavor, delectable aroma, and remarkably firm bodied fruit. Maintains quality through shipping and thrives on the shelf. Agronomical attributes to use in high tunnels. The variety has high resistance and intermediate resistance to a number of known diseases. Sunfresh takes 74 days to reach maturity.
