This past spring, we’ve been working with local farmers helping grow our local seed community by saving seeds on their farm. You can read more about this project here, which was funded by Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE). Although tomato season seems so far away, we are gathering up our seeds and getting…
It’s the time of year when we can finally start sowing seeds for leafy greens that will nourish us all winter! Over the years we’ve become particularly fond of the diversity of Asian greens that grow really well here in North Florida from fall through early spring. We love them for so many reasons. First…
Meet our University of Florida intern, Noah Allen! Noah has been working with us to create videos that highlight our work with local farmers incorporating seed saving into their farm practices! Noah is documenting the seeds, the farmers, and their stories! It’s a lot of behind the scenes work capturing farm footage in the right…
We grew 15 new (to us) varieties this year in our seed trial gardens at GROW HUB and at four other garden locations. Here are the results! Thank you to Meg from Gainesville Giving Garden, Tim, Martha and Marian for contributing their time and garden space to these experimental varieties. View the results of the…
Since last spring, we’ve been actively working on a new project funded and supported by Southern SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) entitled, “Local food needs local seed: increasing production and use of locally adapted seed with a farm to community network.” The main goal of this project is to collaboratively work with local farmers…
In this age of disconnection, food has the power to bring us back together. The seeds we sow, the food we grow, and the meals we make together create the fabric of a flourishing local food web. One of our favorite units offered through our Youth Collective begins unsurprisingly, with a seed. We observe seeds…
How the Seed Was Planted In 2015 we had an ambitious idea: what would happen if we tried to combine our beloved Everglades currant tomato with a dwarf variety, Tanunda Red? This is a very wide cross of tomato types and traits! Everglades is a different species altogether (Solanum pimpinellifolium) and is the wild ancestor…
Several years ago, Melissa was connected to Jerome Feaster through a mutual friend, Bricky who manages the historical farm at Morningside Nature Center here in Gainesville, Florida. She’d heard about his family’s variety of heirloom mustard greens that had been saved for many years, since at least around the time of the Civil War, if…
2020: A year of Relief, Recovery, and Resilience When food insecurity intensifies, local markets shift and shudder, online learning becomes the new way to connect, and home gardens spread like seeds in the wind – we all remember why local food community matters. The global food system staggered and revealed its weakness. But local producers,…
Spring Events! Spring is here and we’ll be at some great community events! Our website events page lists them all and we’ll be adding more. Come join us! Join us for the in-person TEDxUF labs FRIDAY April 09, 2021 / 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm @Heartwood Soundstage Read more about this super fun 3 day event Pop-Up…