Common Wealth Seed Growers

01/19/2025

Our 2025 catalog is out! Both print and online versions. See our website: commonwealthseeds.com.

09/29/2024

"AU Golden Producer" - A Crimson Sweet type watermelon released in 1993 by Auburn University in Alabama. Very sweet and good quality with resistance to anthracnose and downy mildew. Some good varieties bred in the eighties and early 90s never got a chance in the market because of the advent of seedless melons. We especially like the disease resistant Auburn University releases. The USDA seed bank gave us 10 seeds to get started. These were planted in early June.

09/14/2024

Homemade sriracha! Made from roasted Beaverdam hot peppers, roasted garlic and salt. These peppers are mild/medium spicy, and sweet - definitely no sugar needed to make the sriracha. They're also good green. Peppers in second photo.

09/13/2024

Pepper tasting at - 31 varieties of hot, sweet and spice peppers, and a good number of people to appreciate them! These are from trials at Twin Oaks Seed Farm - grown for Common Wealth Seed Growers and for . We'll feature a few of them in more detail in subsequent posts.

09/07/2024

Harvest Season 2024 Newsletter -

First off we want to remind everyone to plant your fall gardens if you haven’t already. There is still time to plant turnips, kale, collards, mustard, lettuce, cilantro and other greens. These crops have the capacity to provide harvests that feed us for over half the year - from October through Ma...

09/07/2024

First fruit from our Trifecta x Edisto 47 breeding trial, planted in late June. This is the F5 generation, we've been doing this every year since 2021. Very happy with with where it's going - this fruit was quite sweet, measuring at 13 brix, with deep orange color and small seed cavity. We plant it late to select for plants that can thrive in high downy mildew pressure conditions, because you can't get sweet fruits when the foliage is struggling. Also selecting for bacterial wilt tolerance, and fruits that won't rot or split in the field.

02/04/2024

Our 2024 print catalog has now mostly shown up for people on our mailing list. You can see the PDF and order one for free here https://commonwealthseeds.com/2024-seed-catalog/?utm_source=seedcatalog&utm_medium=fbpost&utm_campaign=printcatalogpromo&utm_id=2024seed on our website. This is our first print catalog in years. It was a lot of work! Next year will be earlier and easier because we'll have a template and experience with the process.

01/20/2024

At the VABF Virginia Association for Biological Farming conference this weekend in Roanoke!

01/10/2024

Several things to announce:
-First is that all our 2024 listings are up! Seeds are germination tested and ready to ship.
-Second, we just launched our own web store at www.commonwealthseeds.com. We've been using a seed-selling website for farmers called Seedwise for a number of years, and while we appreciate the project and will keep our listings there, it's time to have our own platform.
-Third - we're printing a catalog this year. To get one, go to www. commonwealthseeds.com, click on 'Mailing List' and enter your address.
-Lastly, we're releasing several new original varieties!
https://commonwealthseeds.com/.../easter-in-august.../
https://commonwealthseeds.com/.../bakers-branch.../
https://commonwealthseeds.com/.../solar-flare-sweet.../
https://commonwealthseeds.com/.../mira-red-stem-kale.../

Grown by Twin Oaks Seed Farm – 65 days – Solanum lycopersicum Bred by CWSG growers Kristina Korobeynikova and Edmund Frost at Twin Oaks Seed Farm. Gorgeous pastel-colored cherry tomatoes that look …

01/04/2024

Several things to announce:
-First is that all our 2024 listings are up! Seeds are germination tested and ready to ship.
-Second, we just launched our own web store at www.commonwealthseeds.com. We've been using a seed-selling website for farmers called Seedwise for a number of years, and while we appreciate the project and will keep our listings there, it's time to have our own platform.
-Third - we're printing a catalog this year! To get one, go to our website, click on 'Mailing List' and enter your address.
-Lastly, we're releasing five new original varieties! Solar Flare Sweet Pepper, Bakers Branch Butternut, Mira Red-Stem Kale, Easter in August Cherry Tomato, and Margie's Melon. See pictures, in that order. All are available in our new store.

12/11/2023

We’ve wrapped up processing winter squash seed here at Care of the Earth Community Farm, and our winter squash numbers are in! We were really happy with both Xiye and Ofelia overall. Xiye once again blew us away in the field and in the kitchen. They are incredibly productive even with high DM pressure and although medium-sweet (average 9.7 Brix) have wonderful flavor! Ofelia also produced well. We would like to improve the depth of flavor in Ofelia and see if we can pull in some genetics from a Xiye gene pool with thicker necks. Overall numbers: Xiye produced 1602 squash from 264 plants at 2’ spacing. The first harvest weighed 3754.4 # and second harvest weighed 3900 #. That is an average of 6.06 fruit/plant and an average weight of 28.99 #/plant. In terms of production per sq.ft., Xiye produced 1.516 #/sq. ft. or 66,034.5 #/acre. Xiye average Brix on 24 fruit was 9.7, with one outlier at almost 11 that we didn’t include in the average. The first harvest of Ofelia was 635 squash from 180 plants with a total weight of 1785.94 #. The second harvest was 231 squash, which weighed 477.5 #. That is an average of 4.81 squash/plant and an average of 13.13 #/plant. In terms of production per sq.ft., Ofelia produced 1.19 #/sq.ft. or 51,892.34 #/acre. The average Brix on 25 fruit from the first harvest was right at 10. And the most exciting!!! Xiye seeds are available on the CWSG website! We start shipping orders on December 15th. We hope to have Ofelia seeds available in a couple seasons.