The Good Non-GMO Seeds

“My hus­band and I moved to Arizona a few years ago and found our­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where we wanted to start a busi­ness,” Kristen Mitchell, co-founder of Humble Seed, told Organic Connections. “With our new com­pany we wanted to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where we felt like we were help­ing peo­ple get back to basics, ver­sus tak­ing advan­tage of peo­ple dur­ing preda­tory times. A lot of peo­ple were out of jobs, and there were home fore­clo­sures and what have you. We wanted to start some­thing pos­i­tive dur­ing bleak eco­nomic times.

“Jim comes from a com­mod­ity trad­ing back­ground and I have a biol­ogy degree. A gar­den seed com­pany was some­thing that we could put both of our pas­sions behind.”

Within their moti­va­tion was the desire to assist peo­ple in grow­ing their own pro­duce. “Right now we’re in the midst of a huge can­taloupe fiasco from Colorado, and peo­ple are get­ting sick,” Mitchell said. “So there are a lot of ques­tions these days about where our food is com­ing from. In addi­tion to that impor­tant point, grow­ing your own food is eco­nom­i­cal and healthy. There are a hun­dred and one pos­i­tive rea­sons for hav­ing a lit­tle herb gar­den in your kitchen or a full blown gar­den out back that your fam­ily can ben­e­fit from in so many ways.”

From an envi­ron­men­tal and health stand­point, the Mitchells also wanted their seeds to be as nature intended. “Our first goal was to have a non-GMO seed,” Mitchell explained. “We just didn’t want any­thing genet­i­cally mod­i­fied within our inventory.

“Our sec­ond goal was to have every­thing be non-hybrid, which means you can save seeds from your pro­duce and know they’re going to grow for you next year. So much con­ven­tional pro­duce right now is hybrid, because they want to trans­port toma­toes 1,500 miles to their des­ti­na­tion, or desire water­melon not to have seed. In order to do things like that, you’ve got to take a lit­tle bit of this and a lit­tle bit of that and cre­ate this plant in order to do it. The down­fall is that those seeds then are ster­ile or can’t be planted again next year. We wanted our cus­tomers to have a one-time invest­ment in Humble Seed; it starts with gar­den­ing and then con­tin­ues on for years to come.”

In addi­tion to these con­stant qual­i­fi­ca­tions, many of the seeds avail­able from Humble Seed are of organic and heir­loom varieties.

As they began research­ing to start their busi­ness, the Mitchells real­ized they had another pur­pose: to make gar­den­ing a cool thing to do. “It always seems like when you look at seed packs there’s a photo from the 1970s of a head of broc­coli,” said Mitchell. “There might be some art­work but it seems to cater toward age 75 and older. We liked the idea of what Starbucks did to the cof­fee bean—just esca­lat­ing it to a respectable place and bring­ing some fun into it. We’re sim­ply try­ing to make it cool, hip, fun and engaging.”

The pack­ag­ing makes it easy for a gar­dener to decide what to do—what the Mitchells call “grab and go gar­dens.” “When we were in the gar­den­ing depart­ments of var­i­ous stores, we would see peo­ple go to these packs or racks and wan­der around, not know­ing what to get, very dis­en­gaged,” Mitchell recalled. “Additionally, these packs were some­times stored out­side and exposed to the ele­ments, falling apart, and we thought that that was a very poor way for seeds to be treated and also not very engag­ing for the cus­tomer. So we saw a win-win for both our retail­ers and our cus­tomers: our retail­ers get eye-catching pack­ag­ing, and our cus­tomers get grab-and-go gar­dens. All of our seeds are packed in reseal­able Mylar bags as well, which pro­tect the seeds, allow­ing for ‘plant now or later’ convenience.”

The Humble Seed assis­tance doesn’t end with the pur­chase of seeds. “We act as a con­duit for help­ful infor­ma­tion,” Mitchell con­tin­ued. “We’re very closely tied to our local Permaculture Guild and help peo­ple iden­tify the resources right in their own back­yard; regard­less of where you are in this coun­try there’s an exten­sion office, there’s a mas­ter gar­dener there wait­ing to help.”

The Mitchells also pro­vide assis­tance through social net­work­ing. “We get ques­tions on Facebook quite often, and we’ll post answers back out to our com­mu­nity. There’s a wealth of infor­ma­tion right there at their fingertips.”

The response to Humble Seed from the pub­lic clearly shows they’re on the right track, and the Mitchells are only look­ing for­ward. “Response has been over­whelm­ing,” Mitchell con­cluded. “Every time I go onto my Facebook page and I see over 12,000 fol­low­ers there, it’s very hum­bling. People are just so engaged and emo­tion­ally con­nected to it; they remem­ber them­selves gar­den­ing, or their grandma gar­den­ing. It’s some­thing that they want to get back to and we’re just try­ing to make it easy for them to do so.”

For more infor­ma­tion, or to shop for seeds, visit www.humbleseed.com.