Seeds editor
Sage Marchetti
Sage Marchetti has saved her own tomato and bean seed for nineteen years and runs the Hampshire Seed Library. She edits Wintergreen's Seeds section.
Beats
Published in Wintergreen Quarterly
Two Rows of Corn and the Distance Between Them
On a small farm in southern Vermont, the experiment of saving open-pollinated dent corn seed when the neighbour's field is half a mile downwind.
An Allotment in Walthamstow
Plot 47A at the South Grove Allotment Society in east London has been worked by the same family since 1973, and is now in the hands of its third gardener.
An Autumn Border Planned Around Grasses and Seedheads
Sage Marchetti walks an Iowa border designed for September through January, where the gardener has stopped deadheading entirely.
The Watering Can as Design Object
Three cans, a Haws long-reach in galvanised steel, a Bosmere copper, and a French Sèvres-style plastic, weighed and used through a summer in a small Massachusetts greenhouse.
Isolation Distances for the Home Saver
A practical look at what your neighbour's squash patch is doing to your saved seed, and what to do about it on a fifth of an acre.
The Hartford Public Library Seed Room
On the second floor of the main branch, a converted card-catalogue cabinet now holds four hundred and twenty varieties of vegetable and flower seed, free to any library patron with a card.
A Small Farm Near Petaluma
On three acres in west Sonoma County, a former restaurant cook and her husband grow cut flowers, salad greens, and the kind of tomatoes that do not travel well.
Heating a Small Greenhouse with Hot Composting
Sage Marchetti tracks a winter in which a Hampshire grower kept his 80-square-foot greenhouse above freezing using nothing but a steel mesh cylinder of composting horse manure.
Row Covers in May as the First Defence
A 25-by-40 plot in central Vermont, a roll of lightweight floating cover, and the four weeks in spring that decide whether the brassicas will make it to July.
The Northwoods Seed Exchange in March
A community hall in Ely, Minnesota, two hundred and eleven gardeners, and a folding table that has been the centre of a regional seed economy for thirty-one years.
Replacing 800 Square Feet of Lawn with a Wildflower Meadow
Sage Marchetti reports on a three-year conversion in a Hadley, Massachusetts front yard, and the patience the work demands.
No-Till in Heavy Clay Soil
Sage Marchetti spent eight years converting a Northampton kitchen garden from double-dug beds to undisturbed clay. The first three years were the hardest.
Thai Basil in New Jersey, Four Ways
A grower in Maplewood keeps four cultivars in side-by-side rows and tracks which one earns its space.
Saving Brandywine Seed at the Kitchen Counter
A small house in Northampton, a chipped Pyrex bowl, and the four-day ferment that turns a summer tomato into next year's garden.