Sowing Success

Saving Seeds with Kalan Redwood’s Redwood Seeds…

Over in Manton, Kalan Redwood has fields and gardens full of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers. However, instead of enjoying the final product of the plants’ intended use, her focus is on saving the seeds and sharing them with fellow gardeners. Thus, Redwoods Seeds was born, and its seed packet varieties are sold in 60 stores throughout the North State, from the nearby Sweetshoots all the way up to a store in Portland, Ore.

Kalan Redwood started Redwood Seeds 15 years ago after she met her husband, who came from a livestock farming background, and became curious about collecting seeds. “I was very much going around and pulling seeds off bushes and putting them in my pocket,” she recalls. In 2005, the couple started looking to buy land in Northern California and fell in love with a 40-acre parcel in Manton with a creek running through it. “I don’t think we saw the property before the Manton Fire, which totally blackened it. When we first started clearing the land, it was totally covered in soot. The creek didn’t burn, though,” Kalan says.

They bought the property, obtained a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and used it to replant 11 acres of trees, mostly ponderosa pines. Using carbon sequestration, solar power and preserving the habitat, their Manton land is now thriving. Meanwhile, Kalan learned how to process the seeds out of the plants and started working in contracts with Seeds of Change and Fedco before officially launching her own Redwood Seeds packet business in 2009.

The first store that carried Redwood Seeds was Orchard Nutrition in Redding, their second being Chico Natural Foods. “They were very into selling local seeds and supporting us,” she says, remembering how she walked in with a display and seed packets, and they bought everything she had onsite.

Now, 15 years later and more people getting into gardening since the pandemic, Redwood Seeds grows upwards of 150 to 200 varieties of seeds, selling about 50,000 packets per year.

“We’ve been growing the same varieties for 10-plus years. After we grow them out, we’re selecting ones that are better to grow in our climate, but some just naturally do well in this region,” Kalan says. “People buy our seeds from all over the country so we believe our seeds will do well in New Jersey, too, but buying local supports the local economy. We try to specialize in things that are heat tolerant because that’s the big thing in California right now, as well as short season cold crops. With gardening in the valley, we have to really take advantage of those shoulder seasons.”

Some of the best seeds that grow in the North State are the heat-tolerant Bidwell casaba melon, bred by John Bidwell himself, as well as the light-rind Desert King watermelon. Hot peppers – Korean, thin-skinned, and those with prolific leaves – produce in 70 days, and seasonal cherry tomatoes, winter squash and summer squash are always a sure thing. “A couple of years ago we grew cowpeas, and those did well,” Kalan says.

She says processing seeds is much like panning for gold, but very different depending on the variety. To process out wet seeds, you let them ferment, put them in a bucket, swish them around with water and separate out the chaff. The most common low-tech way of processing dry seeds is by hand threshing – putting them in pillowcases or bedsheets and stomping on them to break the seeds away from their husks.

While that is the simplest solution for the personal gardener, Redwood Seeds does have more sophisticated machinery now that can winnow out the chaff much faster. “We have the Winnow Wizard, bigger fans and bigger screens. But it’s still a different process for every variety and type of plant,” Kalan explains. “It used to take an hour to clean lettuce seeds and now it takes 15-20 minutes.”

Redwood Seeds tries to carry varieties not found commercially anywhere else, and ones created in the last 50 years by independent seed breeders. All their seeds are open pollinated so they can be saved, and Kalan regularly sends out emails with gardening tips. Her goal is to turn every gardener into a seed saver.

“I really love getting my children and local kids involved with seed saving during the harvest,” she says of her 12-year-old daughter Maisie and 9-year-old son Thor. “They have grown up in the garden and saving seeds.

“We often have groups of kids over to help process seeds. We grew giant pumpkins this past year and they all had ‘their’ pumpkin picked out and watched them grow all season. Just before Halloween, the kids’ homeschool class came out to the farm to harvest and process the seeds,” says Kalan.

For growing tips, recipes, seed collections, and a how-to guide on seed saving, visit www.redwoodseeds.net. •

redwoodseeds.net