They have to go through certain conditions to induce them from vegetative to reproductive growth. In addition to the challenges brought by disease and weather, plants like carrots and cabbage are a biennial endeavor. While our state is a great place to grow seed, doing so is not always an easy feat, says du Toit. The land there is well suited to a variety of seed crops including carrots, onions, parsley, dill, radish, kohlrabi, and turnips. Seed production spread east across the Cascades in the 1950s, after the Columbia Basin Project brought irrigation to nearly 700,000 acres. What Tillinghast, Hulbert, and their descendants figured out is that northwest Washington is an ideal location for growing seed for vegetables like spinach, radish, and cabbage (again, Washington provides the majority of the nation’s cabbage seed). Today his grandsons Tom and Jack Hulbert ’85 run Skagit Seed Services Inc., one of the five major seed producers in the valley. In addition to running a dairy, his family raised vegetables for seed for a collection of local companies. experimented with what crops would grow best in the alluvial soil. Washington’s seed history started the late 1880s, when an entrepreneur named Alvinza Gardner Tillinghast opened a seed company in the valley and began contracting with local farmers to grow cabbage seed, which he then packaged and sold around the country.Įarly Skagit Valley farmers like James H.
It’s in the 60s and, while clouds fill the sky, the sun breaks through and traces its way across the valley floor. The August day of my drive through the valley with Roozen is a prime example. Places like Salinas Valley may be ideal for growing spinach plants to harvest for eating, but to get seed “you have to have long days and mild summers.” And for that, Skagit Valley is ideal. And in well-known agricultural settings like California, “the summer days are just too short,” says Lindsey du Toit, a WSU plant pathologist who works at the Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center in Mount Vernon. Most other places have the wrong climate.
Because of fungus concerns, for example, spinach for seed must be in a lengthy rotation, sometimes not returning to the same field for 12 to 15 years.
The region is one of the rare spots in the world where spinach seed can be grown, says Don McMoran, the Skagit County WSU extension agent. While the valley is famous for tulips, most people don’t know that 75 percent of the nation’s spinach seed comes from here.
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