UMass Magazine Online

Winter 2005

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Extended Family

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A Fruitful Partnership

A New Kind of Farm a New Breed of Farmer

Dear One Absent This Long While

Extended Family

Chairman of the Gourd
The founder of Johnny’s Selected Seeds caters to the critical home gardener.

–Deborah Klenotic




	Johnny's Seclected Seeds founder Rob Johnston (photo by Ben Barnhart)

THOUGH IT MAY BE GLAZED with ice, a gardener’s mailbox in winter is a little hothouse of the foxglove and butterhead lettuce, vervain and larkspur that bloom on the pages of the gardening catalogues that arrive daily, transporting the browser to summers past and future.

For gardeners captivated by the wonder of growing plants from seed, or the attractive economy of it, finding the Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalogue in the mailbox is a joy. Perusing it is like tramping around your vegetable beds with a a friend who’s an expert gardener. While you envision fresh carrots lying in a splendid heap next to the stockpot, your companion patiently advises where to plant the carrot seeds, how deep to make the hole, how to fend off wireworm, and when to dig up your harvest. That friend is Rob Johnston ’72C, chair and CEO of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, one of the top specialty seed sellers in the United States.

As a willowy, soft-spoken student at UMass Amherst, Johnston helped start the Yellow Sun Food Co-op, which moved into downtown Amherst after a successful year on campus. In 1973, having decided that quality food begins with seed, Johnston headed north, starting Johnny’s Selected Seeds (named for Johnny Appleseed) on a farm in Albion, Maine.

The company has grown since Johnston’s first patch of pumpkins. Today, Johnny’s employs 90 full-time and 50 seasonal staff at the farm and the company’s seed storage facility in Winslow, Maine. Word-of-mouth about the quality of Johnny’s seeds and service has spread like a vine through the industry. The company has become a popular source for horticulturists who regularly write about it for gardening and women’s magazines, environmental Web sites such as Grist.com, and newspaper home and garden columns. At the height of last year’s growing season, The New York Times cited the company in two articles on a single day.

Spectacled, bearded, and still lean thanks to years of cycling, Johnston lopes along a dirt track past trial beds of arnica, bell peppers, 10 varieties of eucalyptus, and 40 or so types of sunflowers. His crew maintains 40 acres of crops on the 100-acre farm. As he works in the field, the tang of dill scents the August morning air. “We don’t attract home gardeners who say, ‘A carrot is a carrot,’” says Johnston. “The people who buy our seeds are critical gardeners.”

Johnny’s is known for its herbs, cutting flowers, and special produce—four of their vegetables have been chosen as All-America Selection winners, and their 2005 catalogue announces a fifth winner (see box). The company caters to regions with short growing seasons and gives extensive instruction in its catalogue, which many commercial and home gardeners consider a reference book.

“I like that we could be contributing to the small-farm economy and making home gardeners more successful,” Johnston says with quiet pleasure. “Home gardeners make up about 30 percent of our business, and the rest is from specialty and small commercial growers whose produce you’d buy at a farm stand.”

Johnston defines his holy grail: “How do you make a better Waltham Butternut squash? How do you improve on the standard?” Thus the focus at the Albion farm is on developing new varieties and testing other breeders’ varieties for taste and performance rather than producing commercial crops of seeds. “Generally, other farmers do the seed production for us,” explains Johnston. “We do the production on a variety only if there’s no other way we can get the seeds in the volume or quality we need.”

Seed development is the labor-intensive process of breeding—manipulating the mating process and selecting the favorite plants in each generation —and pollinating. This year the Johnny’s crew made more than 3,000 hand pollinations, carefully brushing pollen from male to female blossoms, in their pumpkin and squash breeding nurseries; they also hand-pollinated tomatoes, lettuce, beans, peppers, and cucumbers.

If they leave pollination to nature—bees are their silent workforce—isolation becomes crucial. Today, in fact, a manager approaches Johnston in the field to consult about a neighbor who plans to grow squash in her yard next to one of the company’s farms where they’re growing a special variety of squash for its seeds. Bees could complicate matters. “Ask her if she can hold off,” Johnston says with thoughtful concern, “and we’ll give her all the squash she wants.”

Seed lots (the largest amount of seeds of a certain variety that have a common origin) are stored in the company’s storage facility, where each lot is tested every five months by seed technologists registered with the Society of Commercial Seed Technologists. “No one does quality checks as often as we do,” Johnston points out. “If the seeds don’t make the cut, we donate them to a government agency or a school.”

The facility is so effective that 20-year-old seeds stored there can still grow, notes Johnston. “I just pulled seeds for a grower in Vermont who called and said, ‘Hey, do you still have any of that corn you used to have from that grower in New Hampshire in the 1980s?’”

Though Johnston has reaped success, he says he never focused on expanding the company. “I just kept thinking of how to make better seeds,” he explains. “I’m not much into operations—I’m more into product development. I like to be alone out in the field with my clipboard.”

CREAM OF THE CROP
In its 2005 catalogue, Johnny’s introduces the company’s fifth All-America winner, a hybrid buttercup squash. All-America winners are
chosen in 21 blind-test trials in North America in which judges grow the entry from the seed and rate it for flavor and performance. “For a small seed company like Johnny’s,” says founder Rob Johnston, “having an All-America winner is like having a hit record.” Johnny’s five hits are listed below.

• Bonbon buttercup squash
This hybrid of complex parentage is delicious, says Johnston.

• Diva cucumber
Developed by Janika Eckert, Johnston’s wife, the Diva has a sweet taste, no seeds, and a no-peel skin.

• Baby Bear pumpkin
The slender handles on these pumpkins, about half the size of a normal pie pumpkin, are good for young children’s hands. Their flesh is good for pies, and their seeds are semi-hulled.

• Bright Lights swiss chard
Developed by a New Zealand amateur breeder, and is refined and produced by Johnny’s.

• Sunshine winter squash
This small scarlet squash has bright orange flesh good for mashing, baking, and pie making.

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