165: Penn Parmenter on Seeds
Growing and saving seeds for extreme or challenging climates.
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Since 1992 Penn and her husband Cord have been growing food just above the 8,000 feet level in the Wet Mountains of South Central Colorado. With many years of research and development, they founded Smart Greenhouses LLC and Miss Penn’s Mountain Seeds in 2013,
Miss Penn’s Mountain Seeds is a small, high-altitude, bio-regional seed company servicing the mountain people. As a tomato specialist, she offers over 200 varieties of adapted tomatoes – the Holy Grail of the mountains; as well as around 50 native wildflowers along with a mix of garden flowers, herbs and wild foods.
Penn and Cord have three famished sons, Maximilian, Beauregard and Wulfgar who help them in all aspects of their work.
In this podcast: we hear an enthusiastic and fun guest as Penn chats with Greg about her passion for growing and saving seeds. Penn tells how she got started in the seed business and why she enjoys her job so much. Besides making the act of saving seeds sound really fun, she also explains why it is so important. Her upbeat and positive nature has a great effect, and with the way she describes her crops, it must be like adopting a loved one when you order seeds from her. And if you have a garden, her explanation of how seeds adapt for the area they are grown might just be enough to encourage you to try seed saving on your own.
Listen in and learn about:
- How Penn and Greg are connected
- Being 25 and homesteading with no money and no home
- Starting a garden bed with no running water
- Trying to start a home and a family where everyone was saying it was not feasible
- How she was introduced to Bill McDorman’s seed catalog for high altitude growing
- The holy grail of the mountain and what that meant to her
- How seed saving school changed her life
- Making the change to using the seeds she was already producing
- How she has had so much fun and it is so rewarding for her
- Why seed saving is so essential in extreme growing regions
- How seeds are adapting to the areas
- How there is no garden zone for mountain people
- How seeds change in just one year by adapting to their growing seasons
- What happens with the differences in seasons one year to another
- How things are changing in the Colorado mountains
- What has happened to the pumpkins that she is growing
- Why short season varieties are so important in some areas
- Why the seed days are important and how they are using different seeds
- How Bill McDorman influenced her to start a seed company
- How she recognized her skills as a seed saver
- Why tomatoes are her focus
- How gardeners can learn and have so much satisfaction just with tomato varieties
- Even her husband is a seed saver
- How they are growing Candy Mountain Sweet Corn for the high altitude regions
- Some of the carrots they are growing too
- Why she is offering wildflowers, garden flowers, and even herbs
- How she goes through the time consuming and stinky process of collecting tomato seeds
- Why seeds need to be stored in a steady temperature
- What a typical day is like and why she is covered in seeds so many days
As well as:
- Her failure – apple trees in the mountains and listening to the stories of how impossible it is to grow them in the mountains so she put off replanting the trees that did not live, and what she learned from that
- Her biggest success – her family and how they all work together, their green houses, and providing seeds to the mountain people of Colorado
- Her drive – to save the world and make a difference by responding to the seed crisis by providing seeds that grow well in her extreme climate
- Her advice – Get started! Don’t wait!
Penn’s Book recommendations:
Basic Seed Saving by Bill McDorman (available free with Seed School Online)
The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times
The Tao of Vegetable Gardening: Cultivating Tomatoes, Greens, Peas, Beans, Squash, Joy, and Serenity
Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener’s and Farmer’s Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving, 2nd Edition
How to reach Penn and find her seed catalog:
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