BC Seed Trials

Save the Date. More Info to Come!

One of the steps we go through before sending seed to farmers for on-farm variety trials is repacking the seeds in labeled envelopes. Here we are packing up pepper seed for the 2019 Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement trials. We go through a lot of effort to make sure we don't mix up the seeds as we repack them and to make seed ready for mailing to farmers right away. Check out the time lapse of this year's packing!... https://youtu.be/ya_2Pu04c58 UBC Farm - Centre for Sustainable Food Systems USC Canada - Seeds of Survival KPU Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems High Mowing Organic Seeds Uprising Seeds Adaptive Seeds Johnny's Selected Seeds West Coast Seeds Seeds of Diversity Canada Seed Savers Exchange Salt Spring Seeds Osborne Quality Seeds Fedco Seeds FarmFolkCityFolk Klippers Organic Acres Heavenly Roots Broadfork Farm Greta's Organic Gardens #bcseeds #bcseedstories

If you are looking for some in-depth seed production training check out Canadian Organic Growers' Online Organic Vegetable Seed Production Course. This is a great way to get advanced training and mentorship in organic seed production! Course starts soon! Details below...... USC Canada - Seeds of Survival UBC Farm - Centre for Sustainable Food Systems KPU Sustainability Challenge Citizen Seed Trial

Have you heard? Building on 3 years of BC Seed Trials, we are unveiling a new 5 year project called Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement (CANOVI)! In a continued collaboration between @ubcfarm and the Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security, we are extending our trialing network across Canada, scaling up existing farmer-led pepper breeding for #organic systems with @mazlabseeds , and starting a carrot breeding project with @organic_seed_alliance and @drdaucus. ... This project is funded as part of the Organic Science Cluster 3 from Agriculture & Agrifood Canada. Come learn more about it and give us your thoughts on pepper and carrot breeding at @ahlyon’s presentation at #coabc2019 this weekend! Pictured: growing carrot lines indoors this winter to create a diverse breeding population for on-farm selection. @usccanada @farmfolkcityfolk #plantbreeding #organicseeds #carrots #peppers #veggies #bcseedstories

If you're heading to the Certified Organic Associations of BC - COABC Conference in Vernon next weekend, come check out Alex Lyon's presentation on carrot breeding as she talks about preliminary BC Seed Trials carrot results, the new Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement project, and (if all goes to plan) hosts a mini-carrot tasting for the audience! Alexandra Lyon UBC Farm - Centre for Sustainable Food Systems Sunshine Farm Seeds Paddy Doherty Klippers Organic Acres Forstbauer Family Natural Food Farm Tiffany Traverse 4 Elements farm Heavenly Roots Helen Jensen Wisbey Veggies KPU Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems USC Canada - Seeds of Survival FarmFolkCityFolk Young Agrarians

Thursday and Friday were big days for the BC Seed Trials with leek evaluations at UBC Farm. Alex Lyon, BC Seed Trials Lead Researcher, and Mel Sylvestre, UBC Farm Seed Hub Coordinator, led the crew through multiple evaluations and measurements in getting the first full look at the 2018 Leek Trials. One of the main evaluation criteria is how winter hardy each variety is. We'll find out soon, though looks like Mel has a favourite already! UBC Farm - Centre for Sustainable Food Systems #bcseeds #bcseedstories Organic Seed Alliance BC Eco Seed Co-op

BC Seeds - November Newsletter: Community Seed Grower Webinar, New Program Funding, Enterprise Budget Consults, and More... - https://mailchi.mp/farmfolkc/december-bc-seed-grower-919941

We're excited to be offering this seed economics webinar for the second time after a great turnout for our spring session. Read more and register below...

Carrot breeding for resilience in ecological systems! Join us on Tuesday at the UBC Farm from 10 to 3:30pm!!

Thank you @organic_seed_alliance for an amazing day of knowledge sharing for participatory carrot breeding! USDA-ARS carrot breeder Phil Simon (@drdaucus) was so helpful and generous in advising farmers and others on starting their own carrot breeding projects. We are very excited that one of the outcomes of the BC Seed Trials project is a new collaboration with Prof. Simon and Micaela Colley and Laurie McKenzie at OSA to improve carrots for organic systems in Canada. PS: If you want to learn more about this new project and help us select carrot populations for participatory plant breeding in BC, register for our carrot field day on October 16! See @ubcfarm website for more details.

Vegetables are amazing! They are colourful, nutritious and diverse!! To keep veg amazing; breeding lines need to be maintained, seed needs to be grown year after year and we need to support our local farmers!! Happy Thanksgiving from #bcseeds! #bcseedstories #thanksgiving #bcfarming #groworganic #seedsecurity

We had a good day evaluating carrots at Wisbey Veggies in Chilliwack yesterday (mostly because we didn't get rained on!). We evaluated tops and several characteristics of the roots before weighing them and putting them into storage. We'll do another evaluation in late winter to see how each plot stores over the winter. UBC Farm - Centre for Sustainable Food Systems Alexandra Lyon SeedLinked

Register for the carrot breeding event!! Only 2 weeks away! See more details below.