You may have heard about bio-regional seed and plant adaptation, and you’ll be hearing a lot more about it in the future! This movement, led across the Front Range by MASA Seed Foundation, supports gardening with seeds and starts that have been grown and carefully selected for multiple years in our Boulder County environment. Plants from these seeds have adapted to our specific, challenging growing conditions, and they thrive vigorously here.
They are demonstrably better able to handle heat and drought, and still perform. They’ll increase your gardening success!
Harlequin’s Gardens now carries an expanded selection of MASA seeds, and we plan, in a few months, to bring you vegetable starts grown by MASA from their bio-regionally-adapted seeds! Our favorites include:
Carrots: Kuroda Orange and Purple Dragon. These germinate quickly and successfully, unlike seeds from wetter places. And they’re delicious!
Easter Egg Radish – These colorful, mild radishes are quick to mature. The challenge with radishes here on the Front Range is that after the first, early harvest, subsequent plantings bolt and radishes become hot and woody. But not these! We’ve grown these for nearly a decade, all summer long.
Broadleaf Arugula – One of the earliest greens, with a bit of a (welcome) bite, arugula often wilts and fades in the late spring and summer heat. This variety is so well adapted that harvests extend past others, and it’s proven reliably perennial for us.
Bright Lights Chard, and Lacinato Kale – These nutritious and easy-to-grow greens last longer into the summer without getting bitter, and you can harvest even past the first fall frost (with a little protection!).
MASA Lettuce Seeds – While we love lettuce from all our seed providers, generally speaking these bio-regional seeds grow into lettuce that can take the heat longer without bolting. We have several great varieties.
