December 2025

Greetings Friends, New and Old, and Happy Winter!

Nestled under a blanket of shimmering snow, two seedy folks have settled down to a nice cuppa chaga chai that has been piping away on the woodstove. Would you care to sit a spell and join us? We are having a bit of a chat to review how this past growing season informed and sculpted the varieties we are offering this year.

Welcome!

This year presented us with a unique set of environmental challenges here in the Northeast. First a slow start to the season with a long cold and wet spring and then severe droughts that came with alarming realities like wells drying up and local springs running low. But what does this all mean for a seed saver?

The conditions and environmental challenges of the growing season help guide what strengths we are looking for within a variety. At Bhoomi Devi Seeds we dry farm, meaning we do not irrigate our crops beyond time of transplant. We feel that it is critical to put our varieties through rigorous conditions and select for drought resistance as we experience the fall out of climate change. Any genetic resilience provides an exponential benefit to future growers in years of drought stress or even just a periodic dry spell. We do this selection process knowing that there are many reasons a grower may not have ready access to water. Sometimes a growing location is too far from a water source, irrigating can be time intensive, auxiliary fields on farms often do not have irrigation. Or sometimes, the ground water is depleted. During extreme dry periods, soil can become so dry it becomes hydrophobic and water will simply run off the surface, making a small rain or light irrigation during a dry period inconsequential. Water needs to be introduced slowly to saturate the soil surface fully in order for deep and penetrating amounts of water to be received by the soil. We feel that intentionally selecting tolerance to drought stress can help alleviate the pressure on precious water sources during these challenging conditions. In addition to regionally adapted varieties, maintaining soil moisture and water conservation can be achieved by using cover crops and mulch to prevent water evaporation from the soil’s surface.

We had several varieties shine during this intense growing season, one being Dagbon Pearl Millet. This nine foot tall grass hailing from Northern Ghana has been bred for extreme drought conditions and was thriving all season long. This is an excellent pantry staple for the homestead gardener with its hulless grain— but be warned, the birds also love Dagbon! Keep a sharp eye out as it matures. (However Dragon’s Claw, a hulled millet variety, the birds leave untouched, mysteriously!)

A very exciting observation this season was how Meloncumbers outperformed most of our Cucumber varieties under drought pressure. Cucumbers can be very water intensive in dry climes because drought can cause cucumbers to turn bitter and produce lower yields. Cucumbers are known for their requirement of consistant and even irrigation for peak flavor. Meloncumber (also called Cucumber Melon) is botanically a melon bred to be eaten in the ‘green’ stage— like a cucumber! Hailing from Northern Africa and further selected in the Mediterranean and the Middle East for many hundreds of year. They produced a delicious crop of sweet and juicy fruit with no bitterness, displayed vigorous growth and heavy yields into late summer.

Another standout variety was Guatemalan Green Ayote Landrace Butternut which yielded well in comparison to other squash varieties we were trialing this year. Some varieties ended up aborting all of their fruits and did not yield a single squash due to drought stress but the Ayote landrace put forth a very admirable crop without irrigation. The flesh was sweet, with high dry matter and great flavor and is lasting very well in storage. We crossed Ayote with a mini butternut, which also fared quite well in the drought. Crossings of these two squash make up our Ancestors Butternut Landrace, which has been a very exciting project to embark upon.

The Ancestors Butternut breeding project was born out of a response to the increasing difficulty to grow kabocha-type squashes in the Northeast. We recall even just ten years ago how easy it was to grow kabocha squash and how widely available they were at farmers markets. Since squash vine borers have become a consistent issue, growing kabochas, buttercups and other C. maximas organically has become much more difficult. This is where moschatas enter the picture. C. moschatas (butternut and tropical squash types) are resistant to vine borers because they have solid, woody stems. Maximas, on the other hand, have very succulent fleshy stems, delicious to the borers! Our objective is to produce squash with similar eating quality to C. maxima (think high dry matter and high sugar content) with the borer resistance of moschatas. We are using varieties that have already been worked upon, such as Honeynut (a moschata and maxima interspecific cross) and other varieties that exhibit inherent superior taste experience, such as the Guatemalan Green Ayote Landrace Butternut. We are also creating interspecific crosses between C. moschata and C. maxima. An interspecific cross is a naturally occurring cross pollination of different species of the same genus. A rare occurrence in nature, interspecific crosses become more possible with human intervention. Rutabagas, Tetsukabuto squash, mustard greens and Ethiopian kale are all examples of naturally occurring or human created interspecific crosses.

Our shop is Now Open!

We have many more new varieties we are introducing this year, along with our tried and true favorites that can all be found here!

We also have our annual Seed CSA, in which you receive a 15% discount on 12 packets, as our way of saying thank you for supporting our endeavors! Signs up for the CSA ends March 1. Learn more here!

Thanks for joining us by the fireside!

Happy Holiday Season,

Olivia & Noah