ISSUE 95, HEIRLOOM SEED COMPANIES, 1: Victory Seeds

Victory Seeds

Certain seed companies perform the admirable work of keeping classic plants available. Nowadays less than four global companies control over half of the germplasm available on the market. The suppliers I treat in this series are independent of the big four--Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina and Limagrain. Those large corporations seek proprietary control of the genetics of the seeds they sell, so their efforts tend to breeding patentable new cultivars. The classic field crops, garden ingredients, and fruit trees—those ingredients upon which world cuisines were erected, are landraces of ancient standing, or heirlooms created before the invention of gene editing some 50 years ago. Landraces and most heirlooms are in the public domain so cannot be monopolized.

Each of the companies I discuss in this series has specialties and particular items that compel attention because of their rarity, culinary interest, or historical importance. I will highlight these items. I also want to tell something of the human story of these businesses.

Formed on the family farm of Mike and Sue Dutton near Liberal, Oregon in the eastern Willamette Valley, Victory Seeds from its inception in the mid 1990s sought the preservation of open-pollinated, heirloom vegetables and flowers. In 2022 its ownership passed to Dave Whitinger of Dave’s Garden fame. It remains a family business, though the Whitinger family resides in Texas. Because the seeds have been grown out by a geographically dispersed network of specialist cultivators, the relocation of the HQ has not disrupted the mission or offerings of the company. From the outset Victory Seeds has offered both organic and treated seeds. It also offers the most interesting conventionally bred hybrid vegetables as well as heirloom varieties. Consider tomatoes. This is the great era of small fruited tomatoes—the grape or cherry tomato varieties in myriad colors. Victory has some of the most striking of the recently developed strains. Yet other companies offer similar arrays. Victory is unparalleled however in its offering of dwarf tomatoes—a rich trove of large fruited small stature varieties appears on the Victory Webpage. Craig LeHoullier (he who brought the Cherokee Purple to world attention) and Patrina Nuske-Small (Australian breeder) began crossing classic heirloom varieties with dwarf varieties to create small stature versions of classic tomatoes. Their creations have all been released under the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI). Yet the most splendid and astonishing tomato collection maintained by Victory is the trove of Livingston varieties. A. W. Livingston was largely responsible for breeding the modern tomato as we know it from the Civil War to the end of the 19^th century. The red coloration, smooth unlobed body, the spheroidal configuration, the simultaneous ripening of center and surface—all are Livingston developments worked out in a series of releases. Victory stewards 21 of them, including three gold colored varieties. Of the Livingston tomatoes, the most important that hasn’t been saved is the Acme. But Victory has the others.

Victory has some surprisingly ample offerings of southern peas (cow peas), with a good range of pink eyed purple hull, cream, lady, and brown crowders. It is the best selection offered by a western seed company. There were individual vegetables that caught my attention because of their rarity: the “Old Fashioned Mustard Greens,” the Perkins Long Pod Okra, Willet’s Wonder Pea, the Tennessee Sweet Potato Squash and the Boston Marrow Squash. the Congo Watermelon, the green fleshed Eden Gem muskmelon.

Another unparalleled abundance of choice is the section on tobacco varieties—147!

Yes the collard selections seem limited, the turnips predictable, and the white salsify restricted to the solitary Mammoth Island style that is widely carried. (Is Roughwood the only seed company that offers alternative types of white salsify?)

While the offerings are the great magnet for Victory’s product line, they get additional favorability points for their invariably high germination rate, the richness of the historical description of numbers of plants, the judicious selection of recent creations of the best farm based breeders. They maintain a youtube channel, and their website sports a blog, but the prize information is in the textual descriptions.

https://victoryseeds.com/