FAQ

Any seeds marketed as certified organic, including any packets with the USDA Organic seal on them, have been produced with practices verified to be compliant with the USDA National Organic Program. We review the organic certificate for every new grower and seed lot we receive, and our operation is certified organic by Midwest Organic Services Association (MOSA).

All Driftless seeds are GMO-free, and many are also certified organic.

At Driftless Seed Supply, we sell only untreated, non-gmo seeds. None of our seeds are sold with treatments applied to them.

We source as many of our seeds as possible from Midwest growers, including through the seed producers cooperative we are in the process of forming. We choose varieties that our team has trialed extensively and know to be a good fit for Midwest farms and gardens. We look for varieties that perform well over multiple years, are good for fresh eating, and are reasonably tolerant of disease and pest (or so darn tasty it’s worth extra care!).

Sometimes we source varieties from standard supply chains via other companies, in such cases where we feel the absolute best variety cannot be produced by us (such as with Bolero carrot) even though there are other varieties of the crop we could grow. In some cases, we have not found suitable non-hybrid, dependable varieties to offer in place of those bred and supplied by large companies, such as with our Bishop Cauliflower or Eastern Crown broccoli. 

We offer both open pollinated/heirloom and hybrid seeds, because our priority is offering the right varieties for your farm and garden.

We prefer to offer open pollinated and heirloom varieties when we can, because it means it is easier for our coop members to produce the seed regionally. However, we also acknowledge there is an important place for the uniformity and disease resistance that hybrid varieties can provide. 

If a variety is described as an heirloom it means that it has been sold or stewarded for at least 50 years, and is an open pollinated variety (not a hybrid).

The shelf life and storage requirements of seeds vary by crop. Our mentors taught us a rule of thumb that the humidity + temperature in fahrenheit should be less than 100. We store our seed below 50% relative humidity, and in modified chest freezers to keep the temperature low.

Seeds can be stored in freezers for long periods of time if they are sufficiently dried. This can be especially helpful for seeds with short storage lives, like onions. It’s a good idea to test the conditions by freezing a small amount of the seed first, and then removing them and making sure they still germinate. If they do, you are probably ok to freeze the whole seed lot.

While seeds that are stored in conditions above freezing are best off in breathable packaging (like our seed packets, or paper bags), make sure to put seed you are freezing in a plastic bag or jar so that when you remove it from the freezer it doesn’t absorb a lot of moisture as it comes up to ambient temperature. Most of our seeds are dependably good for at least two years.