The Utopian Seed Project
Celebrating diversity in food and farming through crop and variety trials in the Southeast.
The Utopian Seed Project is a hands in the earth non-profit committed to trialing crops and varieties in the Southeast to support diversity in food and farming. Our utopian vision is to create an engaged network of growers, gardeners, farmers, foodies, cooks and chefs to help educate and celebrate this diversity. We are based in Asheville, NC and are working towards an overarching vision to create food sovereignty in the face of climate change through diverse and regenerative agriculture.
Crop Trial Focus Areas
Exploring Varietal Diveristy in Southern Crops
We are conducting crop variety trials for traditional southern crops to explore the diversity on offer. It’s exciting to realize that the genetic diversity within many crops can give us culinary and climate resilient opportunities.
Tropical Perennials Grown As Temperate Annuals
We are experimenting with growing crops that are native to the tropics, but with some additional care can thrive and provide diverse food in our region. This is an exciting area of crop research with some incredible culinary and potential.
Promoting Underutilized Edibles as Food Crops
We are growing and assessing some of the many wild, native and underutlized food crops yet to be explored or fully appreciated. With some simple selection or breeding work, many of these crops could offer great culinary promise.
In 2020, The People’s Seed joined forces with The Utopian Seed Project. The People’s Seed is the legacy organization of a legendary seed and farming advocate, Tony Kleese. Tony recognized the need to develop a new system for a fair and open seed industry to ensure a sustainable, climate adapted food system for the future. Learn more about our ongoing work HERE.
One step closer!
If you've but been following along, then we've been donated a pretty large multi bay hoop house if we can deconstruct and transport it...
I was a little optimistic in my time-investment-analysis (@lhowerter don't laugh), but with some hard work and some awesome volunteer help, we are getting close to fully deconstructed.
We're currently raising funds to help with some of the reconstruction costs (while we've dreamed of a hoop house for a while, we didn't budget for one..). If you're able to chip in then you can donate via this post!!
#communitysupported #hoophouse #whoscrazyideawasthisanyway
Yacon Syrup! Yesterday we finally made some sweet delicious yacon syrup from our yacon roots. 4 kilograms (~9lbs) of roots made 3 liters (~12.5 cups) of juice which boiled down to 250 ml (1 cup) of syrup.
Full instructions via our latest blog post (link via our bio).
#yacon #boliviansunroot #tuspyacon #yaonsyrup
These are the yacon varieties we grew this year. Three from the @cultivariable improvement program and our 'local' one, which obviously isn't local but has been grown here for a long time (I'm tracking down more info at the moment). The local one looks prettier because it's more recently harvested. We made chips yesterday and today we're making syrup, more details to follow!
#tuspyacon #yacon #boliviansunroot #experimentalroots #andeanrootcrop
Moody skies and intermittent sun at @frannysfarm today. We dug the last of the #yacon #arrowroot and #turmeric before doing collard clean up and a better cold damage assessment.
We talked about the idea of letting the collards go to seed as a WNC cold tolerant landrace and we harvested all the big leaves for eating while pulling away the rotted and damaged ones.
Grateful to our @elonuniversity intern, Liam Falter, and Chef Ashleigh Shanti (@foodordeath_ ) for braving cold weather to help with the harvest. Not mention Roux who likes eating raw turmeric, yacon, arrowroot and collards aka everything!!
#experimentalfarm #collards
Yacon aka Bolivian Sunroot (Smalanthus sonchifolius) is an Andean root crop in the sunflower family that produces crisp and sweet storage tubers over a long growing season.
You can eat yacon raw, but here we sliced and dehydrated. The dried slices have a raisen-y texture and sweetness!
#yacon #boliviansunroot #tuspyacon #experimentalroots #andeanrootcrop
So many colors of collards 💜 💚 💜
#collards #tuspcollards #heirloomcollardsproject
Finally getting round to cleaning the taro! This is a cultivar that we're calling Korean Taro. It has been cultivated by the Pang Family in Georgia for about 50 years. It's very productive and tasty and low in oxalates. It'll be on our Patreon thank you list and we're excited to keep sharing this taro widely! Taro has a long culinary history in Korea and throughout Asia (especially Southeast Asia).
#taro #colocasiaesculenta #tusptaro
I guess we can't really call it a hoop house any more!
We've had some awesome volunteers and some generous donations to make this project a reality!
Thank you to all
Almost half way there. Excited to begin reconstruction!
#communitysupported #hoophouse
It's been a while since I checked on the collards and I was a little nervous given lows of 8F and pretty consistent freezing temps. There was definitely some damage, but a majority of the collards were ALIVE 💚
#collards #collardtrial #tuspcollards #heirloomcollardsproject #heirloomcollards #wintergreens
Pretty excited that at least some of my chaya stem cuttings have rooted out! By the looks of my flat, I have about 16 viable chaya cuttings.
#chaya #plantpropagation #tropicalperennials
The Experimental Farm Notebook
We’ll be publishing updates throughout the growing season so you can stay up to date with what we’re up to and how the experiments are going. This will be an informal narrative of our highs and lows, successes and failures, with photos and fun facts!
Thanks to our Sustaining Sponsors
