A garden with many plants and trees and a sign saying Edible Schoolyard.

Cultivating a Collard Curriculum

Seed Savers Exchange is excited to announce a multi-partner collaborative effort with Alice Waters’s Edible Schoolyard Project. This effort will continue the work of the Heirloom Collard Project and bring in longtime Seed Savers Exchange partner SeedLinked. The purpose of this project is to create a curriculum for middle school students around growing collard greens.

Learn

Decoding the DNA of Heritage Apples

As an orchard intern, it was my responsibility to learn about the heritage apples grown here and research information about these historical varieties.

Varieties

‘Aunt Mae’s Bibb’ lettuce checks all the boxes

In 1937, Nestor and Amber Keene acquired a very special Bibb lettuce from Nestor’s Aunt Mae Smith of Millheim, Pennsylvania, who had, in turn, received it from “local folks named Zimmerman who had grown it for decades in Brush Valley.”

Varieties

Preorder your garlic now!

There are myriad reasons humans have consumed garlic for thousands of years. For starters, it’s easy to grow, easy to harvest, easy to use, and, yes, easy to enjoy. And this year Seed Savers Exchange is making it easy to order too.

A pile of orange-pink sweet potatoes of various shapes

Growing Guides

Growing Guide: Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes have significant cultural and culinary histories and uses across the globe. Growing sweet potatoes has very different requirements from growing potatoes.

A bouquet of yellow and orange safflowers.

Varieties

‘Lorenzo Trussoni Heirloom’ safflower brings beauty, history to any garden.

In July 2015, a few Seed Savers Exchange preservation staff members drove about an hour-and-a-half from Decorah, Iowa, to Genoa, Wisconsin. Their mission? To meet Marilyn Leum, longtime steward of the ‘Lorenzo Trussoni Heirloom’ safflower, at an annual picnic held on the Fourth of July at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church.

An aerial view of a farm with a large garden, red building, and red barn, surrounded by trees

Events

50th Anniversary Plan Your Trip

Plan your trip to Seed Savers Exchange’s 50th Anniversary Conference & Celebration August 8-9, 2025 at Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa. Everything you need to know about where to stay, parking, food, beverages, pets policies and more.

A pie with a slice taken out on a wooden table, and a basket of small yellow melons and apples.

Recipes

‘Mother Mary’s Pie’ Melon Pie

Recipe submitted by Diane Ott Whealy, SSE co-founder and board member. In 1997, a Minnesota family donated the small, round ‘Mother Mary’s Pie’ melon to Seed Savers Exchange. Named after the donor’s mother, this melon was grown by three generations of the family since about 1914 and frequently used in pies.

Varieties

‘German Pink’: the tomato that started it all

Here at Heritage Farm—the Northeast Iowa home of Seed Savers Exchange—the ‘German Pink’ tomato is perhaps best known as “tomato number one” or “the tomato that started it all.”

Three purple eggplant with green leaves lie on a rock surface

Recipes

Eggplant Caponata

Rustic and versatile, it’s often served cold as an antipasto or appetizer or warm as a side to roast meat or as a pasta sauce or on crusty bread. Chef and SSE board member, Carina Cavagnaro believes the sweet-and-sour sauce paired with the creamy eggplant and briny notes can sway even the biggest eggplant skeptic.

Articles