Tired of scrambling around, looking for the perfect gift for the last few people on your list? Sick of the search for that one thing they’ll never forget? Running out of shopping time and patience? Join the club.
Susan von Frank ’03 and her husband Aaron
Owned by Susan von Frank ’03 and her husband, GrowJourney is a “seeds of the month club” that sends members five new packets of seasonally selected, certified organic heirloom gardening seeds each month.
With the mission of igniting a passion for organic gardening while also helping to preserve the rich biodiversity of heirloom seeds, GrowJourney offers members more than just seeds: It brings nutritious food, environmental engagement and biological education right to their door.
PURCHASE: Get a 10% discount on memberships using the code COUGARTEN through 12.22.14.
“We’re trying to help people become more ecologically literate while also saving the planet’s heirloom food seeds, 95 percent of which have been lost over the past century,” says von Frank. “That’s because food production has become even more of a centralized, industrialized process. That process has certainly brought the price of food-like substances down, but it’s driven human health and environmental costs way up.”
It was in resistance to this trend that von Frank and her husband started organic gardening on their half-acre edible landscape in Greenville, S.C.
Heirloom Tomatoes and Beans
“When we were new gardeners, we ran in to tons of problems. First, we had to figure out which seeds to choose: what varieties are good; who do we buy them from; what does hybrid, open-pollinated, organic, etc., mean? Once we selected the seeds we wanted to grow, trying to find out how to grow them organically was extremely challenging,” says von Frank, adding that much of the information they found about organic gardening was unhelpful. “We made a ton of mistakes and learned a lot from those mistakes. We wanted to make organic gardening – from seed selection to growing to harvesting to seed saving – easier, more affordable and less time consuming for anyone interested in gardening, and that’s what GrowJourney is designed to do.”
Von Frank and her husband aren’t new to the entrepreneurial thing: They also are the founders and owners of bitTyrant, a digital media company that develops websites and creates online advertising campaigns.
“The knowledge we’ve obtained through that work has been extremely helpful in starting GrowJourney,” says von Frank, who majored in biology at the College. “Having a degree in biology has been immensely helpful in helping me have a better understanding about plant breeding and how ecosystems work.”
WEBSITE: Find out more about the biology major at the College of Charleston.
And that plays directly into the mission of GrowJourney.
“Agriculture is a big part of the climate change problem, but it has the potential to be a big part of the solution, too,” says von Frank. “By switching to organic methods of food production – which uses fewer fossil fuels and treats the soil as a functional living system and thereby sequesters atmospheric carbon – we could reduce atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels within a few decades.”
It’s a daunting task, but, von Frank says, “anyone with access to a piece of dirt can be part of the solution. Anyone who can support small, local organic farmers who grow new or old open-pollinated, heirloom varieties can be part of the solution.”
Heirloom Tomatoes and Onions
So, be part of the solution – join GrowJourney. Membership not only gets you five new seeds a month, but also share packs, guides and expert advice for growing the seeds and using the plants once harvested. With a mix of herbs, veggies, edible flowers and grains, members never get the same seed variety twice within a year.
“Many of the varieties we grow and offer are unusual, delicious varieties that you’ll never see in a grocery store,” says von Frank, noting that heirloom plants are often more nutritious, and some varieties may even be more drought tolerant and more disease resistant. “We like to think of our heirloom seeds as a giant library that was written over thousands of years and passed down to us by our ancestors.”
GrowJourney’s gift memberships keep that inheritance going and are the perfect holiday gift for anyone interested in growing their own organic food, whether they’re a gardening newbie or a green thumb. Available in one-, three-, six- and 12-month subscriptions, membership to this club might just be the one thing you’ve been looking for all along.
