Seed the Stars

11/07/2025

🥂 Happy 40th Birthday, Kelli Varon Wow... fourteen-ish years of growing together sure has been a BEAUTIFUL blur...

🌎 From the places we’ve worked, to the places we’ve wandered, thank you for dancing through life with me!

🌟 Here’s to MY STAR. To the one who makes every trip an adventure, who makes every day a story worth telling.

💚 You are loved, Kelli. Wishing you a wonderful year ahead and for many more memories to share together. - Ryan

11/05/2025

November in Central Florida is an excellent month for planting popular leafy greens, flowers, herbs, and other Florida cool-season crops in the garden.

With shorter days and a refreshing drop in temperature and humidity, conditions are optimal for growing temperate edible plants; started directly from seed or transplanted into the garden.

It’s also a great time to gather seeds from any of your remaining summer crops as they mature, enrich garden beds with compost, mulch around perennials in preparation for winter, and join in Fall Festivals & gardening events!

10/31/2025

🎃 HAPPY HALLOWEEN from Jinx, our black cat and garden guardian!
🐈‍⬛ We give her plenty of treats, but what she brings back through the cat door… well, we’re not quite sure if it’s a trick OR a treat...

👻 Support her snack fund full by ordering seeds at seedthestars.etsy.com

10/29/2025

🎃 Pumpkins are a promiscuous bunch... Their open flowers attract bees, beetles, flies, and even helpful human hands. This morning we gave nature a gentle, but FIRM nudge by hand pollinating female flowers with today’s STUDS to boost yield and MAXIMIZE the genetic diversity of this landrace squash. Every cross adds a little extra SPICE to the pumpkin party...

🐝 Landrace gardening traditionally thrives on wild, promiscuous pollination of a genetically diverse population that goes through survival of the fittest, and lastly, a taste test! Over time, this creates crops that are hardy, resilient, flavorful, and well adapted to your local home soil.

🌴 The 'Seminole Pumpkin' was stewarded for generations by the Indigenous peoples of Florida through crossing several varieties of Cucurbita moschata, carrying the playful spirit of diversity and local adaptation gardening forward.

👀 Find 'Seminole Pumpkin' seed packets at seedthestars.etsy.com grown locally at in Central Florida and GET IN on this local legacy and delicacy.

10/28/2025

🌿 Find the Winter Greens Collection at seedthestars.etsy.com and grow fresh, vibrant greens all winter long!

🥬 Cool weather in Florida means it’s time to plant your best garden yet... This locally grown set of eight hardy, flavorful greens thrives through our mild winters, handling the ups and downs of the season with ease.

💚 Proven STAR performers in our bioregion, these varieties stay strong through chilly nights and sunny days while keeping pest issues to a minimum.

🌱 Whether you’re growing in raised beds, pots, or garden rows, they’ll bring color, nutrition, and life to your Florida garden all winter long.

🥬 What’s included
✨ Cilantro ‘Slow Bolt’
✨ Bok Choy
✨ Komatsuna
✨ Mizuna
✨ Arugula
✨ Florida Heirloom Broadleaf Mustard
✨ Ethiopian Kale
✨ Romaine Lettuce ‘Parris Island Cos’

⭐ Find the collection at seedthestars.etsy.com
📍 Grown locally in Florida by

10/27/2025

TRUE Datil Peppers coming in hot! 🔥

There are a lot of false Datil seeds circulating from a major seed company, so we were very intentional about sourcing a truly authentic lineage for this special Saint Augustine, Florida heirloom. The seed we started with came directly from a Florida grower whose family has stewarded Datil peppers for generations.

Our seeds will be available later in the season. For now, we’re just excited to finally start harvesting seed and getting to taste this Florida star! ✨

10/26/2025

Harvesting some Papalo seeds from these volunteer plants before some afternoon rain rolls in.

Papalo is a heat-tolerant herb that thrives through our Florida summers and has a flavor similar to cilantro (which prefers the cool season here).

💨 Papalo seeds are dispersed by the wind. Each one has a little fluffy parachute, similar to a dandelion, that helps it travel.

🌱 We’ll definitely have plenty of volunteers popping up throughout the yard and even between the pavers, just like these plants did. It’s one of our favorite things to see where self-seeded plants decide to grow around our seed processing area.

What volunteer plant were you excited to see in your garden this year?

10/23/2025

We’re sad to miss this year’s Convergence as we’ll be out of town, but we can’t recommend this event enough!

If you’re looking to connect with Florida growers, build community, and learn new skills, this is the gathering to attend!

If you want to spend one day getting as much content as possible on all things homesteading we’ve got a ticket for just that. Saturday is our Earthskills Village day where we have 6 sessions of classes with 9 teachers teaching everything from cheese making to large scale agroforestry. If you are just getting into this we have a beginners village where we focus on design and methods of gardening. If you want to learn about mushrooms we have 3 of the top experts in Florida teaching everything from extracts to growing. If you want to learn about bamboo building we will have a treatment system set up, intro to beginner classes, as well as a beautiful building you can see. If you want to learn about aquaponics we have a class on setting up an aquaponics system including catching the fish for it. If you want to learn about agroforestry we installed a 1/2 acre system 6 weeks ago and will be adding to it as well as installing small backyard systems. If you want to learn about herbal medicine we have several teachers focussing on medicinal plants & extracts. If you want to learn about processing we have classes on cheese making, and bread making, bamboo tea, & small animal harvesting. Carpentry, archery, flower mandalas, container gardens, natural navigation, bamboo biochar, kombucha, birthing doula, death doula, indigenous wisdom speakers, and more - come for the day stay for the weekend 💚

10/22/2025

👀 The magical 'Black' Roselle is on her way!

This is our second season growing out this stunning variety for seed after an initial trial year.

Last year our seed crop weathered two hurricanes, so we’re looking forward to better seed-saving conditions this time around to hopefully boost germination on this late-blooming beauty.

Keep an eye out if you're also growing our 'Towering Thai' Roselle which begins to bloom at the same time as 'Black' Roselle.

🌸 Growing Notes: We start seeds of all our Roselle varieties around or after the Spring Equinox in March to take advantage of the increase in daylight hours and limit early blooming. Roselle is a day-length-sensitive plant that thrives in long days and begins to bloom as the days grow shorter later in the season.

10/22/2025

🫠 Saving Marigold seeds for SPORT... Stocking up for a cover crop!
🏴‍☠️ BTW... 20% OFF seeds this week at seedthestars.etsy.com

🏵️ We grow these iconic, long-blooming, pollinator-attracting flowers as a dense cover crop with the intention to suppress nematodes...

🪱 Marigolds cannot completely eradicate nematodes, however their roots produce the exudate alpha-terthienyl which can aid in the reduction of parasitic Root Knot Nematode populations.

☘️ In order to achieve suppression, Marigolds must be densely planted & worked into the soil every season before your crops.

🫘 Fall seed sale alert!

💰 Promo Code: FALLSALE20 at seedthestars.etsy.com