Growing
Our growing site is located at Baddaford Farm, in South Devon close to Buckfastleigh. The farm itself is around 150 acres, and we are renting one acre for our seed production. We are in a lovely sheltered spot in the bottom of the valley, south-west facing, with deep loamy soil.
We have one polytunnel (more to come) for growing crops which need hot and/or dry conditions to produce top quality seed. We also use isolation cages made from insect mesh to stop some outdoor crops from cross-pollinating which each other such as squashes and cabbages
Vital Seeds HQ
Our HQ is in a converted barn on the same farm.
Here we process our seed, and test its germination quality in our specialised (and ancient!) machines. We use a ‘germination oven’ and two ‘Copenhagen tanks’ (pictured). We test our seed once or twice a year to make sure it’s still top quality.
We also use this space to store our bulk quantities of seed, and to process and pack orders. Everything is managed through an extensive database so that we are able to keep track of the flow of seed and information through the system.