March 2020 had the largest boom in America’s backyard gardening world since the push for victory gardens during World War II.
Seeded by the coronavirus pandemic and its ripple effect of stockpiling, food shortages, food safety concerns, stay-at-home orders and wanting to avoid crowded grocery stores, gardens have made a huge comeback.
Seed company after seed company can be found with new statements pinned to the top of their websites regarding back orders, shortages, and commitment to previous contracts, as homeowners flood the online world with orders.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds, in Winslow, Maine, reported that it experienced an unprecedented increase in orders on Friday, March 13, when the national emergency was declared for the pandemic.
“We had a 250% surge in visitors to the website, our phones were ringing constantly, and orders came flooding in,” said marketing coordinator Joshua D’Errico.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds was established in 1973, and grows thousands of varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers each year at a farm to trial how well the plants grow, look and taste, for its seed company customers.
Ninety percent of the increase in orders at Johnny’s Selected Seeds came not from wholesale seed stores, but from home gardeners; and about half of those orders were first-time Johnny’s customers. Overall, tomatoes, lettuce, greens, peppers and microgreens are some of the most requested items, according to D’Errico.
“The first-time customers seemed to be new to growing as well, with lots of questions about how to grow their vegetables and what to choose,” D’Errico said. “We have also seen a significant increase in visits to the Growing Library on the Johnny’s website.”
The feed and seed stores they supply have placed second and third orders because of demand. Johnny’s has also seen an increase in retail stores that want to start carrying seeds, ranging from boutiques to hardware stores.
The seed company’s direct-to-market farmers also are reporting that their online CSAs are selling out this spring, which helps to replace lost sales to restaurants and at farmers markets.
“We also hope that new CSA members will continue to support their local farmers when the coronavirus crisis ends,” D’Errico added.
High Mowing Organic Seeds, headquartered in Vermont, grows over 600 heirloom, open-pollinated and hybrid varieties of vegetable, fruit, herb and flower seeds for home gardeners and commercial growers.
Photo by High Mowing Organic Seeds Transplanting lettuce in a field trial at High Mowing Organic Seeds. The company was inundated with so many orders during the pandemic that it was forced to stop accepting orders for a month on its website.
The coronavirus disease, called COVID-19, also began to impact High Mowing’s orders on Friday, March 13, when the national emergency was announced by the White House, and a state of emergency was also put in place by Vermont’s governor.
“This was when we witnessed a 150% increase in transactions on our e-commerce website … as compared to the same day in 2019,” said Andrea Tursini, High Mowing’s director of sales and marketing. “We are open on Saturdays, but closed on Sundays, and by Monday morning (March 16) it was clear that there was a developing consumer rush to purchase seeds, akin to the purchasing rush experienced by every grocery store and pharmacy in our region.”
High Mowing’s timeline shows a huge increase in online sales — Saturday, March 14, saw an 180% increase in web transactions that by Monday, March 16, had soared to a 280% increase in web sales. And, daily through April 10, the seed company had a consistent 200-300% increase in daily orders.
“The majority of our commercial farming customers have already placed their seed orders for the season in December, January or February,” Tursini said, “the surge of sales from March 13 though April 10 were coming from home gardeners, many of whom have never purchased from us before.”
The rate at which High Mowing was receiving seed orders ultimately became unsustainable, given its capacity as a small business. In order to best serve the people who had already placed seed orders with them, and not further delay the delivery of seeds to growers, the company had to suspend orders on its website for several weeks. During that time, it only accepted orders from farmers and seed rack retailers via email or phone. Recently, they have started taking online orders again, but they are recommending that home gardeners who want to buy their seeds seek out a local retailer in their area.
“This decision was not an easy one to make,” Tursini said. “As record-breaking order volumes continued for us, we were facing challenges unlike any we’ve experienced in the history of our seed company. This unprecedented increase in demand, may be causing us to pause, but we are not giving up and we are doing everything we can to supply growers with the seeds they seek in these great times of need. With these new challenges, we have been compelled to make some tough decisions, this one included.”
“Our ethos at High Mowing is to serve growers who are doing good work in the world and feeding their communities wholesome, nutritious food,” she said, “but we also strive to uphold the principles of human and workers’ rights. To that end, it is important to us to proceed with our work, which has been deemed essential by the governor of Vermont, but not at the expense of the health of our staff and community.”
High Mowing staff members who could do their jobs from a remote location were asked to do so for the foreseeable future, and for those who are needed to operate within the warehouse, they have developed a set of sanitary protocols — the requirement to wear a face mask and a daily checklist of symptoms and prerequisites for each staff member to review prior to performing their activities at the physical warehouse location.
The company did re-activate online orders via its website and is now accepting orders again from all types of growers since April 28.
“What is becoming clear is that people are starting to put more value on knowing where their food supply is coming from” Tursini said. “For a lot of people, as we’re seeing, that means raising it themselves — in their backyard, front yard, front porch, windowsill, roof, fire escape — wherever they can. When the victory gardeners of the 1940s experienced their first hardships of growing food from seed, many plots were abandoned after just one season. From our perspective, that needn’t be the case again; there are great resources available to first-time gardeners and farmers — many of them exist right on the High Mowing website and blog. We’re excited at the prospect of more people learning how to feed themselves and their communities, and we’re going to do our best to make sure we’re helping them succeed at growing food from seed.”
Shelby Watson-Hampton is a freelance writer covering Southern Maryland.
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