Truelove Seeds

09/03/2026

Chris brought Sasha and Kyone from the City Farmer Apprenticeship at Sankofa at Bartram's Garden for seed keeping lessons, and they learned from our interns Jaylin and Ayana how to harvest bitter melon for seed. We also processed their ‘Alabama Blue’ collard, ‘Rouge et Noir’ field pea, ‘Purple Hull’ pea, and onion seeds and ran them through the Winnow Wizard. It’s so nice having them at our farm! We want to go as a group to see theirs one of these days too :)

PS our smooth bitter melons originally come from VietLead and Resilient Roots Farm and they are genetically diverse! Sometimes they have these beautiful white fruits :)

09/03/2026

On Monday I saw this monarch caterpillar hang its behind right beneath an Italian parsley seedhead umbel and four hours later, it was a chrysalis (2nd and 3rd photos). We have a lot of milkweed on the farm for the caterpillars to eat, and plenty of other native pollinator plants where the adult butterflies to drink nectar.

Each fall, the monarch butterfly migrates thousands of miles south to Mexico to hibernate through the winter, sometimes in the exact same trees their great-great-grandparents slept in the year before. They have ancient relationships with many of the nectar plants of the Americas, especially milkweed, the leaves of which gives their caterpillars a strong, toxic chemical defense against predators. I love this butterfly as it knows no borders, and proves the interconnectedness of the many ecosystems of our continent.

Also, why does the monarch chrysalis have that gorgeous gold band? It’s so beautiful and fancy.

Parsley from The Italian Garden Project
Milkweed (Butterly W**d) grew itself and we protect and love it
Bee balm from The Xerces Society

09/01/2026

Philadelphia Master Gardener trainees came for a three-hour seed keeping workshop on Saturday afternoon. After some theory and dialogue and a tour, we harvested and processed seeds together on the farm. This was their last class in their Penn State Extension program, and it was an honor to host them and help them close out this leg of their journey. The last photo is of the compostables, freshly deseeded.

08/28/2026

I spend a lot of time in the pigeon pea trials, so I see a lot of other creatures there too, like these cutie magical humming birds. I hear them revving their lil engines before I even see them.

1. Humming birds pollinating pigeon peas
2. Resin bee pollinating pigeon peas (the plants are very resinous!)
3-5. To***co budworm is our most significant pigeon pea pest
6. But here’s a photo I took last year of an Ichneumonid wasp (Campoletis sonorensis) on a pigeon pea flower. It lays eggs under the skin of young budworms, which hatch and the larva develops inside the caterpillar. They then emerge and pupate on the leaf, attached to the shriveled budworm.
7. Brown Stink Bug maybe trying to scare me away with stinky juices?
8. Another stinker, the Stinkhorn, growing between pigeon pea and tomato beds

08/28/2026

Carolina Mantis is the smaller mantis (compared to the larger Chinese Mantis that I posted eating a dragonfly a few days ago) native to the east coast of the United States. This one hitched a ride on some freshly harvested bee balm seed stalks and blended in so well I had a hard time finding it when I would walk away and come back. Yes, it crawled all the way to my head and I had to take an important phone call while trying not to hurt it or freak out. Then it flew away.

08/28/2026

We have a papaya fruit!! In Philly! I can’t remember how old our four potted papayas are, but I think they were grown in the ground in 2023 and then potted up for winter and kept in pots ever since. They live in the heated greenhouse over winter, and on the farm for the summer. Do you think we have any hope for this fruit ripening??!!

Papayas were first domesticated in what is now Southern Mexico and Central America, where they thrive in canopy gaps, but die off in mature forests.

08/28/2026

White Radish (Fijil Abiyad) seeds from Iraqi Seed Collective

We harvested them almost 2 months ago, but radish seed pods are like these lil sponges for moisture, more so than any other seed pod I’ve worked with in the cabbage family, which usually shatter fairly easily even on humid days. Here in the subtropical summers of Philadelphia, we dry them a few days in the high tunnel and then knock their pods off to continue drying in our dehumidified portion of a partially insulated shipping container. Our coworker Emma stomped them in heavy duty buckets with clean dry boots to remove the seeds, but then I put the chaff through our Winnow Wizard to separate out the pods that still have seeds in them so we can stomp them again. The seedy pods are heavier and denser so they fall in the first (clear) bucket.

Anyone else have tips for producing nice clean radish seed in hot humid areas like ours?

Swipe to go back in time a bit!

The “fijil” seeds that Truelove grew out are originally from al-Mastafa market in Sadr City. The final photo is Wafa’, an Iraqi farmer in Baghdad who is a part of “Guez wa Nahl”, the Iraqi Food Sovereignty Network, holding freshly harvested beets and white radish from her farm in Dora, a neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

These seeds were cultivated by the Iraqi Seed Collective, a group of diasporic people of Mesopotamian heritage who are saving seeds to uplift and preserve ancient culture from the fertile crescent. 10% of the sale of this seed goes to the Iraqi Seed Collective.

Due to years of war, colonialism, and the destruction of the Iraqi national seed bank during the 2003 US invasion, and present-day, ongoing waterway diversion by Turkey and Iran, traditional Iraqi plant varieties and seed saving practices have been disrupted and threatened. We have a responsibility to help keep these endangered varieties – stemming from the dawn of agriculture – in circulation.

08/25/2026

seed keeping with truelove seeds
September 19 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
$20

As summer begins to turn to autumn and we start thinking of harvesting the bounty of our gardens, now is the perfect time to learn how to collect and store seeds.

Join Truelove Seeds co-founder Owen Taylor at Truelove Seeds’ farm at the Schuylkill Center, and get a firsthand look at why saving seed, or seed keeping, is important for the garden, the changing climate, and for preserving cultural legacies. At the farm, explore plant selection, seed keeping techniques, and how careful attention can help adapt seeds to your garden and to your tastes. You’ll get a chance to try your hand at seed collection during class.

Thank you to Schuylkill Center for helping promote and handling registration for this event, and of course for sharing their beautiful property with Truelove! Participants will meet at the Schuylkill Center Visitor Center before making their way to the farm on the property. Registration required. Link in bio.

This is the only public workshop we are offering onsite this year, so please sign up and share with your friends!

08/25/2026

Hello! Please help us get the word out about this job opportunity! We are looking for a Philly area person to join our team with business management and grant writing experience. We are accepting applications until Monday, or until the position is filled. We have some great applications in and are hoping for a few more. Thank you!

JOIN OUR TEAM!

BUSINESS MANAGER

Truelove Seeds is in our tenth year! Until this year, we’ve been funded nearly 100% through seed sales and none of us studied or had much experience with business or fundraising, though we’ve pieced it together with the help of friends and advice from other seed companies :) We are looking for someone on staff to bring that experience and vision to help us continue to serve our beloved customers in growing their diasporic seeds, as well as supporting our team and community partners the best we can.

This role supports the core operations and vision of Truelove Seeds by analyzing financial data and workflow and by designing and implementing new strategies for revenue growth and sustainability. You will coordinate marketing initiatives, develop wholesale accounts, and engage funders through grants, sales, and communications. You’ll help realize our organizational goals in alignment with our values. This position is a good fit for someone comfortable balancing strategy with hands‑on work in a mission- and community-driven agricultural company.

This position is best suited for an organized problem-solver with at least two years of lived business management experience (including sales and fundraising) who is a warm, curious, people-person and passionate about seeds, farms, culture, and community.

Hours/week: 35 hours per week
Pay: $28/hour
Starts: October, 2026
Schedule: Hybrid position including working alongside managers at our office (10am-5pm weekdays), independent asynchronous work, and some farm and community events.

Send cover page and resume to [email protected] with subject line “Truelove Seeds Business Manager - [YOUR NAME]”. We will accept applications until August 31st or until the position is filled. See the job announcement and anticipated timeline at the Our Team page: https://trueloveseeds.com/pages/our-team

08/25/2026

This is a time of plenty, but also a time when the nights are cooling and we all know winter is coming (by all, I especially mean the insects and other non-human animals, and also me and some of you)…

The video buried in this post is gruesome - it’s a praying mantis eating the face off a dragon fly. Everyone is trying to fatten up for a long cold winter, but actually the mantis doesn’t even survive our winters as an adult, so they are filling their gullets to fuel their mating and egg laying so their 12 to 400 babies per ootheca (foamy egg case) will hatch in the spring and start the cycle over without them.

My coworkers and I are out squirreling away seeds to store for the winter, and we are brushing shoulders with bees and wasps doing the same (but they are after pollen and nectar and soft bodied insects), and we are stumbling over voles and mice and groundhogs too. These furry freaks have similar tastes to ours, and it’s frustrating for all of us (humans and rodents both).

Actually, unlike humans, rodents sometimes even eat praying mantis eggs, so they lay them (picture soft serve ice cream coming out of the machine but the machine is a gyrating mantis behind) high on a plant stem, out of reach.

I’m really meandering here. Here are the photos:
1. Monarch caterpillar in the rose milkweed
2. Honey bee on the Isabela gandules
3+4. Blue winged scoliid wasp in the uvilla and skullcap
5+6. Carpenter bee in the garlic chives
7. Mantis eating a dragonfly
8. Carpenter bees in the passionvine