FRUITION SEEDS

A patchwork of farm fields in the rolling hills of New York's agricultural Finger Lakes region has literally gone to seed - all for the benefit of gardeners and eaters.

- Tovah Martin

The founding farmers at Fruition Seeds strive to find the lettuce that won't bolt when temperatures skyrocket during heat waves, and they ferret out normally long-season melons, vegetables, and flowers bred to suit their Zone 5 climate in Naples, New York.

Owner Petra Page-Mann knows her growing season intimately and breeds or curates plant varieties that will perform in short but intense growing seasons. This is Fruition Seeds' signature difference. She speaks fervently and proudly about the varieties honed for the cool Northeast rather than California, China, and Israel, where most garden seeds are bred and grown.

"I can't remember a time when I wasn't working with seeds," Page-Mann says. As a precocious 6-year-old, she was saving bean and tomato seeds from the 20×20-foot plot she gardened with her dad.

"I just took it for granted," she says. Similarly, she didn't think twice about the climate in her hometown of Naples. The fact that she grew food where summers are brief and winters are brutal was simply a way of life. Selecting seeds from the tomatoes that were tastiest and ripened rapidly was just common sense.