Dan Brisebois , New Society Publishers, 2025, 214 pages

Book Review by Pam Dawling, Author of Sustainable Market Farming: Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres, and The Year-Round Hoophouse: Polytunnels for All Seasons and All Climates

This excellent, well-organized book is a valuable new go-to resource for small-scale vegetable and flower farmers or gardeners planning to grow seed crops alongside produce crops. Whether you do this for your own use or to sell, The Seed Farmer will set you on a successful, sustainable and profitable path. The book also has many tips for experienced seed growers and is equally useful for home gardeners. You can become a larger part of the local food system, protecting yourself from seed supply chain disruptions and ensuring a supply of locally adapted seed within your own control.

This step-by-step manual explains everything clearly. Unlike most seed-growing books, The Seed Farmer helps you get up and running by advocating a simple start your first year, in what Dan calls a First Seed Mindset, growing one seed crop (or 2 or 3) for use on your farm the following year. There is no need to abandon growing food! Dan Brisebois explains how to choose a seed crop that fits in seamlessly with the rest of your growing. This approach makes getting started easy, with little cost in time or money, and no dire consequences if things go wrong. Dan’s writing style is friendly, accessible, compassionate, inspirational and – yes – joyful.

Dan provides help in choosing good seed varieties for your situation, and tips on which crops to leave for later in your career. He shares great hands-on experience growing, harvesting and processing many different crops. He explains the economics of seed growing, and reasons to scale up and sell seeds from your farm. He provides likely seed yields and sets out trustworthy sowing and planting schedules.

Dan’s earlier work on farm planning includes co-authoring Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable Growers. Dan is a founding member of Tourne-Sol co-operative farm, who run a seed business and supply 500 families with weekly CSA produce baskets. Dan writes and teaches well. He is skilled in guiding growers through the intricacies of the slower persistent rhythm of seed growing while not neglecting the weekly rhythm of vegetable production.
Once the First Seed Mindset and experience is acquired, you can progress to more seed crops. This book is one to read from the beginning. Walk, then run and skip!

Choosing Your First Seed Crop
Part 1 of the book gives enough information for growing your first seed crop, ignoring many of the complexities you can consider in the future. Just grow and harvest mature seed of one crop. Understand the limits of your knowledge in Year One: your seed may not be pure and is not saleable. Enjoy sowing it on your own land and seeing what grows.

In choosing your first seed crop, think about what grows easily and well on your farm, and study your seed order to learn which crops would benefit you most if you had your own seed supply. That might be the amount of money you’d save, or the realization that you could develop your own strain that would do better than the seed you are buying.

Self-pollinators (Selfers) are 95% or more pollinated by themselves and so make good First Seed Crops – you can ignore cross-pollination issues and questions of isolation until next year. Choose open-pollinated varieties, because these are stable and will grow predictable results. Beans, peas and lettuce are almost all OPs and make good first seed crops. Fruiting annuals are easiest of all. Just mark off part of the row and keep those fruits until well ripe. Continue Reading…