The History of Territorial Seed Company
Roots, Trials & A Regional Mission
In 1979, Steve Solomon wrote the first Territorial Seed catalog and started what would become Territorial Seed Company. His goal was simple and pretty radical for the time: find and offer the best-adapted vegetable varieties for home gardeners in the Pacific Northwest, not just whatever was popular nationally. To do that, he built serious trial gardens and tested varieties side by side through both summer and winter, even under tough conditions like heavy clay soil and limited water.
In those early years, seed production was scrappy and local. Crops were isolated in neighbors’ backyards to preserve purity—things like open-pollinated Brussels sprouts, an heirloom cranberry bean, and Lorane fava for cover cropping. The “warehouse” was drafty, winter work happened around a woodstove, and the whole business ran on community help and reinvested pennies. By the early ’80s, Territorial was already mailing out 100,000 catalogs a year and shipping thousands of copies of Solomon’s 1981 book, “Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades,” while answering daily letters from gardeners who wanted real advice for their climate.
The Johns Family Takes the Helm & Territorial Grows Up
In 1985, Tom and Julie Johns - early customers who shared a do-it-yourself lifestyle of organic gardening, home canning, and self-reliance - answered a small classified ad that read, “...mail order seed company in Lorane for sale.” They bought Territorial Seed from Steve Solomon and became its owners.
They immediately began expanding selection based on what gardeners actually wanted: tomatoes jumped from 15 to 75 varieties, plus more sweet peas, garlic, lettuce for year-round harvest, and even sunflowers for feeding birds. They moved from a purely regional catalog to national and Canadian catalogs. In 1988, they launched the Winter Garden Catalog, focused on cool-season harvests; it remains described as the only dedicated winter gardening catalog in the U.S.
In 1987, to support serious product testing, Tom and Julie invested in 44 acres at London Springs, south of Cottage Grove Lake. That site became the core of Territorial’s trial grounds -where thousands of varieties are still grown out, tasted, and scored for hardiness, flavor, and germination.
Breeding, Trialing & Year-Round Self-Sufficiency
Through the 1990s and 2000s, Territorial kept pushing a core idea: gardeners can and should be able to feed themselves from the backyard, not depend on produce that’s traveled hundreds of miles. The company focused on crops for extended harvest windows, four-season growing, and reliable storage, and continued reclaiming and preserving older open-pollinated varieties that larger suppliers had dropped. Territorial also partnered with breeders (including long-running collaborations with university plant breeders) to produce region-tough, great-tasting varieties and bring them directly to home gardeners.
This was also the era when Territorial really became known for Pacific Northwest–adapted seed, winter gardening lines, and specialty varieties that weren’t always of interest to big commercial seed houses. The farm team kept trialing, saving seed, and maintaining in-house selections so those varieties didn’t disappear.
A New Generation of Stewardship
Today, Territorial continues to operate with the same core philosophy it started with: test everything, keep only what truly performs, and help gardeners grow real food at home. Our research and production farm in the Cascade foothills spans dozens of acres where we trial thousands of varieties every year. Only the most flavorful, resilient, and reliable make it into the catalog.
In 2022, leadership passed to the next generation when Jake and Farren took over the company. They carry forward the mission that began in 1979: helping people become more self-sufficient by growing high-quality, great-tasting food in their own gardens.
The farm is certified organic and managed with a strong focus on soil health, seed purity, and watershed protection. We hold our seed to high germination standards and continue to champion non-GMO, trial-proven varieties for home gardeners.
London Springs Farm
Nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range lies a small valley that is home to London Spring Farms.
This secluded 75 acre farm is surrounded by tall firs and flanked by the crystal-clear Coast Fork River
The Coast Fork River runs through the valley providing irrigation for the farm and serves as the headwaters of the Willamette River. At an elevation of approximately 900 feet, our last frost date typically falls on May 12th and the first frost around September 15th. We have a reasonable growing season, but our cool summer nighttime temperatures make long, hot season crops a challenge. You can understand why we are confident in saying that if it’s offered by us, it will perform well just about anywhere you want to grow a garden.
All of the seed varieties we offer were trialed and evaluated at our farm.
Only crops that have proven to thrive and yield the highest quality crops will receive our stamp of approval and be included in our offerings. In addition, the live plants that we offer and send to you are raised in our farm greenhouses. To ensure we sell only top performing seed, you’ll be interested to know we have established germination standards that are higher than prescribed by the Federal Seed Act. We test every lot of seed we sell to ensure success in your garden. In addition to providing our customers with the highest quality seeds and plants, we strive to operate our farm in an environmentally safe and sustainable manner. We are proud to have the following certifications at our farm: USDA organic by CCOF Certification Services LLC and Salmon-Safe by Salmon-Safe Inc.
Our purpose is to improve people's self-sufficiency and independence by enabling gardeners to produce an abundance of good tasting, fresh from the garden food, twelve months a year.
Safe Seed Pledge
Agriculture and seeds provide the basis upon which our lives depend. We must protect this foundation as a safe and genetically stable source for future generations. For the benefit of all farmers, gardeners and consumers who want an alternative, we pledge that we do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants. The mechanical transfer of genetic material outside of natural reproductive methods and between genera, families or kingdoms, poses great biological risks as well as economic, political, and cultural threats.
We feel that genetically engineered varieties have been insufficiently tested prior to public release. More research and testing is necessary to further assess the potential risks of genetically engineered seeds. Further, we wish to support agricultural progress that leads to healthier soils, genetically diverse agricultural ecosystems and ultimately people and communities. Territorial only offers untreated seed.
Territorial Seed Company Guarantee
At Territorial, our products are backed by our full guarantee. We want our customers to be 100% satisfied with both the seeds and supplies you buy from us. If anything you buy from Territorial proves to be unsatisfactory, we will either replace the item or refund the purchase price, whichever you prefer.
Acknowledging our past…
Territorial had yet to develop its first true leaves when Julie and I purchased the company from Steve Solomon in 1985, who started the business six years earlier. He had a small warehouse and test garden on his five-acre homestead in Lorane, Oregon. There was a lot to learn about running a small mail order seed company, but the best part was growing and evaluating all the cool seed varieties.
Territorial’s first seed growing projects were with fava beans in the early 1980’s. We selected and multiplied a fava variety we named Sweet Lorane with trial seed obtained from the (now called) US Plant Genetics Resource Unit (PGRU) while still in Lorane. It was unique because it was the only small-seeded fava we found that tasted great, making it dual purpose for cover cropping and fresh eating.
In 1985, we started our relationship with Dr. Jim Baggett from Oregon State University. Jim had recently released Oregon Spring, a determinate parthenocarpic (seedless) tomato, but there were no home garden seed companies at that time that could produce it. In fact, major seed producers had no interest in this non-commercial type. We took on this project and, with Jim’s help, we successfully produced the seed. This led to Territorial being the first seed company to grow and offer other “Baggett releases” such as Oregon Star and Legend tomatoes, Pizza Pepper, and many others.
Our ever-expanding trials and a strong desire to grow our own seed, quickly made a larger and permanent land base necessary, and we were fortunate to purchase farm ground close to our own family homestead. In 1987, we established this undeveloped property as London Spring Farms, which is home to our organic seed and plant production operation and Territorial’s organic trial and research facility. Territorial’s farm staff have also selectively bred, and named, new seed varieties such as Umpqua broccoli and Aunt Molly’s ground cherry, which are still popular to this day.
In the early 1990’s we were given the original stock seed of Sweet Meat and Sugar Hubbard, bred in the 1940’s by the Gill Brothers Seed Company out of Portland, Oregon, from seedsman Sandy Fraizer. After studying Gill’s original catalog descriptions and several years of multiplying the seed we were able to reintroduce these hefty winter squash to our customers. Over the years, we have conducted selection and landrace breeding improvement work on hundreds of open-pollinated and heirloom crops. Our goal has been to revitalize familiar but neglected varieties, restoring them to their true type and selecting for the original breeder traits that make growing them worthwhile. A goal that we don’t see shifting for Territorial any time soon.
My wife Julie and I, and now our kids Jake and Farren, have owned and operated Territorial Seed Company for over 40 years. If it wasn’t for the gray in my beard I wouldn’t believe it.
-Tom Johns
As we look towards our future…
Clearly, we are no strangers to change at Territorial. As we look back on the history of our company, many of our customers will recall these humble beginnings when our catalog was printed in black and white and product descriptions were accompanied by illustrations, not photographs. Territorial’s first seed catalog, over 45 years ago, provided solid organic growing information and supplies to help gardeners be successful at growing healthy plants in healthy soil. Our catalog today is not only full of colorful photographs, but we’ve continued to fill those pages with updated culture information and build on a foundation of products we know will reliably produce fresh-from-the-garden food for our customers.
Another area that has continued to evolve throughout the life of our company has been the trial and research farm. In 1988, Tom and Julie would share an update with our customers about a trial farm expansion to a new plot of land in London, Oregon.
This change would allow the business to put down roots where we would expand upon our trial and research program as well as increase our own seed production. All of this was for you, our customers. We wanted to be certain we were always able to provide reliable growing information that was firsthand. Alongside this, we were passionate about keeping seed varieties alive that were falling by the wayside because of a lack of interest in them on a commercial scale. Our customers were home gardeners, and the majority continue to be to this day—because of that, we still maintain some of those original seed lines seen in our first catalogs. Our research farm has become this wonderful example of searching for change while maintaining the past, something that will continue to ring true for us as our company officially entered its 2nd generation of ownership in 2022.
Jake and I always do our best to stay true to where we came from and acknowledge those, such as founder Steve Solomon, who brought us to where we are today. Our parents, Tom and Julie, worked tirelessly to grow the company into what many know it to be now and continue to be constant supporters of our ideas and passions as we work to keep Territorial Seed in the minds of gardeners. However, it’s not just our founder and owners that have brought us to where we are now. From the time a seed is planted at our farm, crops harvested and cleaned, seed packaged in an envelope, to orders picked, and shipments sent—a Territorial employee is part of every single step. We’ve been grateful for the many employees we’ve worked with over the years, some of whom we’ve known our whole lives.
There is so much value in our past. We can’t say that other changes will never happen—that seems impossible in the fast-paced landscape of today. However, we can say that we will always do our best to stay true to where we came from and acknowledge those who brought us here. Throughout our lives we get comfortable with the constant presence of certain things or people, but change is inevitable. For us, we choose to use our past and the people who’ve contributed to it as a guiding light.
Territorial will continue to evolve but we will always come back to our roots.
-Farren Johns
