The Seed Underground

Woman-owned local business

We take care of the small details and believe that each daily action can make an impact.

Happiest at home in my garden, observing all the life flocking to the little haven I created while raising a family. My garden became my creative outlet and then became so much more. Healing my body, restoring my peace and feeding me and my growing family.

I started off like everyone else and planted a few edible plants, firstly focusing on medicinal and healing plants to help with my gut issues. The more I grew, the more obsessed I become with varieties, especially after connecting with so many growers from around the world on my instagram @lifeisanorganicgarden and seeing the wonderful colours, shapes and forms so many fruits and vegetables came in. It became my mission to try and grow as many of those varieties as I could, delighting in the unique and rare. Quickly tomatoes became my passion. The breeders are creating more and more varieties each passing year with their beauty surpassing the season before and every year I add too many to my collection. It's not only about tomatoes though, I love growing 5-20 varieties of every vegetable and flower too. The garden has become a unique, hugely biodiverse and magical little oasis where many come to seek solace or to just be heard.

Now that my children are all adults I finally have the time to share my incredible range of seeds with fellow South African growers and I am sourcing more and more each season to offer something new regularly. It feels wonderful to finally use my passion to encourage South Africans to grow healthier, nutrient dense food that is more appealing, astoundingly beautiful actually... with flavours where you can't help but sound out the tastes, because words aren't enough.

The Seed Underground Ethos

Organic

Every seed you purchase is from plants grown with zero chemicals. The garden is fed mainly by the circle of its life...homemade compost, plant teas, vermicompost, worm tea and ferments. Where bought soil is needed I choose 100% organic.

Pest pressure is handled using hand removal, covering fruits with cloth or using sacrificial plants to trap unwanted insects.

Permaculture

It is not difficult to practise permaculture when you are a plant collector. You won't find rows of identical plants, instead there is a vast array living and thriving together, jostling their way for space, light and nutrients, becoming stronger, more resilient plants.

With such a wide assortment of plants, a host of good and bad life forms arrive achieving balance if all goes well. Rarely is there a need to interfere. Instead I write off certain crops and celebrate those which nature allows me to harvest.

Biodiversity

Organic + Permaculture = Biodiversity

A miraculous journey began 26 years ago moving onto my property. The more I added, nature matched me and the wild life arrived. Chameleons, leopard toads, a cuckoo, owls, hawks and yes shrews and mice too. I find empty snail shells in all my beds and piles of them under pots. perhaps its the lizards or garden snakes.

Dragon flies breed as fast as the mosquitoes, but the geckos take care of those!

Empty beds fill themselves immediately with flowers and even vegetables. There is no space for weeds, but I've encouraged a few to grow.

Nothing leaves my property, cuttings make fencing, trellises and compost. It's a closed self sustainable cycle.