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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ben Geiger of Garden Window Farm is harvesting black-eyed peas, aka southern peas, this week.
“These are the pods once they’re mostly dry. But you can see we’ve got some of different colors,” Geiger said. “This is a blue-ish gray pod.”
He’s working with the Utopian Seed Project, an Asheville-based nonprofit, to test crops that will be climate resilient.
“Having seeds and crops that are resilient to our weather extremes is the best way to adapt to a changing climate,” Geiger said.
Several years ago, Geiger owned a food truck, then started a farm in Denton in 2020.
“[I] just got real interested in sourcing local ingredients and then kind of went down a rabbit hole of growing them myself,” Geiger said.
He says now he’s fairly hooked on farming.
With this project, he’s contributing to growing ingredients that can withstand the volatile nature of weather.
“Having more resilient plant varieties is definitely very important as we see more weather extreme events,” Geiger said.
The Utopian Seed Project uses crossbreeding to take different varieties to create hybrid versions of crops. Then Geiger can select and refine the seed collection. This year he grew three to four varieties of southern peas.
“These are the black-eyed peas that we’ve already shelled and harvested,” Geiger said.
With the southern peas that performed best, he’ll take those seeds and grow them again next year for a higher yield.
“It’s great. I’m very excited to be able to share our progress with the other growers. We have little groups that we’re able to share our successes, failures, what’s doing the best. Being able to collaborate and be in these groups with other plant breeders and seed savers,” Geiger said. “It makes me feel like there’s good progress to be had.”
Geiger has also been growing climate-resilient collard greens with seeds from the Utopian Seed Project.
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Melody Greene
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