The Seeds That Grow the Most Delicious Vegetables

The butternut had it coming. Gigantic and often bland, the squash filled our grocery carts and vexed our dull knives for too many years. Dan Barber, author of The Third Plate and co-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York, decided to do something about it.

Over the past century, hundreds of seed purveyors were gobbled up by bigger food industry players (like Monsanto), who were then bought by agrochemical companies (like Bayer). They patented plant genetics that keep our produce aisles a sea of sameness while breeding seeds that rely on something else these companies sell—pesticides. Inspired and incensed, Barber cofounded Row 7 Seed Company, a collaborative line of seeds and produce that partners breeders, farmers, and chefs on a mission to center delicious vegetables on our dinner plates.

The baby was the honeynut squash, sweet and thin-skinned. The result of a partnership between Barber and Cornell University plant breeder Michael Mazourek that first hit the market in 2015. Barber says honeynut and its cousins (hello, honeypatch) are now grown “on tens of hundreds of acres from coast to coast.”

Row 7 offers seven fruits and vegetables and 23 seeds in its catalog, each a credit to the ingenuity of seed breeders eager to share their creations with the world. Plant breeding is as ancient as farming, a process of cross-pollinating plants until you get the beaut you desire. You can grow Row 7 seeds or find its products at farmers markets and Whole Foods across the country.

Great marketing also helps. Barber’s connection to the dual worlds of farming and fine dining brought Row 7 to restaurants, spreading the word one menu at a time. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, I encountered Row 7’s Badger Flame Beets at Spencer, where chef Abby Olitzky dreams up a new menu every month. She was scouring the Ann Arbor farmers market when she saw “these enormous beets, long and tubular” at the stand from Seeley Farm. She knew exactly what they were—a supersweet beet bred to be less earthy—and filled her cart to roll them to the restaurant. She roasted the Badger Flames in a shallow bath of olive oil, white wine, and thyme, then crushed and served them in a salad with an oniony crème fraîche and hazelnuts. “The color was insane. The most fluorescent bright orange,” she said. I inhaled them.

These days Barber is inundated with breeders who want to partner. (A portion of sales of plants bred at public institutions goes back to help fund further research too.) Next up is a deep purple, near-black sweet potato that Barber exclaimed is extraordinary. The Row 7 team is working on the potato’s name. Purple Majesty? I’m rooting for Purple Nurple. We’ll have to wait and see.

Plant Row 7 Co. seeds at home

Savory garlic meets the mellower, oniony sweetness of leeks in this hybrid allium from breeder Hans Bongers. He spent a decade selecting for straight and uniform plants with a tender (not stringy) texture, so there’s no need to overtrim those dark green tops.

Breeder Irwin Goldman and his lab took about 15 years to develop this mild and sweet beet while studying the exact compound that creates the root veg’s usual “dirty” flavor in the first place (geosmin) and tasting harvest after harvest directly from the field. With orange-red skin and golden flesh, the result is less earthy and astringent and can be eaten raw.

This low-moisture, golf-ball-size spud from second-generation potato breeder Walter De Jong concentrates the very essence of potato flavor into every bite. Its ultra-creamy, white flesh tastes nutty, almost like it’s already been buttered.