Leek seeds for the kitchen garden that intends to actually produce leek this year. The Leek requires 120 days from seed to table and rewards every one of them.

Leek is a patient, cold-hardy allium that develops its best flavour and character over a long, slow season. Each packet is hermetically vacuum-sealed -- removing the oxygen that causes standard paper seed packets to lose germination viability within approximately one year. State law requires a 3-year viability label on sealed packaging. NASA research on hermetic seed storage indicates viability of up to 10 years under proper conditions. Every packet is non-GMO and germination-tested at independent third-party labs before it earns its Japanese woodblock print artwork.

How to Grow Leek from Seed

Sowing and Germination

Start indoors in late winter. Transplant when pencil-thick. Earthing up produces longer white shanks.

Care and Harvest

Long growing season -- 120-150 days. Harvest autumn through winter. Cold-hardy.

Why Vacuum-Sealed Seeds Last Longer

Standard paper seed packets are permeable to oxygen and moisture -- the two primary causes of seed degradation. Most paper-packaged seeds begin losing germination viability after approximately one year, contributing to significant garden-industry waste: packets purchased, not planted, expired, discarded. Shido Seeds are hermetically vacuum-sealed. The packet does not expire quietly in a drawer. It waits.

About the Packaging

Every Shido seed packet is illustrated in the style of Japanese 1910s woodblock printing -- designed and drawn in-house by Chive, the Toronto ceramics studio that has been exhibiting at the Chelsea Flower Show in London every year and does not, as a matter of principle, sell to big-box retailers. Customers collect the packets as a series. This was not the original plan.