By Nancy D. Lackey Shaffer | Photos by Viktor Budnik
Plant nurseries can be found in every community. Growers supplying good things to eat or place in garden soil (or a decorative pot) are wonderfully abundant in the local area.
Surprisingly, however, seed suppliers are much less common.
One Ojai-based enterprise has flourished in this niche market: The Plant Good Seed Company. It supplies vegetable, flower and herb seed varieties directly from a network of over a dozen growers, most in California (including six from Ojai), although there are some in the Pacific Northwest, on the East Coast and from Canada as well. Nearly anything a home gardener could want can be found here, including seeds for dye and fiber plants.
The man behind the operation is Quin Shakra.
From Liberal to Land Arts
While many Ventura County farmers come from ag families with generations-long roots in the area, Shakra took a circuitous route to owner and manager of Plant Good Seed. Born in New Hampshire, he grew up in Oregon and double majored in sociology and philosophy, with minors in musicology and creative writing, at the University of Oregon in Eugene. From Sarah Lawrence he earned a master’s degree in history.
But between undergrad and graduate school, he became enamored with the wilderness, spending as much time as he could outdoors.
“I got into primitive skills, identifying plants,” Shakra recalled. “And then I stumbled into the scene here.”
By “here,” he means Ojai, where his mother was living. He came out for a visit after graduation and found a job at Farmer and the Cook, the Meiners Oaks organic farm, market and restaurant owned by farmer Steve Sprinkel and Chef Olivia Chase. Shakra got involved with all aspects of the business, and even cooked on weekends.
Sprinkel had been managing a 1.5-acre plot called Mano Farm and offered to let Shakra take over the lease. In 2009 Shakra joined forces with two friends to make it happen.
“There were three of us in the beginning,” Shakra recalled. “I’m the last friend standing…I was able to steer this from friends dorking around in the field to what it is now.”
Seeds of Change
Mano Farm started as a typical organic farm, supporting itself through its Community Supported Agriculture program. But with such a small space, he realized the limitations of a produce model…and discovered an alternative in seeds.
“You just don’t need as much land for seed production,” Shakra explained. “You don’t need acres and acres. It was a really spare, efficient thing.”
He also came to appreciate the artistry of this approach to growing.
“It’s poetic,” the liberal arts scholar mused. “It’s a full cycle…it’s about working with plants from beginning to end. You get to understand more about the plants. You also have to understand the botany.”
By 2011, seed production was Shakra’s main focus, and The Plant Good Seed Company sprouted. He wasn’t expecting it to be wildly successful — he just liked working with seed. But to his surprise, he was basically the only seed game in town.
“No one else was really working with seed in the area. No one was working with boutique varieties,” he said. “There was a market very quickly. We didn’t realize it was a good business model.”
Steven Sprinkel remembers when he first met Shakra, nearly 20 years ago. “He was tall and reserved…he had been steeped in political activism at the University of Oregon. He was willing and very bright.”
When Shakra expressed interest in having his own farm, Sprinkel was happy to let him take over the Mano Farm lease. Sprinkel recalled that Shakra’s initial focus was on “seeds hard to get or endangered.”
“It was obvious that this was something a lot of people weren’t doing,” Sprinkel said.
He and Shakra have remained friends and colleagues through the years. Sprinkel continues to focus on his farm-to-table business, where produce he grows himself is prepared into delicious fare served at his restaurant, but he also sells several seed varieties through Plant Good Seed, under the name Rancho del Pueblo Farm. And a half acre on his own land is reserved for Shakra’s use.
“It’s always been hard to farm,” Sprinkel said. “I wasn’t using it, so I told Quin he could use that space to grow his perennials.”
Sprinkel appreciates the work Shakra puts in. “A lot of things I grow for Quin take pressure off the farm…There are lots of deer, birds, raccoons. Deer don’t eat basil or calendulas.”
Thriving in Place
Shakra no longer lives in Meiners Oaks. In 2018, he moved to a quarter acre on the East End, which serves as his home, a base of operations for The Plant Good Seed Company and a wild growing area where he concentrates on his pet project: native California seeds.
“There’s a huge interest in native seeds,” Shakra said. It also makes sense for the environment, which has sandy, rocky soil and lots of squirrels. “Hardy shrubs, climate appropriate…I call it squirrel-tolerant agriculture.”
Growing on Ivan’s Meadow, named for Shakra’s 20-year-old Maine Coon — his beloved companion, muse and familiar — are a variety of mints and sages, including native white sage, California mugwort, wild vervain, Mexican elderberry, Matilija poppy and (appropriately) catnip. Some have been transplanted from Thacher Creek, which borders the property. Others are volunteers. All Ivan’s Meadow seeds are certified organic through Oregon Tilth, and available exclusively through Plant Good Seed.
Shakra, however, works with numerous other suppliers, mostly small operations — some are simply growing and harvesting seeds in their own backyards. He stores, packages and ships the entire Plant Good Seed catalog from his home base (and harvests and cleans a lot of it by hand, too). Assisting him in this endeavor is Kendall Hill (who produces seed under the name Faery Folk Farm) and Brindy Holt, who manages inventory in the Portland, Oregon region.
Another key figure at the company is Goda Trakumaite of Weedy Seeds in New Jersey, who illustrated the beautiful Plant Good Seed logo and packaging art. Shakra said her work has always elicited compliments, and been very effective advertising.
“Because of our packaging art and ethos, I’ve never really had to market this company,” he said.
Plant Good Seed features Trakumaite’s work in its seed-saving “comic books,” the company’s illustrated guides for home growers interested in collecting seeds from their own plants. T-shirts, hoodies and tote bags with her designs are also available. Some are colored with plant dyes sourced from the company’s growers, such as Ride or Dye Ojai — a wonderful triple collaboration of which Shakra is particularly proud.
There’s no brick and mortar location; Plant Good Seed operates almost exclusively online, with occasional attendance at the Ojai Farmers Market. “I realized we needed to get online fast and everywhere we could,” Shakra explained, adding that this approach has allowed him to reach a wider market, keep costs down and run a “nimble,” adaptable operation.
Blooming Business
For many years, the company grew organically, if slowly. That all changed in 2020.
“The company went through hyper-acceleration during the pandemic,” Shakra confirmed. “I was not prepared…I could not manage demand.”
Just how much demand? According to Shakra, Plant Good Seed nearly tripled in size over the span of about three years. A big portion of its customer base is the home gardener, and more people were planting vegetables and sprucing up their yards during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Shakra thought it would be a fad; it was not. He even had to close the website for a time due to low inventory. He said that things have finally slowed down somewhat, “but we’re still having record months.”
So now, he’s planning for growth.
“People love seed — there was immediate community support,” Shakra said. “But we had to serve a larger market.”
That meant finding retail customers. Plant Good Seed now has racks of seed packets at Green Thumb Nurseries, and at several New Seasons Markets in the Portland area.
Today, Plant Good Seed does upwards of $400,000 a year in gross sales.
“Pretty good for a company that was bootstrapped by someone with no money,” he said.
Success, however, hasn’t changed Plant Good Seed’s ethos, or Shakra’s hands-on approach.
“I like things that are simple,” he said. “I enjoy the primitive methods. It’s inherently communal. It harkens back to a time when communities were closer knit.”
He also loves the way that growing from seed, nurturing something from its point of origin to full fruit or flower, is something done across all countries, cultures and political divides.
“It’s special that there are so many people from different demographics who want to start from life,” he said. “Somebody who wants to work with a plant from the beginning of its life phase…there’s just something beautiful about that.”
The Plant Good Seed Company
226 West Ojai Avenue, Suite 101-539, Ojai
805.705.9550
www.plantgoodseed.com
