Craig’s Selected Questions: An Interview with Rob Johnston, Founder of Johnny’s Selected Seeds

When I started gardening in the early 1980’s, spring meant a trip to the local nursery to buy whatever they carried in the familiar 6-paks. After a few years of seeing the same old varieties growing in my garden, I entered the phase of starting my plants from seeds. Among the large selection of seed catalogs that arrived in the mail, the one that really caught my eye was from a small company in Maine called Johnny’s Selected Seeds. It was evident in reading through their catalog that the people who ran the company were concerned with quality on many levels, from the selection of seeds that they offered to the informative and comprehensive growing information. Everything that I ordered from JSS was wonderful, be it Nepal tomato, Gold Crest bell pepper, E-Z Pick bush bean, or Rosalita lettuce. That was 10 years ago, and I am pleased to say that unlike the latest hot restaurant that declines in quality and gets lazy with success, JSS just keeps getting better and better as time goes by.

A few years ago they became one of the first high profile seed company to offer an excellent selection of heirloom tomatoes. Along with popular open-pollinated varieties Kotlas, Oregon Spring, Bellstar, Whippersnapper, Washington Cherry, Taxi, Gold Dust and Gold Nugget are such delicious and interesting varieties as Pruden’s Purple, Cherokee Purple, German, Debarao, Giant Paste, Great White, Valencia, Wonder Light, Striped German, Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine, Cuostralee, and Matt’s Wild Cherry. JSS has also offered Anna Russian and Tiger Tom in the past, and they may reappear in future catalogs. One just gets the sense that they love what they do there, and want to do it continually better, to serve the gardening public.

There would not be a Johnny’s Selected Seeds without its founder, Rob Johnston. Rob and I have been chatting occasionally over the phone for at least 5 years. We cover a lot of ground in our phone conversations. Although the initial cause for the call is something related to gardening, we often stray into other areas of common interest. Over the last few years, we have come to realize that we share interests in, among other things, weather, maps, and music, along with our obvious passion for heirloom tomatoes. Rob is a willing audience for testing everything that Carolyn and I sent his way. And, much to our delight, a good number of our favorites can be found in the JSS catalog. Obviously, Rob has good taste! Since Carolyn and I are so fond of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, we felt that Rob would be an excellent choice for an interview. So, armed with a list of questions, Rob and I spent some time on the phone chatting about tomatoes, seed companies, and life in general.

Rob was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, in 1950. His dad hails from West Virginia, and his mom is from Ohio. When Rob was nine years old, his family and he moved to Massachusetts. He attended the University of Massachusetts, initially seeking a mathematics major. However, since this was in the period of 1969/1970 (a very socially enlightening time for our country), it is no surprise that Rob did not maintain an interest in math. As you can probably guess, it was then that he began to develop an interest in agriculture. After trying unsuccessfully to gain admission to Cornell to follow up on this new interest, he selected a different road to accomplish his goals.

Rob then became involved with food cooperatives, helping to start the Yellow Sun co-op in Amherst, Massachusetts. Rob also spent some time in Providence, Rhode Island, working in a natural food store started by his then girlfriend’s mother. A supplier to the Yellow Sun co-op had a small vegetable farm in New Hampshire, and Rob (after cutting his hair) moved there in 1972. It was then that he became interested in the seed business. The farm supplied a vegetable broker in New York who had an interest in particular and uncommon types of produce. Seeds for such ethnic or foreign vegetable varieties were hard to come by at that time.

Stimulated by such requests, Rob spent evenings developing a network of seeds. He went to Boston libraries in the evenings, reading the international trade directories and consulted with various countries. In this way, Rob familiarized himself with what was available for seeds outside of the United States. At the end of the summer of 1973, Rob once more moved in with his parents in Massachusetts. It was there that he published Johnny’s Selected Seed’s first seed catalog. The catalog was written at the farm, and printed by a friend in Boston. It also included hand drawings (by a New Hampshire friend). In this first catalog were seeds from a few foreign suppliers, as well as some family heirlooms, his orientation even back then being toward non-hybrid varieties. That first year, Rob realized sales of about seven thousand dollars. Rob moved to Dixmon, Maine in 1974 to establish the headquarters of his new company, and Johnny’s has been in Maine ever since, later moving to its current location in Albion.

I asked Rob about his first contact or awareness of the Seed Saver’s Exchange. He read to me parts of a letter from November 30, 1976, that he received from Kent Whealy, director of SSE. Kent asked Rob to mention the SSE (known then as the True Seed Exchange) in his seed catalog. The True Seed Exchange had 200 members in those days. Rob feels that the greatest value of the SSE as it currently exists is in the network of gardeners, the linking together of amateur enthusiasts. Rob himself occasionally offers seeds through the SSE. He mentioned a few ideas of improving the Winter SSE Yearbook. He suggested bold facing new information in any given year. This would certainly make it easier for SSE members to easily see the new seeds in the year’s listings. When asked if seed saving hurts companies that concentrate on non hybrid varieties, he replied no. Any activity that builds enthusiasm for gardening should be supported. For example, even those who save seeds from year to year need gardening supplies, books, and seeds of varieties that they do not maintain.

Rob, who still owns JSS, currently spends about 20% of his time on management responsibilities. Naturally, this is not the favorite part of his job. He spends the balance of his time on research and production. He feels that JSS is very ambitious concerning product development, and wants the company to continually strive to offer customers better seeds and better methods. At JSS, there is excellent staff stability, and good morale right now, though he admits that such things can be cyclical. Since delegating the presidency of the company in 1992 to another staff member, Rob feels that things are going very well there indeed. He is the first to admit that the public relations part of the job is not his specialty. He still likes to get his hands dirty!

JSS focuses upon such crops as squash, pumpkins, and peppers. These are species in which a modest size operation can make a real impact, in Rob’s opinion. There are also smaller projects ongoing with other crops, such as tomatoes. I asked Rob about his interest in heirloom tomatoes, and why JSS is carrying a selection of them in the catalog. Rob has been maintaining a collection of heirlooms since the late 1970’s, when people began to send seeds of various varieties to JSS for testing. He feels that he was late off the mark with heirlooms, as he thought that they were too primitive, inconsistent in performance, and matured too late in Maine. What he has found however is that they frequently grow very well there, and certainly have been a success in terms of sales. JSS rotates heirlooms in and out of the catalog. Brandywine is very popular, Cherokee Purple OK, but Anna Russian, Cuostralee, and Great White are tough sells. Nepal is actually out of the catalog as well.

I asked Rob about his hobbies, and he told me about his love of contra dancing, biking, skiing, and playing the guitar. As to his favorite tomatoes, he replied that he likes small tomatoes with lots of flavor, especially processing or sauce tomatoes. He particularly enjoys the new (to his catalog) plum tomato Debarao. He did admit relishing the flavor of the large heirloom beefsteak types, such as Brandywine. It is tough when they come in so late, however. Most of the popular SSE heirlooms do not ripen in Maine until late August, and are at their best in September. Rob and I have also frequently talked about the relative strengths and weakness of open pollinated vegetables, in comparison with hybrids. His opinion is that for self pollinated crops like peppers and tomatoes, the phenomenon of “hybrid vigor” is not as significant as for crops such as squash and corn. His belief is that the major advantage of hybridization is inclusion of disease resistance, as well as improved adaptability and consistency of performance year to year and over a wider geographic area that is provided by the hybrid vigor. For home gardeners who are not as concerned about concentrated fruit sets or ability to machine harvest, hybrids are certainly not mandatory. He did remind that heirlooms can be very variable season to season, however. A variety that is spectacular one year may be a near total failure the following season. Hybrids may not be as spectacular in terms of either success or failure.

Rob has been trying for years now to get Carolyn and me up to Maine to visit. The thought of helping Rob and the JSS staff taste through their tomato trials is exciting indeed. Up to now, work and family responsibilities have prevented me from taking the trip. Carolyn has similar issues with her teaching responsibilities. The year is definitely coming, however, when you will find me in Maine some September. Somehow, I have a feeling that Rob and I would spend some time with the tomatoes, then head off to play the guitar together!