About Sea Spring Seeds

Tunnels at Sea Spring Farm and in the distance a view of Lyme Bay in West Dorset

Sea Spring Seeds is based at Sea Spring Farm, a specialist nursery overlooking the English Channel in West Dorset. The business is owned and managed by us, Michael and Joy Michaud, along side our other enterprises: Sea Spring Plants (selling chilli plug plants), Peppers by Post (growing and selling fresh chillies through the post) and Sea Spring Photos (a photo library for vegetable growing).

After working for decades in agriculture and horticulture, we started our own business in 1989, first growing vegetables and herbs for local shops and restaurants. We gradually became interested in chillies, eventually establishing Peppers by Post, Britain's first company growing and selling fresh chillies through the post.

We then began hunting for new chillies in immigrant shops and allotments, where we found naga morich, a Bangladeshi landrace from which we developed the Dorset Naga, one of the hottest chillies in the world (see www.dorsetnaga.com).

Sweet pepper trial at Sea Spring Seeds.

Sea Spring Seeds was started to satisfy our love for growing and eating high quality vegetables. Being growers ourselves, we sell only those varieties that reach the high standards we have set for flavour and productivity. In our search for the best we have grown and tasted hundreds of varieties – and eliminated many that were downright bad or depressingly mediocre. But there are always a few that stand out as being exceptional, and these are the ones we offer in our catalog.

Sea Spring Seed lettuce variety trials: seedlings ready for planting out; harvesting the mature heads.

Sea Spring Seeds is a work in progress, and we are continuously working to expand our range of varieties on offer. The process is slow and steady, and in 2011, we conducted many more trials, including some on tomatoes, peppers and leafy salads. But we will always remained loyal to chillies, and will always be working on our breeding programme to produce more exciting and unique varieties to follow on from Dorset Naga.

Every year we have an open day in August, so if you would like to see the trials come along, we would love to show you around. Next year the our open day will be on 26th August 2012.

Chillies growing in greenhouses and tunnels at Sea Spring Farm.